Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

I’m a gun nut Ballistic-American and something of a nerd, so why am I not surprised that these two character traits/weaknesses/identities have conspired to hijack my subconscious as of late.

Where exactly has it shanghaied it to? (Yeah, that sentence probably could have been constructed…gooder.) For the life of me, I have spent the last week playing over in my mind what I would want out of a 10/22 if I were stuck in a world full of soft-skulled, slow-moving zombies. Seriously. I’m spending, like, an hour a day surfing the web for just the right barrel, just the right stock, just the right sights, just the right accessories…and then when I find them and think “Yeah, that’d be perfect” I rethink the requirements and have to start from scratch.

RIght off the bat, I was absolutely in love with this:

It’s a one-off from Nodak Spud. But…I loved the HK MP5 look. Compact, has provisions for an optic, has open sights, enough barrel to thread and suppress ahead of the sight, and a telestock. Oh..but that stock….mmmm…not so sure. I mean, the zombie apocalypse is going to require a good bit of running around and being light on your feet…so wouldn’t a folder make more sense? But then again, rimfires can be fussy…and if you pull the trigger and are rewarded with a ‘click’ you’re going to want a stock with some stoutness to it so you can drive the buttplate (need a metal buttplate now rather than the OEM plastic) through the skull of the zombie. And what about a suppressor? I can find threaded .22 barrels all day long but I cant find a threaded .22 barrel with iron sights. That shouldn’t surprise me…once you screw a suppressor onto the end of the barrel you wind up having the diameter of the supressor block the sights. But..I need iron sights in case the optics fail. And..and..and….

See, this has been running in my mind for the last week since I’ve been watching season three of The Walking Dead.

So, I figure what I’d want is a solid stock, wood or plastic, a threaded barrel, sights high enough to overlook a mounted suppressor, a rail for optics, maybe a better mag release, and some rail for mounting a light. Not much to ask for, right? Something that when it’s all done would like very much like this:

The flash suppressor is probably gilding the lily, but it protects the threads when you don’t have the suppressor on the end. I’d swap the barrel band for the side-mounted, rail equipped one from Pro-Mag (ProMag Barrel Band) and call it a day.

Not as compact as it would be with a folder, but I like having the ‘blunt force trauma’ option. True compact would look like this. But I think this would be a nice rig for capping the slow, shambling zombies at up to 100 yards. And, with a couple Butler Creek mags, a small group of ‘em could be knocked down by one person almost as fast as knocking down one.

See, this is what happens when you give a science-fiction/comic-book nerd an internet connection and a 10/22.

But, in the interest of stimulating dialog and catering to my mania, how would you set yours up? We’ve established that the skull of your average Walking Dead zombie is easily penetrated by simple hand tools, so a .22 offers plenty of penetration. The rule of law has quite obviously taken a holiday so SBR and suppress to your heart’s content. Bonus points for detailing parts and model numbers.