World War Z

[General Mung Beans]

Has anybody seen the film? I've just seen it to-day and while it was enjoyable I didn't get why Spoiler

the Israelis hadn't decided to carpet bomb or otherwise sterilize everything within fifty miles of the wall they built and didn't evacuate the areas close to the walls.

[AniThyng]

Has anybody seen the film? I've just seen it to-day and while it was enjoyable I didn't get why Spoiler

the Israelis hadn't decided to carpet bomb or otherwise sterilize everything within fifty miles of the wall they built and didn't evacuate the areas close to the walls.

Because hubris.

OK, too short? Because they did not think the wall would be breached by mindless running automatons, and it takes time to let all those people in (i'm sure that counts as "evacuating"), didn't you notice the stream of buses flowing in to the processing area?

Though I am curious why they didn't just cluster bomb the ant wall. Too high a risk of bringing down the wall I suppose.

[Grumman]

Has anybody seen the film? I've just seen it to-day and while it was enjoyable I didn't get why Spoiler

the Israelis hadn't decided to carpet bomb or otherwise sterilize everything within fifty miles of the wall they built and didn't evacuate the areas close to the walls.

Because it would work. It's not hubris, it's the inability of a fictional character to win against a writer willing to cheat his ass off.

[AniThyng]

Has anybody seen the film? I've just seen it to-day and while it was enjoyable I didn't get why Spoiler

the Israelis hadn't decided to carpet bomb or otherwise sterilize everything within fifty miles of the wall they built and didn't evacuate the areas close to the walls.

Because it would work. It's not hubris, it's the inability of a fictional character to win against a writer willing to cheat his ass off.

Thank you for proving the point? Look, let's face it, these are runners with no sense of self presevation and fear whatsoever. They aren't going to cower before machine guns, they aren't going to dive for cover when a shell explodes behind them, and they sure as hell don't care if you roll a platoon of tanks over them. How many do you think you can kill? 10? 100? 1000? 10000?

They obviously thought the wall would be enough. And perhaps it would have been if you worked on the assumption that they couldn't brute force their way over it. What else could they have done that makes sense in context and not with hindsight?


Also, even after massive carpet bombing raids that devastated entire armored divisions, there are still survivors. They just normally aren;t in any condition to fight because they're fucking human. Zombies dont give a shit.

[Grumman]

Has anybody seen the film? I've just seen it to-day and while it was enjoyable I didn't get why Spoiler

the Israelis hadn't decided to carpet bomb or otherwise sterilize everything within fifty miles of the wall they built and didn't evacuate the areas close to the walls.

Because it would work. It's not hubris, it's the inability of a fictional character to win against a writer willing to cheat his ass off.

Thank you for proving the point? Look, let's face it, these are runners with no sense of self presevation and fear whatsoever. They aren't going to cower before machine guns, they aren't going to dive for cover when a shell explodes behind them, and they sure as hell don't care if you roll a platoon of tanks over them. How many do you think you can kill? 10? 100? 1000? 10000?

All of them. Because unlike people, zombies are too fucking stupid to mitigate the damage caused by a machine gun, artillery piece or tank. This means that instead of a cowering human who can get up and fight again, you have the mangled meat that used to be a zombie.

Despite what zombie-wankers like to claim, they don't have to care. They just have to die.

[NecronLord]

Thank you for proving the point? Look, let's face it, these are runners with no sense of self presevation and fear whatsoever. They aren't going to cower before machine guns, they aren't going to dive for cover when a shell explodes behind them, and they sure as hell don't care if you roll a platoon of tanks over them. How many do you think you can kill? 10? 100? 1000? 10000?

This makes them easier to kill, not harder. There are reasons soldiers are trained to take cover and fire back from cover, not just charge.

[AniThyng]

Thank you for proving the point? Look, let's face it, these are runners with no sense of self presevation and fear whatsoever. They aren't going to cower before machine guns, they aren't going to dive for cover when a shell explodes behind them, and they sure as hell don't care if you roll a platoon of tanks over them. How many do you think you can kill? 10? 100? 1000? 10000?

This makes them easier to kill, not harder. There are reasons soldiers are trained to take cover and fire back from cover, not just charge.

Mortal soldiers also tend to be incapacitated and go down when shot. Zombies are not bothered by such petty considerations, at least from light weapons, no?

[AMT]

I'm just surprised they didn't flare out the top part of the wall making it a sort of walkway area. If they had nothing could have climbed over it, the tower of bodies would have fallen backwards

[FedRebel]

Has anybody seen the film? I've just seen it to-day and while it was enjoyable I didn't get why Spoiler

the Israelis hadn't decided to carpet bomb or otherwise sterilize everything within fifty miles of the wall they built and didn't evacuate the areas close to the walls.

Spoiler

Because there were tunnels leading to the city, they were still letting people in while the zombies were outside, and establishing shots showed a series of above ground tunnels leading to the city.

I'm just surprised they didn't flare out the top part of the wall making it a sort of walkway area. If they had nothing could have climbed over it, the tower of bodies would have fallen backwards

it certainly bothered me that the wall lacked antipersonnel measures...especially that no one was constantly patrolling it, the zombie pile could've been identified in the formative phase and potentially stopped.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

This makes them easier to kill, not harder. There are reasons soldiers are trained to take cover and fire back from cover, not just charge.

Mortal soldiers also tend to be incapacitated and go down when shot. Zombies are not bothered by such petty considerations, at least from light weapons, no?

It doesn't matter, though. Zombies gain a little in endurance over normal humans, while losing self-preservation, intelligence and the ability to use tools. Worst trade ever.

[Erik von Nein]

Oh, god shit, really? Is it going to turn into this, again?

[AniThyng]

This makes them easier to kill, not harder. There are reasons soldiers are trained to take cover and fire back from cover, not just charge.

Mortal soldiers also tend to be incapacitated and go down when shot. Zombies are not bothered by such petty considerations, at least from light weapons, no?

It doesn't matter, though. Zombies gain a little in endurance over normal humans, while losing self-preservation, intelligence and the ability to use tools. Worst trade ever.

What do you mean gain little. They now ignore wounds to any part but the head. Sure you can just blow them apart, but now shrapnel and bullets are much less effective than they would be against mortals.

[kitty]

Actually I was happy with WWZ. It might have had nothing to do with the book, but at least I didn't feel the "how stupid can you be?" with the main characters. With the exception of the doctor who should have been issued a baseball bat. I think there are people in the CDC who are trained to hunt diseases in dangerous areas?

as for zombies, fast ones with the charge like mentality and a super fast infection could prove dangerous, but if you had a large enough number of infected. However I disagree with body and limb shots won't do anything. there are important tendons, muscles and bone required to stay upright from femur bones to abdominal muscles. punch a few holes through that and what your left with is structurally unable to run.

[Lord Relvenous]

What do you mean gain little. They now ignore wounds to any part but the head. Sure you can just blow them apart, but now shrapnel and bullets are much less effective than they would be against mortals.

Do zombies have some magical power to ignore broken bones, ripped tendons, and destroyed joints? It's great to say they can ignore injury, except in mechanical terms it doesn't mean shit. Unless you think all human combatants are made combat ineffective just because they really hurt, zombies are just as likely to become a non-threat when hit with shrapnel from a 1000lb bomb.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

For a sense of perspective: At Verdun, the French are still digging up bits and pieces of people pulverized by artillery nearly a century after World War I ended. The Douaumont ossuary contains the remains of over 130,000 French and German soldiers who could not be positively identified, and there are at least that many still buried out there.

A World War I-era army would be more than capable of handling zombies. Why should a modern army be any different?

[Jub]

A zombie with a torn muscle that ate shrapnel won't be using that limb very effectively, damaged smooth muscle effects balance and core strength, concussion can ruin brains and crush muscle and bone. That zombie pile could have at least been destabilized by mortars or rockets that aren't large enough to knock the wall over and shrapnel would have meant that most of them don't get up for another attempt. Plus against zombies nothing is stopping you from busting out the nasty shit like dumb-dumb rounds and hollow points for your small arms. Zombies will never breach the hull of even a simple armored vehicle so things like humvees can drop small hordes with no fear of ever being harmed, not to mention the new line of IED resistant vehicles, tanks, and other AFVs.

Frankly a third rate military with old WWI and WWII gear could kill a zombie army.

[Jub]

GHETTO EDIT: Also when has Israel shown real restraint with using weapons when they're in danger? They send out their A game against lesser threats all the time, they'd not hold back against a horde of undead threatening to drive them to the sea.

[Metahive]

So, for Solanum, the World War Z zombification vector, Max Brooks had to cheat extensively to make his zombies not mere target practice. For one, the Tomato Virus is like a perpetual motion machine that can power the zombie indefinitely without any sort of energy consumption. It also kills everything it touches, including bacteria, so the zombie doesn't simply decompose into mush. You know, just like a real "virus". It's also 100% communicable and has a lethality of 100% as wellkdjhfgkldr...sorry, had to remove the jizz from my keyboard from all the wanking that just spewed forth from my screen. That's some potent tomato, I tells ya'!
Brooks supposedly set out to write a "realistic" tale of a zombie outbreak and yet had to exaggerate the properties of his Tomato Virus to this ridiculous extreme. O yeah, and all the worlds militaries and governments are morons who approach the outbreak in the most idiotic way possible.

Isn't this like little kids playing superhero and making up more and more bombastic superpowers to trump the other?

[AniThyng]

If you're going to bring that up, the way the government approaches it was supposed to be based on how they (mis)handled the responses to historic epidemic crisis' like AIDS (deny, deny, it can only happen to <marginalized group here>, 3rd world problem, etc etc) and SARS (particularly in terms of placebo treatments and checks that did nothing but make feel better like body temp scanners).

Also, the way I heard it, Iraq was supposed to be just peachy. Let's time travel to 2003 and read this board! Man, hindsight is wonderful ainnit. If you can't step back from focusing on minatue and see the book for what it is, a commentary on the war on terror, complacency (it can't happen here!) environmentalism (to sustain refugee fleets, humanity scoured the ocean of whales and fish, canada is depleted from sustaining a massive refugee infux etc), and capitalism (the "rabies" drug that did nothing, but was marketed as a preventive cure), there's no helping it anymore.

I mean really, Fukushima. Impossible. Who would design a nuclear plant like that, with the backups on the flood zone of a possible tsunami. it's completely unrealis-oh, what do you mean that actually happened?

And AIDS right? Who could possibly be so naive as to believe only drug addicts and homosexuals are at risk? Are people stu-oh, what do you mean that's what people thought. Oh dear. Who writes this drivel.

Next thing you know you'll be trying to convince me that the Americans had to pull out of Viet-WHAT??

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Yeah yeah yeah, good and nice analogies to highlight problems with the real world. These are a few of the book/movie's strengths. Unfortunately, the plot has a modern military getting overrun by an army of zombies in the open field, and thus is fucking retarded.

Don't get me wrong, I'll go see the movie and I think I'll be entertained because I just plain love gore and machine guns. But I just can't think about how it's supposed to make sense.

[Metahive]

I'm sorry, but what was this rant about? Brooks had to wank the hell out of the Super Tomato to give his zombies a fighting chance. So, the only way to kill them reliably is setting them on fire or dealing catastrophic damage to the head, which must be done by bullets or blunt objects, since apparently shockwaves coming from explosives and the like don't deal any damage to the head and dismembered zombies are just as dangerous as intact zooooouu...sorry, my eyes just rolled all the way up my head.

Look at the fucking Battle of Yonkers, where first all conventional weapons fail because the author fails at biology and has the zombies be largely unaffected by HE shelling because, "they have only coagulated blood in them" *GROAN* (so, they're all dried up and therefore stiff as a 2-by-4, huh?), then has the military switch to freakin' AT rounds and when that predictably fails too, has helicopters use their rotors as makeshift meatgrinders.

It looks like some sort of Monty Pythonesque parody only minus the funny.

[Jub]

Fukushima was nearly worst case and it still went rather well causing no deaths and having little long term impact, it was also hit by a wave and an earthquake of a magnitude it was never designed for. So that is a terrible example.

AIDs was swept under the rug for a while, but at the time there was very little known about it and disease control was no where near as good as it is now. SARS and the Bird Flu were known well in advance to be non-events so the best thing you could do is simply to placate people with placebo as it was the cheapest and easiest way to get people to calm the fuck down about a disease that wasn't mush worse than the common cold. Even so we still shut down flights from infected areas once the threat was known and quarantined certain people ntil we knew what the threat was. Or do you deny that we took steps to mitigate both these disease?

Even Iraq was an over commitment and while the mission itself might be questionable the tactics for fighting have come along nicely. Shock and Awe went off without a hitch, and the sort of bad conduct you see in news reports is as common as war itself. It may be a pointless war, but it hasn't been so badly fought within the objectives that have been set. There is no way the military events of this 'realistic' book would ever happen and from the sounds of things the idiot ball gets even larger in the movie.

----

Now, I don't know that much about the book/movies take on the virus, but let's be honest and realize how unlikely it ever escaping a lab and running free are. First it would have to either be carried out by a person who was infected working on it and with modern tech and methods that is unlikely. This is also why the disease would never escape naturally as most biological test labs have negative pressure and air scrubbers. Even in human experimentation they would be held in cells and locked wards so they couldn't run free even if they did eat every guard inside.

Even if it escapes its vector is an infected person biting you. How likely are you to get bite by something that is only capable of running right for you? Sure these ones can climb, but in early outbreak numbers a locked door will likely stop them from getting in and anything with more reach than an arm will be effective at keeping even a small mob away from you. Rage zombies are less of a threat than a rabies infected group of baboons and those rarely cause people with spears and fire much issue, let alone a modern military.

Here's a question, even with the most incompetent military around, how many fast zombies does it take to kill a tank crew that are willing to button up when they run out of fuel and ammo? The answers is that no number of zombies can mission kill a tank or kill the crew inside and the tank can win just by driving over them and letting loose with it's remote operated machine gun and HE main gun rounds. Add in arty, airstrikes, soldiers with barbed wire defenses and ranged weapons and the zombies will lose.

Barbed wire is actually great versus zombies because it tangles and shreds and even if you don't feel pain and aren't effected by blood loss getting a limb wrapped in wire that saws through muscle will mess you up. It's what should have been at the top of the wall in the movie because it would take a shit ton more zombies to climb over the wire than it took to scale the wall in the movie. You also have to wonder why nobody manning the wall threw grenades down into the mass and why no helicopters that weren't commanded to fly at building level and armed with more than a simple minigun were waiting to be scrambled? Why were there no mines at the base of the wall when we know Israel would have no issues busting them out?

The way the military was shown is extremely stupid and if you know anything about how real militaries operate unrealistic as hell. You might disagree with the mission and the TOE, but the guys know how to execute what they're tasked with doing and the top brass are always looking for a better way to accomplish the same goal with the gear and men the budget will allow. There is no way that anything like what happened in the books ever happens IRL.

[PainRack]

If you're going to bring that up, the way the government approaches it was supposed to be based on how they (mis)handled the responses to historic epidemic crisis' like AIDS (deny, deny, it can only happen to <marginalized group here>, 3rd world problem, etc etc) and SARS (particularly in terms of placebo treatments and checks that did nothing but make feel better like body temp scanners).

Also, the way I heard it, Iraq was supposed to be just peachy. Let's time travel to 2003 and read this board! Man, hindsight is wonderful ainnit. If you can't step back from focusing on minatue and see the book for what it is, a commentary on the war on terror, complacency (it can't happen here!) environmentalism (to sustain refugee fleets, humanity scoured the ocean of whales and fish, canada is depleted from sustaining a massive refugee infux etc), and capitalism (the "rabies" drug that did nothing, but was marketed as a preventive cure), there's no helping it anymore.

Wait, are we talking about how Brooks tried to extend an analogy or are you trying to argue that because real life screw-up= Brooks scenario is plausible?

Let's just take their stunning "vaccine" as an example. The way the scenario is protrayed in the book? Its impossible.
Now, its IS possible to retcon the story so that yes, it does, but the book essentially asserts that the rabies drug worked as a VACCINE/DRUG. Which meant it passed the FDA approval. Which requires them to show both safety and efficacy.

The only way the story could work was if the US CDC and FDA assumed that the zombie plague was caused by rabies. Not impossible of course, I mean, people make mistakes and this is an emerging epidemic and people won't assume the magical powers of Brooks zed but base it off actual science. But yeah... Now, if it was sold as a SUPPLEMENT or NATURAL HEALTH PRODUCT, that angle works.

Bringing up SARs is nonsensical. The way the crisis occurred literally couldn't have happened in the book.

I mean really, Fukushima. Impossible. Who would design a nuclear plant like that, with the backups on the flood zone of a possible tsunami. it's completely unrealis-oh, what do you mean that actually happened?

And AIDS right? Who could possibly be so naive as to believe only drug addicts and homosexuals are at risk? Are people stu-oh, what do you mean that's what people thought. Oh dear. Who writes this drivel.

Next thing you know you'll be trying to convince me that the Americans had to pull out of Viet-WHAT??

I'm sorry, there's mistakes, and there's sheer impossibilities.

Look, the Battle of Yonkers is implausible. The military has to be morons, but unlike say Sheppard, my stance is that the US army were literal retards(and contradictory, since Fulda gap= bring out more ammo and stuff but hey, maybe there was some form of factional battle going on or just more retards).

But the rest of the scenario? It stretches the imagination. And when the entire book has one stretch after another, digesting it as a long book as opposed to short stories, it really depends on how much suspension of disbelief you're willing to invest.

Look at the fucking Battle of Yonkers, where first all conventional weapons fail because the author fails at biology and has the zombies be largely unaffected by HE shelling because, "they have only coagulated blood in them" *GROAN* (so, they're all dried up and therefore stiff as a 2-by-4, huh?), then has the military switch to freakin' AT rounds and when that predictably fails too, has helicopters use their rotors as makeshift meatgrinders.

It looks like some sort of Monty Pythonesque parody only minus the funny.

The funny thing is that AT rounds, SABOT is pretty effective against zombie hordes too, unless the tank gunners were aiming low or something. Just shoot and watch as your round go through zombie after zombie until it finally spins out of control and impact into the ground.


But yup. Machine guns aren't effective, single shot weapons firing as riflemen squares are 'superior' anti zed weapons, killzones are staggered by range and apparently, the "Fulda Gap" generals seems to have forgotten Airland Battle where the US is supposed to batter second and third echeleon forces while their frontline chews up the enemy.......

[quote="jub']
AIDs was swept under the rug for a while, but at the time there was very little known about it and disease control was no where near as good as it is now. SARS and the Bird Flu were known well in advance to be non-events so the best thing you could do is simply to placate people with placebo as it was the cheapest and easiest way to get people to calm the fuck down about a disease that wasn't mush worse than the common cold. Even so we still shut down flights from infected areas once the threat was known and quarantined certain people ntil we knew what the threat was. Or do you deny that we took steps to mitigate both these disease?[/quote]
AIDs also happened to be a STD, which runs straight up against a lot of cultural barriers and shit we throw up, especially when it first exploded in the US in a discriminated group.

Looking at SARs for example, case zero in Hong Kong was rapidly traced and we established the chain of events, and then worked out how it was spread and quarantined them. We used existing knowledge and within weeks come up with a working treatment protocol.

Yet, none of this happened in Brooks case. Instead, what we had was a ''news" blackout, that was so effective, that it had months to spread(using the most ineffective spread vectors possible) to the entire world. Remember, we're not talking blood transfusions here. ORGAN transplants. That's what? Thousands over several years? And not all of these organs would have been contaminated, even if we subscribe to the Chinese prisoners/test subjects sold organs as a working model.

Alternatively, zombies had existed in China for so long that it remained under the radar for an unknown period of time, enough to infect a significant portion of the population. Amazing considering that this is 2003, and China has its own internet, weibo and baidu.

Oh wait. Let's not forget. Alpha teams were SO effective in destroying early zombie infestations........ until after winter when suddenly it exploded and Great Panic!

Seriously. Its not as if zed is like dengue or West Niles, with a 'wild' reservoir and animal vectors. You destroyed successful vectors, but somehow, it kept popping up until spring when infection rates suddenly exploded.
The chain of logic isn't flawed, but that doesn't mean that the premises are correct.

[Vendetta]

I'm sorry, but what was this rant about? Brooks had to wank the hell out of the Super Tomato to give his zombies a fighting chance. So, the only way to kill them reliably is setting them on fire or dealing catastrophic damage to the head, which must be done by bullets or blunt objects, since apparently shockwaves coming from explosives and the like don't deal any damage to the head and dismembered zombies are just as dangerous as intact zooooouu...sorry, my eyes just rolled all the way up my head.

They're obviously hollywood explosions, where as long as you aren't in the fireball you're fine.


Long story short, read the Newsflesh trilogy, the zombie virus there had even more advantages (100% dormant infection of all mammals before the first reanimation, reanimation on contact with live strain of virus in any mammal with bodyweight over 40lbs) and the books are still set in a world that dealt with the zombie apocalypse and life goes on because zombies are only a threat to the stupid.

[Patroklos]

So sound effectively attracts zombies like a dog to a whistle?

1.) So how the hell does a PA system suddenly trigger zombie intrest when dozens of helicopters flying in/out/over/around the enclave that are easily far more loud doesn't?

2.) Most effective weapon possible is a load speaker set up a mile outside your safe zone blasting ACDC. Preferably over a pit of burning phosphorus or inside the mouth of a wood chipper.

As for the cure...
Spoiler

They note that zombies can apparently identify sickness in cursory seconds long glance. How do they do this? In Brad Pitts case there were no visual cues at all but it looked like zombie doc sniffed him so maybe thats it? But that doesn't square with the two other cases in the movie...

We also know due to the soldier in Korea that it isn't just sickness, but maiming works too (why would a hungry zombie care about such a problem?) as his leg problem was purely mechanical so to speak. There is no way to identify this other than visually, so if everyone just walks around with a limp they are good to go?=]

I am also not a fan of the super strength we see here. I get it that they don't feel pain and don't care about personal danger but we see instances of just a few knocking down firedoors. I don't care how much crystal meth you are on that is not going to happen.