Gruesome Walking Dead Zombie Merge Horror. Which flashlight would you EDC?

[rgoal30]

The Surefire Scout Light attached to my Colt AR-15 is the obvious choice since I would be EDC'ing the rifle. I already EDC an LX2 so I could def see clipping that to my person somewhere.

[fisk-king]

Whats needed for "walking dead" is a stronger female lead...

Also, Rick's wife gets on my nerves. First she tells Rick he needs to kill Shane then later she's pissed because Rick killed Shane. Confused.

[scout24]

1104 paklite hours on low here at 6pm EST, 46 straight days, now somewhere between my Thrunite T10 and my Titan on low. Still brighter than my Thrunite Ti firefly, brighter than I like for midnight runs/getting ready for work. Plenty of usable light, I can see the beam shining the light on my bookshelf from 5 feet away here in daylight. More observations after dark... On, on low, since Feb 9th...

[run4jc]

1100 paklite hours on low... On, on low since Feb 9th...

[eh4]

My pak-lite and green photon came in today! I Will Not be reproducing this experiment... But I Will run a test of an expired 9v from a beeping fire alarm.

[2K5Cesar]

My Fenix E21 because it uses the common AA's

[Chevy-SS]

........ My reasoning is its small bright and if the grid goes down there will be plenty of AA's to collect from stores and TV remotes.

THESE are the primary considerations IMHO.

Thus I would choose my EagleTac P20A2 (uses 2 AA), or my Quark AA*2 'Tactical'.

-

[cland72]

My Fenix E21 because it uses the common AA's

Not to hate on the E21, but I had one and it was having intermittent issues where it wouldn't turn on. I would focus on using the crap out of your light as much as you can (if you haven't already) to determine it's reliability.

[SDM44]

Not to hate on the E21, but I had one and it was having intermittent issues where it wouldn't turn on. I would focus on using the crap out of your light as much as you can (if you haven't already) to determine it's reliability.

I agree with this, about using & testing your lights as much as possible. Fortunately, the 2 x E21's that I have work great (especially during the last few power outages I've had, and when I've gone camping). Even the E11's I have also work well, but after using the E21 the E11 is a bit sad to use. I do notice the E11 will get hot over a short period of time, whereas the E21 seems to dissipate heat pretty well. They work well for what I use them for.

However with that said, neither would be used as a weapon-mounted light on my rifle or shotgun if there was a walking dead / zombie apocalypse taking place. I have some better choices for that.

[sloan]

Well this thread has convinced me to get a pak-lite, or 2. They are on sale for 19.99 now on their website. Only the ones with colored caps, not the glow in the dark caps.

[2K5Cesar]

Not to hate on the E21, but I had one and it was having intermittent issues where it wouldn't turn on. I would focus on using the crap out of your light as much as you can (if you haven't already) to determine it's reliability.

haven't had any problems yet but then I've only had it for about 3 months, still it's brighter and built better than most of my flashlights i have that's why i choose it

[eh4]

Hey sloan, thanks for the tip.
The cost is a bit steep for such a low powered flashlight, I certainly Had to get one and I'll probably get another due to the Great Value Per Gram but what I'd really like is a serious price break, shipped without batteries, and maybe stamped "not for resale", with their website on the second line... Then I could afford to give one to each of my friends and family.

Second Fairly Informal Test;

I've started running the pak-lite super on a very depleted 9V, it measured 5.25V directly plugged to the multi meter the battery briefly read .18A . Been running on that battery for about 22 hours now, measured .1mA draw with pak-lite running on low. I am kind of messing with the test though because I can't resist occasionally blipping it onto high to see if it still functions and what sort of high is available.
Best comparison I have available is ZL H51Fc, low and high are corresponding fairly well with L1 and L2 on the Zebralight, but it's a very indirect comparison as the ZL is putting out more floody light and the p-l is throwing a little further.

That's 22 hours on the most junked old Rite Aid 9V that I could find, that's plenty of time for hunting up a decent battery without becoming lunch.

Edit: 48 hours on this dogged out 9V passed uneventfully, Low still throws about as well as Low2 on the ZL H51Fc, while high still throws about as well as Low1 on the ZebraLight.
I'm expecting this 9V to die with a "pop!" sometime soon, it's staying in my watch pocket so I'll know roughly the time of death.
Low is down to .09mA and High is using around 1mA at first and then drops to .8mA after a few seconds.
The "9"V is reading 5.27V (I know, I got 5.25V the other day).

[scout24]

Paklite on low has now officially doubled it's stated runtime on low on an alkaline, 1200hrs as of 6pm here on the east coast. Still bright enough for navigating in the dark, I still have to cover it a bit at 2am, or it'll hurt your night vision. I can still pick out book titles/ read from 4 feet away comfortably. 50 straight days...

[run4jc]

I hereby dub the Pak Lite of "worthy of any walking dead flashlight collection!" I mean, good grief...150 8 hour nights. 5 months. And the little buggers are inexpensive...

Glad I have 4! I have one with green LEDs...may have to put it to the same test as Scout has done here!

Thanks for sacrificing an alkaline for us, Scout! So now, any bets on the final run time? I'll start the ball rolling with a prediction that it will finally give up at 1350 hours...

[angelofwar]

Paklite on low has now officially doubled it's stated runtime on low on an alkaline, 1200hrs as of 6pm here on the east coast. Still bright enough for navigating in the dark, I still have to cover it a bit at 2am, or it'll hurt your night vision. I can still pick out book titles/ read from 4 feet away comfortably. 50 straight days...

These Paklites may out -due my L1-Red...

[eh4]

I'm tempted to kill my second variant Pak-Lite test with a trashed 9V, which started it's test at 5.25V. It just seems like a half life situation, at one tenth of a mili amp load I'm concerned about how loooong it's going to take to kill this already dead battery... At 72+ hours it's still holding with comparable throw of a ZL H51Fc at L1 and L2 for the Pak-Lite's low and high.

What we have here folks is a genuine Zombie Light.

You could probably kill the thing with a well centered shot through the circuit board, but short of a 9V battery I imagine you could keep it going for years with a half dozen strips of copper and zinc stuck into succeeding generations of potatoes.

[scout24]

eh4- Dead Rite-aid with 72hrs so far is flippin' awesome! =)

[cland72]

Whole lotta posting without pictures going on! (Yes yes, I know this is a merged thread)

M60 in 6P body with XM07 tailcap, 9P with M61

[angelofwar]

Whole lotta posting without pictures going on! (Yes yes, I know this is a merged thread)

M60 in 6P body with XM07 tailcap, 9P with M61

Nice cland! K.I.S.S.!

[eh4]

Well it's been 5 & 1/2 days on a trashed Rite Aid 9V that measured 5.25V at the start of the test, and frankly I've screwed up the test, I just discovered that I left the Pak-Lite on High for a half day or so, but it's back on low now and still chugging along like nothing ever happened, still much less total lumens but slightly greater throw than Zebralight H51Fc with Pak-lite low compared to ZL L2 and Pak-Lite high compared to ZL L1.

Here's the last thing a zombie ever sees, about a week after an otherwise unilluminated individual equipped with machete and featherweight pak-lite found a single, lousy, chirping smoke detector....



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

-Pak-Lite on high for dramatic effect. That's a machete blade btw, with an angle grinder modified squared off tip (better balance, easier to hit unwanted plant squarely and miss fence or desirable plant behind weed plant btw).
Not that it matters as the hypothetical, monologuing, self aware zombie would have only a split second to say "what is that? oh, that's a machete blaaa.... "squerch! blurb, blurp!"

[scout24]

1320 hours, paklite on low. Still going strong since Feb. 9th. Tomorrow night will be 8 straight weeks.

[eh4]

hey scout24, what is the voltage on your battery?
Down to 5.14v here. .075 mA low and .5mA high.

[scout24]

eh4- I haven't unplugged or turned off the light since starting the runtime test. I'm almost afraid to now!

[eh4]

I'm starting to think that the maker of the light got tired of waiting to see how long it would actually take to run down, and arbitrarily picked a number where the lumens were still within a given spec for a range of more and less efficient leds...
Rite Aid is getting close to ten days, and I keep forgetting it on high for a half hour or an hour at a time... might just run it on high continuously when it hits ten days to kill it.
If your voltage is still above 5.25V. you might easily have a week or more to go. :-0

What if you've got 24 mAh left at 5.3V, and 24mAh more at 5.24V, and...? at 1/10 of 1mA draw on low! :-0 :-0 :-0


EDIT: April 6, in an hour it will be 10 days since starting on a 'basically' dead battery. Currently reading at 5.13V, Pak-lite on low draws .075mA, on high it draws .5mA .
-and I can't take it anymore, in an hour I'm switching it on high and keeping it there until it either dies or until high drops down to around .075mA draw.

[scout24]

Here in 1/2 hour, my Paklite will be at 1396 hours. Crossing over 1400 overnight. Still more than bright enough to read a book/titles from a few feet away with dark adapted eyes. Would be great for middle of the night backpack searches while camping. Just brighter than my Titan on low, at least in the "hotspot"... Interestingly, one emitter is just the absolute slightest bit dimmer than the other. First time I've noticed that...


eh4- Go baby go!!! Amazing...

[SDM44]

Here in 1/2 hour, my Paklite will be at 1396 hours. Crossing over 1400 overnight.

That's very impressive. Is that with a lithium 9V? Or are you just using an alkaline 9V?

I'm wondering if constant turning On & Off would have any affect on the battery life, as opposed to constant On.

[scout24]

SDM44- Regular Duracell alkaline, all low level, on continuously since Feb.9th @ 6pm my time. If anything, I think cycling on and off gives the battery time to recover if you will, and would actually give more time. I've run lights until they stop, and 10 minutes later, they'll switch back on for a few minutes. You can do this several times in my experience.

[M@elstrom]

I'd pack as many of my lights as possible keeping in mind the need to carry other necessary items, pride of place would be my multimode P7 Maglite which would also double as an improvised impact weapon...

[bbjones]

Possibly the tiny monster

[eh4]

Well 4 more days on high finally killed off the Rite Aid 9V hooked to the Pak-Lite, or maybe it was the other day when I shorted the battery on some steel wool to see if it would still make a fire. ;-) (would not)
I pretty much had a full conversion reaction, from wanting to see how long it would go, to wanting the battery to give up the ghost.
It's still running btw, but the high setting isn't putting out as much light as the low was when I started. I base this on the view of the colors and clearly visible wires when looking directly into the emitter.
Voltage at time of UnDeath: 4.8V (let's ignore the fact that if it's left off for a while it tends to come back to life...)

Safe to say 2 weeks constant use on low, switching to high for any reason for any reasonable length of time as often as desired, off a cheap depleted battery.

I feel really good about toughening this light with a little bit of clear epoxy around where the leds meet the body on the outside, and carrying it from now on in a little pocket of essential junk (mini Bic, needle and thread, ball o' wax, etc) as a long term utility light, my nicer EDC would entirely suffice to help me find an old or new 9V.
I'm going to get a second one with a Lithium battery for the house or for the next time I could conceivably become separated from civilization for months and months, and keep that one with it's lithium of course.