Zombies: Best melee weapon?

Baseball bats would be too long and cumbersome to use in small confines and the swing required for a killing blow would be too wide making it ineffective for groups, a regular joe would probably have sore hands after 6-8 swings at zombies because of the recoil.

Hammers are ideal for crushing the skull and destroying the brain but it leaves a chance for the attackers hand to get bitten.

The chainsaw would be the last thing you want as a melee weapon, it's heavy, loud, fragile (it was made for wood, not bone) and would require gasoline to use.

Generally blades isn't a good weapon as you would believe it would be, it won't have enough crushing force to get through the skull, the edge would quickly deteriorate when being used against bone and flesh and would require regular maintenance , they would serve better as a utility tool rather than a weapon.

Best thing I could think of is using a makeshift spear, you could climb up some ledges and take stabs at their heads, their light (usually a simple wooden staff with a sharpened edge), easy to make, durable (even if it isn't sharp the force per square inch it can create is enough to pierce the skull). Not really effective on equal footing though.


A riot shield could possibly be effective but hard to come by, but acquiring one would immensely improve chances of survival from zombie attacks. Just aim to obtain the smaller ones because the bigger ones would prove to cumbersome.


But then again if you were a serious survivor you would avoid all forms of conflict with zombies as much as possible. A good tactic is using bare handed combat to deter zombies, I studied enough judo to perform simple throws that requires little effort to achieve with minimal contact to the mouth of the zombie, you don't have to kill them when you can just temporarily down them giving you enough time to flee. I just hope you exercised enough to actually get away from one, in a post-apocalyptic zombie ridden wasteland you'll eventually get ripped if you survive long enough.