World War Z: The War Room (a short story+zombies)

[The Vortex Empire]

Unless you're replacing it with a bunch of Gaul barbarians, I don't see how the zombies could win against any modern force.

[Arachnidus]

Unless you're replacing it with a bunch of Gaul barbarians, I don't see how the zombies could win against any modern force.

There's strength in numbers. Not so much in finite ammunition with little support. I'm taking a new look at it. Yonkers happened deep into the Great Panic's beginning days, so we're looking at major outbreaks all over the god damn place(remember, the undead count coming out of Manhattan was in the millions). The military could have been cut off prior to the battle, and now Yonkers is pretty much a last ditch morale strike. With festering outbreaks all over the damn place, a final retaliatory strike is made to clear out the area, which tragically fails due to a lack of proper support, morale and men.

[Sea Skimmer]

You don't need ammo to kill zombies though; if you have tanks you can just crush them. Even if the average person can only kill one zombie; that would already be enough to halt the expansion of the zombie threat. Of course plenty of people would be turned into zombies without killing any zombies, but one tank crushing 500 zombies per hour or even just a civilian hunter on a roof top killing 10-20 makes up for that quickly. What's more modern tanks and armored vehicles can burn almost any liquid fuel around so you aren't going to run out of gas easily in America. Funneling the zombies into tank squishing kill zones would be just too easy. We have 200 million civilian guns alone in this country. Get one kill with each one.. and we just wiped out 2/3rds of the American population. Realism and American civilization zombie outbreaks do not belong together unless its some kind of super long delay airborne virus that somehow springs out of every single town at the same time.

Some place like central Africa with no vehicles and no one who can even remotely aim and no government at all would be more vulnerable to 'conventional' single point of origin zombie outbreaks. Zombie fiction in which places like Africa and Indian are overrun but the rest of the world has built barriers around them and deploys constant coastal patrols and inspection regimes would be a lot closer to realistic if that's what you want in a story.

Anyway, all that aside, be sure drop the bit about the zombies walking underwater, because the ocean currents do not allow such activity, and sharks would eat them anyway. Dead bodies will float sometimes, because gas builds up inside them, but this is unlikely to happen when the zombie keeps moving throughout the process. This would likely rupture any large gas pockets forming as they rot, and if not the corpse would burst in the sun drifting after a few days anyway. The only way zombies are going to get across is drifting on somthing, and being zombies being zombies and all, they are not going to know to stay on the deck of a drifting ship. They'll run overboard looking for more humans and be gone.

[PainRack]

There is a way to rewrite the Battle of Yonkers as a defeat and still keep Brooks incompetence and fighting the last war theme.

Just set it up differently. A panicked call by the Mayor of New York about the zombie horde rushing out of the city. A response by the National Guard, which has been gutted by the Great Panic effects on communications, logistics and transportation. Not to mention key personnel missing due to infected. A call to federalise troops not being "passed on" by local authorities. Army and Marine rivalry, communication protocol and etc being set on different frequencies between Guard, Army, Marine forces, which hinder the effective use of artillery to shape the battlefield. Hell, a screw up in reading the map which results in artillery destroying part of their own battle line. The Marines read the new tech coords way A, Army reads it as B, inexperienced NG troops whatever........

Once you start mounting up the frustrations and mistakes, start introducing the fog of war in response to zombie units popping up behind your lines. Didn't the Army clear that zone? Is that civilians... or Zed.
Have conflicting orders fly around. The NG go this way so as to rescue civvies and politicians(in keeping with Brooks theme of corruption), leaving behind a hole the Army doesn't know about.
Have the technology go wrong. Land Warrior shows no zed along a route and its being held by friendlies. Oops.
Have different authorities snipe at each other or having to obey weird rules and chain of command.
CAS firing danger close by said colonel, but colonel B neglected to pass information along to affected unit due to fog of war.

The potential is ENDLESS. You STILL have the same rout happen because of human incompetence, but it now becomes plausible. The shock and repercussion still comes into play. People lose faith in the military and the resulting confusion. To regain cohesion...... retreat into the West where the horde infection isn't that severe and some form of local authority/law and order still exist. The military "needs" to do so only because their entire response so far has been piecemeal.

[Simon_Jester]

PainRack's suggestions are interesting, I think. At some point is is acceptable to compromise on "this is the most plausible outcome of the scenario" for the sake of drama; the key is to find an outcome that is sane. Having problems of interservice rivalry and the like tearing a military apart is hardly unprecedented.

Assuming that by "Defeat and utter destruction en mass" you mean the US military losing the battle, then it can't be realistic. There is literally no realistic way for it to be anything but a curbstomp in humanity's favor, barring all US equipment suddenly breaking down for no reason. (Not that that would be very realistic either)

A set piece battle between a large, heavily armed human force and a massive horde of zombies coming from one direction? Yes, that's definitely going to go in the humans' favor.

If they're already having to deal with disruptions to the supply line as a result of zombie outbreaks all over the country... you may run into a situation where the Army stacks up zombies like cordwood, but finds itself in an untenable position and has to withdraw.

You don't need ammo to kill zombies though; if you have tanks you can just crush them. Even if the average person can only kill one zombie; that would already be enough to halt the expansion of the zombie threat. Of course plenty of people would be turned into zombies without killing any zombies, but one tank crushing 500 zombies per hour or even just a civilian hunter on a roof top killing 10-20 makes up for that quickly. What's more modern tanks and armored vehicles can burn almost any liquid fuel around so you aren't going to run out of gas easily in America. Funneling the zombies into tank squishing kill zones would be just too easy. We have 200 million civilian guns alone in this country. Get one kill with each one.. and we just wiped out 2/3rds of the American population. Realism and American civilization zombie outbreaks do not belong together unless its some kind of super long delay airborne virus that somehow springs out of every single town at the same time.

The World War Z version has a fast-onset version of the zombie virus that can only be spread by infected bites, which is problematic for this scenario. But one of the critical points is that by the time a well organized government response has started targeting mass concentrations of zombies, they've already spread all over the country. That may be unrealistic for a pandemic scenario, but it's not completely insane on the scale of, say, zombies being immune to blast effects from MLRS rockets.

Some place like central Africa with no vehicles and no one who can even remotely aim and no government at all would be more vulnerable to 'conventional' single point of origin zombie outbreaks. Zombie fiction in which places like Africa and Indian are overrun but the rest of the world has built barriers around them and deploys constant coastal patrols and inspection regimes would be a lot closer to realistic if that's what you want in a story.

Of course, they also have lovely disturbing racial subtext...

Anyway, all that aside, be sure drop the bit about the zombies walking underwater, because the ocean currents do not allow such activity, and sharks would eat them anyway.

Though that would do Bad Things to the postwar shark population in this scenario, zombie flesh being toxic to animals.

[Arachnidus]

There is a way to rewrite the Battle of Yonkers as a defeat and still keep Brooks incompetence and fighting the last war theme.

Just set it up differently. A panicked call by the Mayor of New York about the zombie horde rushing out of the city. A response by the National Guard, which has been gutted by the Great Panic effects on communications, logistics and transportation. Not to mention key personnel missing due to infected. A call to federalise troops not being "passed on" by local authorities. Army and Marine rivalry, communication protocol and etc being set on different frequencies between Guard, Army, Marine forces, which hinder the effective use of artillery to shape the battlefield. Hell, a screw up in reading the map which results in artillery destroying part of their own battle line. The Marines read the new tech coords way A, Army reads it as B, inexperienced NG troops whatever........

Once you start mounting up the frustrations and mistakes, start introducing the fog of war in response to zombie units popping up behind your lines. Didn't the Army clear that zone? Is that civilians... or Zed.
Have conflicting orders fly around. The NG go this way so as to rescue civvies and politicians(in keeping with Brooks theme of corruption), leaving behind a hole the Army doesn't know about.
Have the technology go wrong. Land Warrior shows no zed along a route and its being held by friendlies. Oops.
Have different authorities snipe at each other or having to obey weird rules and chain of command.
CAS firing danger close by said colonel, but colonel B neglected to pass information along to affected unit due to fog of war.

The potential is ENDLESS. You STILL have the same rout happen because of human incompetence, but it now becomes plausible. The shock and repercussion still comes into play. People lose faith in the military and the resulting confusion. To regain cohesion...... retreat into the West where the horde infection isn't that severe and some form of local authority/law and order still exist. The military "needs" to do so only because their entire response so far has been piecemeal.

This is the type of thing I'm going for. A complete rewrite of Yonkers, to still keep the universe intact, but to make it a little more feasible to the keen observers that we all are.

[PainRack]

Regarding the reason for Yonkers, there are better ways to portray the necessity of the battle and even make it semi-tragic, although I'm not sure if that would fit Brooks meme. Civilians evacuating the city, mayor running away, military makes a stand so as to evacuate the refugees. A thin Gray Line so as to speak, one publicised by the government and showing the effectiveness of government response to the zombie crisis. Only to have it fail due to the hurried nature and lack of planning, conflicting demands and etc. Hell, throw in the lack of ammunition if you have to, just make the reason refugees are jamming the highways preventing resupply and army commanders place the units in the line anyway.

Hell. Have reinforcements and resupply just minutes away, but unable to reach the front due to refugees. Imagine the story value of an M113 or Bradley unit having to consider crashing through a massive traffic jam so as to rescue stranded infantry soldiers trying to make a retrograde movement to the rear. Show the cries of infants and curses of parents as drivers ignore their plight and just move on. THAT would be a major morale hit.
Hell, if one still goes with lack of ammunition, failing to rescue refugees from zombies because you don't have the ammo to hit said Zed can be stunningly Grimdark. It would work much better than oh no, zed are eating soldiers....... That shock value works only if said soldiers can't retaliate against the enemy. Horror works very well when you are helpless against impending doom. Not when you have gun, will travel.