It's better to have a katana than a shotgun for a zombie apocalypse.

1. Opting outI do apologize if it wasn’t made clear enough in the instigation, but you say you saw nowhere written in the resolution, definitions, or debate structure that suicide is not an option. Look back up at the definition of “advantageous”: “more beneficial or favorable for the purpose of reaching a desired end. In this case, that desired end is indefinite survival”.Committing suicide is not surviving, so this whole point is irrelevant to the debate.2. Availability of weapons/ammunitionPerhaps guns as a whole are more common than a katana, but an FP6 specifically is not so common. Seeing as how the question of this debate is, “when a zombie apocalypse strikes, which would you rather have in your hands: a katana or an FP6”, it should be assumed we’d start with either weapon. But that’s not to say you’d automatically start with a whole mountain of shotgun shells.I’ll give you a few boxes out of courtesy, sure, but after those are spent, then what? Even if surviving in the first few months is easier, it’ll only get more and more difficult as ammunition becomes scarcer and scarcer.3. EffectivenessMy opponent seems to think I’m making my hypothetical katana-wielder out to be some kind of Jet Li superhero, destroyer of the undead. Certainly, one can’t expect to take down fifteen zombies with a blade if he is exceedingly clumsy, unskilled, or short-winded. These are the people who will, in general, die first when a zombie apocalypse strikes anyway.But with a month or less of practice, it is not out of the question to take down a group of zombies with a katana, even if you had little to no experience prior to the apocalypse. Katanas may be primarily for decoration nowadays, but they’ve never been considered some joke weapon blacksmiths used to make just to waste time.I concede the effective range of a katana is shorter in length than a shotgun. I’d be a fool not to. However, even with that shorter effective range, an attacking zombie should not ever be able to get close enough to scratch or bite you, unless it had the neck of a giraffe or the arms of Monkey deLuffe.My opponent makes no effort, however, to refute the fact that one must spend precious seconds mid-battle to constantly pump and load a shotgun (while the katana has no such handicap). Extend this argument.4. Clean killsMy opponent’s solution to this problem involves goggles, masks, and bandages from Wal-mart. As stated previously though, trying to get your hands on such supplies would be damn near suicidal in the beginning. If we were to agree, though, that we would get our hands on such supplies, as my opponent implies, then this argument would be equally effective (or ineffective) for either weapon. I’m willing to agree to this if my opponent is.5. Noise/smellMy opponent concedes the point about noise.But then he goes on to claim stealth against a zombie would be impossible, because it would smell you before you had the chance to sneak up on it. There are a multitude of rebuttals I can offer to this:(A) As stated in the instigation, it’s usually pretty easy to trick a zombie’s nose by somehow making yourself smell like rotting meat (ie. rubbing fish guts on your clothes). Therefore, stealth is by no means impossible.(B) My point isn’t that you could get the jump on one or two zombies before they notice you, but that you could kill one or two zombies with a katana without attracting others in the area with a loud noise.(C) I absolutely refuse to agree a sweaty, stinking person is the smell-equivalent to the booming noise of an FP6 shotgun. A zombie’s nose is not hypersensitive like some kind of German Sheppard or something. Nor is their sense of hearing any more special than you’d expect. So while it is perfectly reasonable to assume one could hear the blast of an FP6 shotgun several blocks away, it is not reasonable to assume one could smell you from the same distance.