I tried this one, as a Police officer. Managed to explore a good part of the island, killing 12 Zeds overall and 2 brutes before succumbing.
I don’t see how you can escape the island. Build a boat? Not realistic. Swim?
Secondary question, your initial dog. Can you tell him to stay in a specific spot, like a NPC?
I just built a simple rowboat on my two prison escapes. Why don’t you think it’s realistic to do that? They’re really easy to make. I actually used the island as my base in one of them; rowing all around this huge lake to strike at various places then row back with my haul.
IDK first you must overcome basically the entire zombie population, and some are brutes. Depending of the character you choose, that’s ranging from difficult to impossible.
Then you have to build a boat, admittedly I never did that, but I guess it means having all tools from the prison?
Just swim for it, with just pant or something I’ll bet even 1 in swimming would be enough, 2 is definitely enough.
I’ve grinded from 0 skills and materials to building a boat on the prison island. It just requires some grinding to get access to the tools/materials that you need. There’ve been some significant changes to the island recently, so it’s much harder, now, but I’d imagine it isn’t impossible. It’s just, you know, a challenge start that’s meant to be difficult.
Many people who talk about it on discord just take high swim skill at the start and then restart until they find an island near the shore. That seems to be how the majority of people get off the island, but I think that’s really dumb, personally, and completely ignores the whole point of starting on the prison island.
I don’t think you even need all that high swimming, I’m pretty sure I started with only 2 swimming when I did it though that was a while back. I stripped my survivor down to his pants, swam like that and made it quite easily. Of couse I arrived on shore with nothing but a pair of pants which is troublesome in and of its self. 
It has been a little while since I played this scenario so it might have changed. When I did it it was difficult but definitely not impossible. I just played cat and mouse around the buildings, slowly picking off the zombies. I ran the stronger ones through the barbed wire to injure and slow them and, if I recall correctly I found a rifle in one of the watch towers eventually. There are proper weapons around for dealing with the stronger ones which can be gotten with some effort/risk. Or there were.
The boat was super easy. Once the island is cleared and probably even without doing it, there are a lot of resources around. You can make a hammer and screwdriver very easily and then you can get planks and nails for building a basic rowboat.
Dodge zombies until you find decent weapons, kill zombies with rifles and guns.
I’ve had at least one prison survivor strip down to almost nothing and swim back and forth to shore, ferrying gear, until he was ready to take over the mainland, and then come back later with a proper rowboat to finish looting the prison.
For obvious reasons that’s not a viable option with winter start.
Well yeah, that’s true. It’s cold enough even on the normal start date never mind a winter start, boat building is pretty much the only option at that point.
Is this assuming the prison does not have a 100 killer robots with machine guns? This scenario does sound intriguing. But every prison I have encounter is chock full of instant kill on sight robo madness. I don’t even get a recognition safe second to react. I normally avoid prisons altogether for this reason.
Thinking I have REALLY terrible luck if everyone can casually walk around and only deal with zombies 
Island prison has only one robot in the antechamber.
Necroing this one because I’m trying it out and I have a question.
Situation so far: Tools are my main problem. I found a survival(3) book and got my fabrication up to 2. I have a sling, an AR with 10 shots, an expandable baton, and a makeshift hammer. The hulk that always spawns there somehow died off screen, but I was happy to pulp his corpse.
After some time, the Zs managed to break down one of the metal doors which dropped a very very useful steel chunk. I used that to create my makeshift hammer so I can make makeshift pots from the sheet metal for water boiling. I smashed some sinks and got copper tubing → copper knife.
Food is getting scare, killed a goose that came by and foraged the 3-5 bushes available and found eggs. I hacked the console but behind that metal door to the armory is YET ANOTHER bar gate, I can’t get through there. Climbing took me up to that outdoor gym and into the vet’s office for the watch dogs. Found lots of doog food so I can hold out a little longe but I want to build a boat an leave ASAP.
For a raft, I need logs. For logs, I need an axe. For an axe head, I need another chunk of steel but I have no idea where to get that.
Swimming over seems suicicald because of the many jawed terrors around the island. I could try to kill them with my limited AR rounds but idk how many will be on my way to shore. So my guess is a raft with a sail will bring me over but I might just get eaten. Last idea was to craft a reach weapon and poke the jawed terrors from one tile away until they die…
Any recommendations?
You can make an adze that has wood sawing or cutting of 1. That’ll get you logs. If you can make a screwdriver & makeshift crowbar you can begin deconstructing things, which will give you much better yields than smashing everything… Sheets, blankets etc will give you material to make string, rope or thread.
Even a 1x1 raft can get you off the island and will require a minimum of materials. You could even put a box on it to have a little storage.
If I remember right, there’s a catwalk a level up with guard towers at the corners. You might find some more food in there as well as guns/ammo and more things to disassemble for materials. Personally, I’d save the bullets for the zombies - jawed terrors can’t get you if you stay a tile away and poke them with a spear, but the zombies can. It’ll also leave you with ammo for protection while sailing.
I already have an adze but I can’t do “anything interesting” with it. Can’t cut down a tree nor chop up logs with it, construction menu says I need lvl2 for that.
Deconstruction is a good idea.
The guard towers are still inaccessable for me. The doors on ground level are locked metal doors and the gap between the roofs and the tower windows is 2 tiles wide. I thought about building a wall+roof+floor to get one tile closer for a jump but I am gated by logs and wood sawing lvl 2 again…
As a tip for island starts, build a homewrecker over trying to finesse the tool requirements for lockpicks. (Assuming you haven’t had the friendly neighborhood hulk bust down the important doors and gates you might end up doing that yourself)
Also, skip building a raft. It’s easy enough to make a proper boat by raising your skills via a little crafting.
Those are good hints probably. But I was actually lucky and very close to shore. I killed the sharks with a wooden spear (2 actually, one broke in the process) and swam over.
What I found interesting:
Wearing an item with items stored in it weighed me down enough to sink me. But putting everything I could in my net backpack and wielding it was fine (Athletics 1 from a book). Probably not intended but I cheesed that to get my tools and a handgun with me.
Probably because only torso encumbrance is checked for purpose of deciding if you are going to sink. I guess arm encumbrance only affect swim speed or maybe nothing at all.
I’m pretty sure that that’s how it should be. I believe carrying your things in your hands is the recommended method for transporting bulky items while swimming.