Quote Originally Posted by Traab View Post
True, but in this case, unless you already have friends, every enemy combatant in the area will come directly after you until they eat you or you run out of people to kill. And while against humans a wound can work for breathing space, no such luck here. It had better be one hit, one kill, or you will get swarmed under. So your aim had better be perfect every time, or you are going to die. As the saying goes, you have to be lucky every time, they only have to be lucky once. A glancing blow, an arm gets in the way enough to keep it from smashing the skull, hell, your axe gets hung up for a second or two too long in a zombie skull. There are a lot of ways to die trying to fight in hand to hand.
Not quite, a strike with blunt force trauma to certain parts of the body will by necessity of the laws of kinetic energy force a zombie to stop it's forward advancement/stumble back some.

For example, kick him in the pelvic girdle and he'll be forced back a couple of steps. Take a step back or two yourself, and boom, room to breath, take aim and swing again at the head.