I still think my moat strategy for self protection has a lot of virtue.

trust me. I will be knocking on your door yelling complete sentences!

Oh, and let me put in a good word for Mira Grant's Feed novel, which does a good job of working out a consistent SFnal zombie-plagued world. (Working in a hospital becomes very interesting where the dead rise rather quickly....)

Being Human SyFy promo.

she would do well to pop his eyes with her thumbnails and then grab a fire extinguisher and hit him in the head until things stop crunching and start making squishy noises.

My girlfriends are always appalled when I remind them of this strategy...one just had a robber in her house while she and her family slept...along with a good hardy rap to the trachea.

My psychotic criminal father wasn't good for much, but this advice stood me in good stead. Not the eye-popping, but the neck punch.

You need a fair amount of windup (and ergo room) for an effective larynx strike. And it's easy to clip the chin by mistake and render the whole thing ineffective. I forget what it's called, but the v between your clavicles is pretty sensitive and you can often push someone a few inches back by angling your finger correctly there, and you don't need to have room behind you to carry it off.

That having been said, eyes will pretty much always work, and you need little to no leverage for it.

pop his eyes with her thumbnails

I've discovered that this is a far more effective strategy to defend against heifer attack than punching the heifer in the skull. (Heifers have thick skulls.)

My psychotic criminal father wasn't good for much, but this advice stood me in good stead. Not the eye-popping, but the neck punch.

I recently congratulated a male coworker on using principles of positive reinforcement for getting better cooperation from his 6 yr. old daughter rather than resorting to violence and fear. But then I reminded him he would have to make an extra effort to purposefully teach her to defend herself from predatory males, since he was not standing in that role himself. He brought up the thumbs-in-eye-sockets and flat side of hand to throat techniques as examples of things he would teach her.

Also very effective without needing much elbow room is a finger laid across the top of the philtrum and pressed back at a 45 degree angle.

Ask Holli.

I have seen that demonstrated. It's like a magic trick; it's hard to believe how well it works, even seeing it.