Zombies! What are you going to do when...

[DarkFish]

Originally Posted by Raptor1

Aha, they might be able to live off them, but would it keep them healthy enough to carry your load of supplies (You need to carry around much more than Cowboys did, don't forget) and be able to outmaneuver a horde of zombies at the same time?

Easily. What do you think horses used to eat in the past?
As for supplies, I plan on taking enough for only a few days. That gives me plenty of time to search farms for food. (don't forget I live in the Netherlands, farms are never further apart than let's say a kilometer. If it's summer I could easily find some vegetables.

A horse might well work as an individual transport, but you can't regularly count on it to perform well enough in any condition.

Could you explain what exactly you mean with "perform well enough in any condition"? There are hundreds of thousands of different conditions, and equally many different ways of performing. Do you for example mean "run fast enough when a zombie horde chases you" or do you mean "can keep walking on a hot day" or do you mean [fill in random situation]?

Besides that, the point about weapons. If you're being faces by little enough zombies to slip through the gaps with your horse, you can well take them out (At least a fair number of them) with well-placed shots from a battle rifle or similar weapon; it is certainly much safer than trying to run through and hoping the odd zombie doesn't land a hit on your horse.

Why take them out? If all the world is swarmed with zombie hordes, a few less zombies won't make a difference. I leave as much killing as possible for the army guys who've got the right equipment and training to do so effectively.
If you're on a horse, about the only usable weapons are melee weapons. Try accurately aiming a rifle while galloping towards the enemy, I'm pretty sure you can't.
Besides, if you're surrounded by zombies your best chance of survival is to flee, no matter what weapon you have. You might take out quite a few, but eventually the moment comes when you forget to look over your shoulder, or your reloading goes wrong, or whatever.

A car might be great to run over zombies, until the moment you crash into something solid which you couldn't see for all the zombies on your windshield.

But let's compare the good and bad points of a car and a horse:
Car:
-Good:
- Fast
- Superior armor/protection
- Lots of room for supplies etc.
-Bad:
- Needs fuel, if you can't get it soon enough you're dead
- Hard to fix in case of mechanical problems
- Can't get everywhere, it needs some sort of road/flat open terrain

Horse:
-Good:
- Very agile
- Can go everywhere a human can, no matter what terrain
- Finds its own "fuel"
- Still much faster than a zombie
- Injuries hard to heal, but generally don't take much more than just time, and in case of emergency would mostly still be able to run
-Bad:
- No armor/protection
- Limited room for supplies
- Can panic and refuse to follow your orders (especially with horses you don't know very well)

The good and bad points are pretty much the opposite as you see, which makes them useful for different strategies:
Horse:
-Avoid encounters with zombies
-Go off-road where there aren't many of them
-Search for supplies wherever you can.

Car:
-Drive on roads and through towns, where there are likely to be more zombies
-Bash through any zombie horde you find
-Take enough supplies to survive for quite some time
-Hope your car doesn't break down

Also, can horses be infected? I don't think so as I've never seen a horse zombie