I was wandering around in the vast wilderness that is the World Wide Web, when I stumbled upon an article, a blog post actually, that described the Maori mere, a short warclub, generally made of New Zealand greenstone, a type of local jade.  The story is that a skilled warrior could thrust the sharp edge of the weapon into an opponents skull and with a twist of the wrist, actually wrench the top of the skull off.

So, does anybody have any more information on this thing.  Is that a myth? Is is proven anywhere? I know the British had a hell of a time subduing the Maori in the 1800s...maybe becasue they all had the tops of their heads removed?

By the way, the Wikipedia site has some good pictures and information.

An Incan star mace. A bronze head on a wooden handle. Not the most elegant weapon, but it was specifically designed to smash heads.

Deadliest Warriors it is called

He cracked the cow skull like it was nothing.

no offense meant, but For diseased, I don't think a katana would work to well unless you're strong enough to hack straight through a limb or skull with one solid strike, not to mention whether a skinny blade would actually hold up after repeated use unless it was very well made. It seems like a heavy machete or stout short sword would work better, as long as you could still maneuver quickly with it. Also easier to build from scrap metals.

Edit: it seems like a terrible idea to go melee  against a disease zombie. it would be a disease of the blood if it could also be spread through saliva, you would have to wear like a painter's suit to avoid getting infected from the blood splatter.

Makiakiasaurus, again that show is still preditable the use a light steel knife and a heavy club in a blunt force trauma test of course the heavy club won. Though an iron mere with the same size, shape, and weight would be pretty beast  .

Anyway poor show but, a really cool weapon. I think with zombies this weapon would only be good on less than a dozen or so enemies past that they might overwhelm you in such case a longer weapon (example cold steel gun stock warclub   )  would be better to keep them at a distance and have the mere as a back up or perhaps an AA-12  with Frag-12 rounds if you have the budget.

  I don't know about it being the best, but a good hardwood ball headed warclub has quite an impact and is designed to crush skulls, it's lightweight and easy to carry, can also be used pretty well up close.  My kit would probably consist of some type of sword like a katana and a light but strong shield, for primitive I would go with a roman or viking shield but for modern a riot shield along with the helmet with visor.  The other thing I thought about the other day was that if you wore full chainmail it would be pretty frigging hard for a zombie to bite you...it will stop a sharks bite.  In which case the shield, full leather clothing and chainmail gloves and around my neck/shoulders for armor.
  The one thing that must be remembered though is that zombies attack in masses, so you don't want to use a weapon that allows them to get too close, and you don't want to use a weapon that will get embedded in someone and you won't be able to get it out in time for the next attacker.
  I've always thought a sling in a scenario like in Dawn Of The Dead the remake, where you are on top of an apartment building and there are masses of zombies below you.  You could just sit up there with a makeshift sling and chuck all kinds of projectiles at them and probably get a lot of kills as you would be shooting down so a lot of headshots would result.
  A cool weapon on deadliest warrior belonged to an African tribe, I can't remember the name... it was made of iron and looked a little like a swastika, but it was a phalus symbol for the tribe, kind of a I'm a man weapon that was thrown like a giant throwing star.  I think the opponent was an aztec jaguar.  That thing was extremely devastating.
   

LukeWebb wrote on Jan 19^th, 2011 at 1:30am:

The knife is called a mambele, and different tribes make them in different shapes all over Sub-Saharan Africa. For a while I was kinda obsessed with getting one. The best site to look at them is The Guido T.Poppe Collection Website because it breaks the knives down into categories and tells you which tribe makes which knife for what. A really cool bit of information is that some Bantu descended tribes have a religious taboo against touching iron with bare skin, so they actually trade for their mambele with another tribe and have the hilts wrapped in copper wire up to the ricasso.