Your non-superpowered 5-man zombie apocalypse survivor squad.

[Kyberwulf]

I am gonna go a different route.

Don Juan.
Robin Williams.
Dr. Martin Luther King.
The President from Independence day.
Yoda, without his lightsaber.

:D WE are gonna beat this Zombie Apocalypse. Gonna make these zombies feel again.

GOOO Warm Bodies!

[thorgrim29]

Ok I'll bite (get it?)

-Samantha Carter from Stargate to cobble together modern civilization out of a solar panel and a spool of wire
-Daryl Dixon, cause he's a badass and knows zombies, scout and provider
-Rebooted Lara Croft, like a cultured, more badass Daryl (reboot because she's a better team player and she has "rescue Sam" as a pavlovian reflex by now, and I'm a Sam even though I'm a large white guy instead of a tiny asian girl it might help me)
-Dr McNinja might fail at the "not super-powered" test. If so, Dr Beckett from SGA
-And, our glorious leader, Commander Shepard from Mass Effect 1, either male or female (probably female, she's more interesting), engineer class (seems more useful than the other non-biotics). Because come on, it's The Shepard. We're going to need a leader, why not one who's as absurdly charismatic as she is badass?

My role in all of this would probably be to pick holes in plans and provide unskilled labour, not much call for a business accountant in the zombie apocalypse, and both Shepard and Carter are better organizers than I am.

[Starwulf]

John Thomas Rourke(Leader): He is literally "The Survivor". He is basically the ultimate soldier/mercenary with a wickedly high IQ, extremely good common sense, and probably the best reflexes of any non-super human I've ever read about. Good with a blade(any kind), top-notch with any weapon, excellent hand-to-hand skills, knows how to make any habitat survivable.

Jack Reacher: Much like Rourke, Reacher is ex-military with a wide, versatile set of skills, and while he usually works alone he is quite capable of working with others when need be.

Michonne: The sword-wielding woman from "The Walking Dead". She knows what it takes to survive in a zombie apocalypse, and will do what it takes to insure the survival of herself and those she cares about.

Wulfgar: The Ultimate Barbarian, wields a giant war-hammer that can likely crush multiple zombies in a single swing. I don't consider him "Super-powered" because while he's from a high-powered fantasy setting, he's just a human that got really freaking big and really freaking strong. We'll pretend that his war-hammer doesn't have the magical "return to owner" properties for this scenario.

Ash Williams Has already survived dealing with "deadites" which are basically hyped up zombies several times, knows how to do what has to be done, never gives up, and most importantly: Has a chainsaw as an attachment to his missing hand.

[Flickerdart]

I mean, I'm not exactly an expert on this stuff, but it doesn't seem like any more of a stretch to say that there would have been fairly inexpensive scrap lead lying around in the early 1900s than it is to say that Simo Hayha would never, ever, ever have had a reason to know learn to cast bullets.

What do you imagine caused all this lead to appear in rural, agrarian Finland? And how would he get the equipment to make it into bullets? What about powder?

"Simo Hayha went to the store sometimes" is far less absurd than what you are suggesting.

[DoctorFaust]

What do you imagine caused all this lead to appear in rural, agrarian Finland? And how would he get the equipment to make it into bullets? What about powder?

"Simo Hayha went to the store sometimes" is far less absurd than what you are suggesting.

You're saying it's absurd for him to have fishing weights? For there to have been lead junk lying around? To have, quite literally, a campfire, a bucket, and a small handheld tool?

[Jeivar]

Maybe a drawn-out discussion on whether or not Simo Hayha knew how to cast bullets should be taken to PM.

[Kitten Champion]

Maybe a drawn-out discussion on whether or not Simo Hayha knew how to cast bullets should be taken to PM.

What?!? But it's so intensely interesting!

I'm on the edge of my seat here.

[LokeyITP]

If you're on the internet, you should be able to quickly find that farming/living off the land is much harder than casting lead. For that a candle and a bullet mold and some time is all you need. You do it outdoors so you don't die of course and soft metal is anywhere. Crimper and capping are the stuff you'll have to keep tools and parts for. Also smokeless powder and...

Of course why bother, there's bullets galore in N Europe or anywhere and they last decades.

[OracleofWuffing]

1. The Mayor of SimCity - Preferably the Super Nintendo one, though the 2000 or 3000 incarnations would do in a pinch, as well. We're gonna need to restart civilization, this guy seems capable of that job and seems to work well with blank slates.
2. Steve - Or Alex from Minecraft, whatever, I'm not picky. Makes a great pack mule, handy with terraforming, basic combat, building, farming, and fishing. I don't imagine the zombies will actually pose any noticeable threat, but if they do, I have an expert on hand.
3. Batman - I want to have a contingency for keeping the above two in check, and am under the impression that this guy's known for being good with contingencies. Bonus, he's rich.
4. Gyro Gearloose - Leads to more entertaining and wacky adventures than MacGuyver while filling the inventor role.
5. Rosie - From the Jetsons. I was actually kinda stumped here, I was kind of looking for someone more in the cooking role of things, but couldn't really think of anyone specific that wouldn't drive me crazy (Brock from the pokemon anime was a thought, but Pokemon are probably in the "superpower" territory and he'd probably go depressed hardcore in a world without them). It'll be nice to have someone clean up after my slob ways, and having a robot clean up any biohazard area is probably a wise choice.

[Hytheter]

Victor Von Doom

Are we not counting literal magic as a superpower or are you forgetting that Doom is a potent sorcerer?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Hmm... I think I would have difficulty assigning roles, but here's my choices.

Kamina (TTGL)
Ash Williams (Army of Darkness)
Olivier Mira Armstrong (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Commander Shepard ♀ (Mass Effect)
Wesley Crusher (ST:TNG)

Some excellent picks here. Is Wesley there as zombie bait?

[Avilan the Grey]

Are we not counting literal magic as a superpower or are you forgetting that Doom is a potent sorcerer?

How about pre-armor Victor.

[Darth Credence]

Easy. Me and four friends. We will wear leather from head to toe on the off chance we actually have to deal with a zombie, and just play video games for a few weeks while the whole thing plays itself out. We have enough food around that we wouldn't even need to leave the house.

[Hytheter]

How about pre-armor Victor.

Still a sorcerer.

[Kitten Champion]

Some excellent picks here. Is Wesley there as zombie bait?

Well, that's the sneaky bit. See, I see three distinct possible beneficial scenarios --

1. We all die, but we do so with the knowledge that Wesley's going down with us.
2. Wesley Crusher, in his usual TV fashion, preposterously whips up an anti-Zombie cure around the climax, saves world, annoys all.
3. Kamina takes young Wesley under his wing, becomes the next Simon, awesome time is had by all.

There's nothing but up-side here.

[Rater202]

Still a sorcerer.

He ddin't become a sorcerer until a good while into the Fantastic Four's run, did he? Go with Early Doom

[DiscipleofBob]

Some good picks here. I'm going to try to come up with choices that haven't already been used.

Reed Richards - Pre-cosmic radiation. The stretchy bit isn't that important in the long run, but a super scientist who can hopefully cure the zombie plague will be vital.

Tony Stark - Chief engineer. Just need to give him a CAVE with a BOX of SCRAPS!

Lex Luthor - Also a super science and engineering genius with organizational and leadership skills, and I imagine without actual superpowered people around and normal people having to work together he might actually be agreeable. Plus he wouldn't be afraid to make the tough calls and get dirty work done.

Oliver Queen - Fits in well with the others, is an excellent combatant, and has survivalist skills from being trapped on that island.

Chell The odd one out for multiple reasons, but a Portal gun would be too useful in getting to hard to reach places, escaping difficult situations, funneling zombies off a cliff, the possibilities are endless.

[Rater202]

Super Technology like tony Stark uses is forbidden in the OP.

[Flickerdart]

You're saying it's absurd for him to have fishing weights? For there to have been lead junk lying around? To have, quite literally, a campfire, a bucket, and a small handheld tool?

He needs fishing weights to fish - if he uses them on bullets and then shoots those bullets, now he has no fishing weights and can't fish.

As for lead junk, I'm not even sure what you're suggesting - what sort of things would a subsistence farmer own that are made of lead and count as junk? This is long before the era of planned obsolescence, everything he owned he would have needed to survive and would have performed extensive maintenance upon to keep it working and not "junk."

I am happy to concede the point if you can give me some examples of large lead objects likely to just be tossed onto the side of the road by random passers-by in rural Finland. Of course, there is still the matter of the casings and the gunpowder as I've mentioned, but I'm assuming he gets those from gnomes that frolic in his garden or something, right?

[Calemyr]

Well, that's the sneaky bit. See, I see three distinct possible beneficial scenarios --

1. We all die, but we do so with the knowledge that Wesley's going down with us.
2. Wesley Crusher, in his usual TV fashion, preposterously whips up an anti-Zombie cure around the climax, saves world, annoys all.
3. Kamina takes young Wesley under his wing, becomes the next Simon, awesome time is had by all.

There's nothing but up-side here.

"Kick logic to the curb! Do the impossible! That's how Team Gurren rolls!"
"So, can you make Wesley Crusher cool?"
"Um... er... no. There's impossible and then there's... that..."
"Cool. Wesley, work on a cure. We'll work on zombie traps that use you as bait."
"Who the hell do you think I am?!"
"An obnoxious writers' pet that even your own actor dislikes?"
"Oh... Right then."

[DiscipleofBob]

Super Technology like tony Stark uses is forbidden in the OP.

Don't need the suit. Tony Stark has proven he can do awesome things with spare parts and a Home Depot.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

3. Kamina takes young Wesley under his wing, becomes the next Simon, awesome time is had by all.

<mind explosion>

That would...that would be indescribable.

[industrious]

I tried to challenge myself: pick 5 people nobody else picked.

Hank Morgan (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court): Was able to build a 19th century technology base in medieval times. The modern world may be more complicated, but requires more infrastructure, which will undoubtedly be ruined by the zombies.

Robin Hood: Guns are, as pointed out previously, too loud for zombies. The bow and arrow, however, is nearly silent. We should also have access to sporting goods stores to scavenge, or the guy should be able to make his own without difficulty. He also knows how to live off the land.

The Man (The Road): He's experienced with apocalypses, knows how to scavenge in the ruins of an old world, and how to remain unseen by cannibal humans, who are probably more alert than zombies. He also knows how to teach those skills.

John "Hannibal" Smith ("The A-Team"): Team Leader, Morale Officer, and more than capable of handling anything the world will throw at us. He's also ex-military.

Katniss Everdeen: For much the same reasons as Robin Hood; proficiency with a bow and with hunting, as well as stealth.

[Killer Angel]

mmm...
What level of apocalypse are we talking about? we wake up and the world has blown up? fast zombies? slow ones?

anyway, I suppose there's still some organization... so, here's my squad (for now, i think i'll need only 4 people):

(Me)
my wife
my first daughter
my second daughter
the current USA president.

Then I'll enjoy my save nuclear bunker and my huge amount of supplies, while the army takes care of the zombies.

[TeChameleon]

I hate to join in on the 'Simo Hayha making bullets' debate, but I might actually have something useful to add. While I've never cast bullets myself, I've watched someone I know do it; it takes rather less gear than you'd think, and isn't even all that time consuming. As far as lead goes, there was a surprising amount of it used in making various things around the turn of the century- hell, even some roof tiles were made of it around that time period. Ditto a lot of the plumbing a few decades earlier, so there was a fair bit of old lead pipe around, since no-one wanted to use it anymore once they figured out lead poisoning and all that fun stuff.

So it's hardly stretching credibility that you'd have a handful of such things laying around. And as a final note, farmers aren't exactly notoriously fond of spending money (neither are Finns, from what I remember of my sadly brief time in Helsinki ), and casting your own bullets is much cheaper than buying them.

... and as a post-final note, bear in mind that this would have been the 1920s, and 'going to the store' was rather different than nowadays- the White Death didn't even necessarily have a car.

Anyway, moving right along... for my group?

Karnak the Shatterer, of the Inhumans. Born allergic to the Terrigen Mists that grant the Inhumans their superhuman abilities, Karnak decided to substitute training and determination for superpowers. By the time he hit adulthood, the powerless Karnak was one of the most lethal men in an entire society of poweful superhumans, able to spot the weakest point in any material or object and 'strike it with unerring precision' (ah, Stan Lee narration...). Eventually, he managed to extend this talent to spotting the weak point in a plan (don't ask me how that worked, I think a writer was just trying to be clever and not quite succeeding), making him an exceptionally useful strategist and advisor.

The Doctor (might infringe on the no superhumans thing, not sure- and I have NO idea how Time Lord regeneration would interact with a zombie plague. It's not something I'd want to experiment with firsthand, at the very least...). Pretty self-explanatory, I think- even without his TARDIS, which I'm assuming the rules wouldn't allow, since otherwise it'd be pretty easy to cure a zombie plague... one quick timejump, Patient Zero gets an unexpected injection, and the world is saved, wa-hey!.. he's still a supergenius with thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, and it wouldn't exactly be hard to persuade him to help. Probably be (much) harder to stop him from helping He'd also be rather useful at rebuilding civilization once the other four butchered the zombies wholesale.

Tommy Prince. 'Nuff said.

Abraham Van Helsing. To a vampire hunter, zombies are pretty much a light warmup. I seriously doubt that even a full-on zombie apocalypse would so much as slow Van Helsing down.

Chakaal. If you need any evil reduced to bite-sized chunks, Chakaal is your gal. She's a hero to the core, and, as a foil and contrast to Groo the Wanderer, is everything he is not- beautiful, wise, and cunning, with superb survival skills and clever plans. Her main flaw is that she keeps allowing Groo to 'help'... and if Groo isn't in-universe, that shouldn't be a problem

Chakaal is also canonically as good with her sword as Groo is with his two. Given that Groo considers 'how to slay hordes' an introductory-level lesson (as in, lesson two) in swordplay, complains that there aren't enough foes when he's only got two armies to slay (and his enemies agree with him- "We're fighting GROO with only two armies?" "Yes, we could use several more armies..."), and is usually only stopped when he runs out of enemies, no matter who or what he's fighting, it should give you some idea of just how good he and Chakaal are.

And, as a final note, Chakaal is one of the very few characters who can actually mitigate the damage that Groo causes, sometimes even leaving the people they were helping better off than when they started. Given that in-universe, Groo's attempts at 'help' are considered worse than barbarian hordes, famine, locusts, plagues (yes, plural), wildfire, flooding, and rampant banditry put together, something as minor as a zombie apocalypse shouldn't prove more than a few afternoons' diversion.

[Avilan the Grey]

He ddin't become a sorcerer until a good while into the Fantastic Four's run, did he? Go with Early Doom

Exactly. The first stories I read did not have him knowing magic.

I am flexible about Scrooge though. He is... of the Duck clan and therefore unusually... powerful.

Spoiler: Hulking eh.. Ducking out:

Show

...We all know where Donald get's his temper from...

[TeChameleon]

It really depends on how you define 'early Doom'. Doom's... third story, I believe, had him showing his first non-tech superpower- he learned how to mind-swap from the aliens who rescued him after he shot himself into space. However, in the later issues that chronicled his earlier life, young Victor started learning magic while still in his early teens, if the art is anything to go by. So while having a prepubescent Victor Von Doom on the squad might be interesting, I'm not sure how useful he'd be

... then again, if Valeria Richards is anything to go by, he'd probably Deus Ex Machina the whole mess before his twelfth birthday

[lord_khaine]

Chakaal is also canonically as good with her sword as Groo is with his two. Given that Groo considers 'how to slay hordes' an introductory-level lesson (as in, lesson two) in swordplay, complains that there aren't enough foes when he's only got two armies to slay (and his enemies agree with him- "We're fighting GROO with only two armies?" "Yes, we could use several more armies..."), and is usually only stopped when he runs out of enemies, no matter who or what he's fighting, it should give you some idea of just how good he and Chakaal are.

And, as a final note, Chakaal is one of the very few characters who can actually mitigate the damage that Groo causes, sometimes even leaving the people they were helping better off than when they started. Given that in-universe, Groo's attempts at 'help' are considered worse than barbarian hordes, famine, locusts, plagues (yes, plural), wildfire, flooding, and rampant banditry put together, something as minor as a zombie apocalypse shouldn't prove more than a few afternoons' diversion.

Ohh yeah.. good old Groo.. dam its long time since i heard of him. Heh.. when you take superhumanly skilled swordsmen of that class in your team then the challenge should almost be increased as well.
To.. something along the line of "somewhere else Groo has his own team" And he is also trying to solve the zombie issue

[TheThan]

well lets see,

Ray Mears: Bushcraft survival instructor. There are a lot of people that could go here but I’m using him because he seems pretty chill. With him he can gather food, water, build fire and make shelter and equipment out of natural materials. I know he’s an archer and I’m pretty sure he can handle a rifle as well. Plus he's been all over the world, so he's familiar with whatever environment we find ourselves in.

Angus MacGyver: Gadgeteer, give him a Swiss army knife and literally anything and he can build you any sort of simple machine you can imagine. he can also act as a mechanic, lock-pic etc. Sure he doesn’t like guns, but I’m sure he’ll get over it once the zombies start eating brains.

Davey Crockett- A real life pioneer, explorer, hunter, solder and statesman. Davey can do it all, plus lead or at least negotiate with other survivors since he was a Tennessee congressman after all. He's familiar with percussion cap muskets, but I'm sure he'll adapt to modern rifles quickly.

Carlos Hathcock: A legendary sniper serving in the USMC during the Vietnam war. White Feather here was not only a superior shot and scout. His heroics as a sniper and simply as a man are well documented. He saved the lives of seven fellow marines that got hit by a landmine while in an APC (earning a purple heart and a silver star for it). I want someone that I know won’t abandon me and can function under intense pressure.

Helga: A busty blond Swedish masseuse. What? A nice massage during down time would be nice; after all a bit of luxury goes a long way. She might not have the training the others have, but she's got other assets. Plus there's no better teacher than on the job training.

[Kitten Champion]

Angus MacGyver: Gadgeteer, give him a Swiss army knife and literally anything and he can build you any sort of simple machine you can imagine. he can also act as a mechanic, lock-pic etc. Sure he doesn’t like guns, but I’m sure he’ll get over it once the zombies start eating brains.

Wait wait wait... hold up here... MacGyver has a first name?