Cracked Cracks the Zombie Apocalypse

[Molyneux]

All this discussion of high explosives really makes me yearn for some kind of "Mythbusters versus Zombies" scenario. I mean, if anyone's good at rigging up massive explosions on a shoestring budget and on short notice...

[AniThyng]

Yes, but that starts to fall apart once we get to the stage where the military is involved. Even if they do not know to aim for the head specifically yet, soldiers will learn quick. And if you're sending armor against hordes of unarmored, shambling, corpses, fragmentation rounds would be the first choice, since they are meant to kill people in the first place.

One of the points brought up in that passage was the veteran musing that if the troops didn't have datalinks that transmitted in gory, morale breaking detail what happened to soldiers that did get overrun, they might have done much better. Soldiers might be all battle hardened and all, but these are people fighting literal undead monsters that feel no pain and used to be people that turn you into monsters when they bite you, so i'd cut them some slack if after a certain point and with ammo running low and no end in sight they decided to make a run for it. The book does tell, if not show, that disciplined troops figthing in proper defensive position can hold out indefinitely after all.

I think part of the problem at least for the 2nd bit is that the US Army doesn't really have all that many fragmentation rounds for its M1s. For whatever reason [i forget if there was a stated one other than the obvious satire on the "every army trains to fight the previous war" idea] the M1's at Yonkers seemed to have, as explicitly pointed out in the book - warloads more appropriate to fighting the Soviet tank horde in the Fulda Gap. And it definitely only has 40 rounds load regardless of the specific combination of shells.

Whether or not the USA has enough stocks of canister to give to its M1's is true in the real world I don't know, but that's how it was in the book.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Looks like I'm going to have to do some more quoting...

I mean... don't get me wrong... it's not like Zack just skipped through the barrage unscathed. We saw bodies blown to shit, tossed into the air, ripped to pieces, even complete heads, live heads with eyes and jaws still moving, popping sky high like freakin' Cristal corks... we were taking them down, no doubt, but not as many or as fast as we needed to!

It was a fuckin' meat grinder, a wood chipper, organic matter clouding like sawdust above the horre.

Nothing can survive this, I was thinking, and for a little while, it looked like I was right... until the fire started to die.

Three out of a total loudout of forty! The rest were standard HEAT or SABOT!
...
Do you know what it feels like to see a sixty-something-ton tank fire into a crowd with absolutely ass-all result!

We could have stopped them, we should have, one guy with a rifle, that's all you need, right? Professional soldiers, trained marksmen, how could they get through? They still ask that, critics and armchair Pattons who weren't there. You think it's that simple? You think that after being "trained" to aim for the center mass your whole military career you can suddenly make an expert head shot every time? You think in that straitjacket and suffocation hood it's easy to recharge a clip or clear a weapon jam?
...
Well, we did! We still managed to do our job and make Zack pay for every fuckin' inch! Maybe if we'd had more men, more ammo, maybe if we'd just been allowed to focus on our job...

So yeah, long story short: If Brooks hadn't fully researched his ordinance, it looks more like a case of 'not quite as devastating as it should be' rather that 'zomfg zombies are immune to bombs!' and the battle wasn't lost because somehow zombies weren't susceptable to high explosives, but rather because of comically colossal fuckups up the line that resulted in way too little ammunition for everyone.

[Samuel]

Damn, if only they had placed soldiers on top of buildings where they didn't have to worry about being over run

[Bakustra]

Damn, if only they had placed soldiers on top of buildings where they didn't have to worry about being over run

Hey, did you know that most zombie movies satirize American society? The earlier movies focused on consumerism, mainly. So it's no surprise that the US military is led by complete fuckups in Brooks' version, since his satire is more focused on modern, 2000-on society and the events of Iraq and Afghanistan. Damn, it's almost as if he was making a written version of a zombie flick!

[AniThyng]

Damn, if only they had placed soldiers on top of buildings where they didn't have to worry about being over run

And then what, supply them indefinitely with helicopters while the horde proceeds to overrun the ground all around them? In light of real life military disasters though this hardly even seems to be the most glaring problem.

"damn, if only they had used movement and cover when going over the top"
"damn, if only they had M2's and Apaches when going to arrest Aideed"
etc. etc.

[Gunhead]

So we're again at "LOLZ t3h inc0mptenz!!". If those quotes O.K Damien posted are the measure of Brook's research into military weapons, I can sum up his research real easy. He browsed wikipedia.

-Gunhead

[Bakustra]

So we're again at "LOLZ t3h inc0mptenz!!". If those quotes O.K Damien posted are the measure of Brook's research into military weapons, I can sum up his research real easy. He browsed wikipedia.

-Gunhead

Yes, the whole point of the book was to satirize elements of society. That's why the entire population of North Korea disappeared, that's why you had the rich partying on Long Island while the outbreak is going on, and that's why the US military was led by idiots. It's called an exaggeration of real trends. (PS: These are recollections years later, so I think demanding perfect accuracy is the hallmark of a moron.)

[AniThyng]

So we're again at "LOLZ t3h inc0mptenz!!". If those quotes O.K Damien posted are the measure of Brook's research into military weapons, I can sum up his research real easy. He browsed wikipedia.

-Gunhead

Actually, now that we are on the subject, what *is* the actual lethality rate of a artillery barrage against an exposed army? Like if we take a fully equipped M109 battery and pitted it against a infinite horde of somali's armed with AK's charging across an open field, how many thousands would die before the battery ran out of ammo and was overrun?

[Samuel]

Damn, if only they had placed soldiers on top of buildings where they didn't have to worry about being over run

And then what, supply them indefinitely with helicopters while the horde proceeds to overrun the ground all around them? In light of real life military disasters though this hardly even seems to be the most glaring problem.

"damn, if only they had used movement and cover when going over the top"
"damn, if only they had M2's and Apaches when going to arrest Aideed"
etc. etc.

No, you supply them via running the zombies over with trucks. Or linking roof tops together with wooden boards and carrying supplies to where they need to be. There really isn't anything complex about this. The zombies can't get you if you are anywhere they can't walk. Destroy the stairs, fire from second story windows, have barricades to slow them down and let you bunch them together...

Heck, you don't need to be American to do this. Any military on earth can, but apparently they were all too stupid to.

[AniThyng]

Damn, if only they had placed soldiers on top of buildings where they didn't have to worry about being over run

And then what, supply them indefinitely with helicopters while the horde proceeds to overrun the ground all around them? In light of real life military disasters though this hardly even seems to be the most glaring problem.

"damn, if only they had used movement and cover when going over the top"
"damn, if only they had M2's and Apaches when going to arrest Aideed"
etc. etc.

No, you supply them via running the zombies over with trucks. Or linking roof tops together with wooden boards and carrying supplies to where they need to be. There really isn't anything complex about this. The zombies can't get you if you are anywhere they can't walk. Destroy the stairs, fire from second story windows, have barricades to slow them down and let you bunch them together...

Heck, you don't need to be American to do this. Any military on earth can, but apparently they were all too stupid to.

I'd like to see how well your trucks run after they are fouled by a carpet of zombie corpses.

Ah fuck it. Clearly Brooks should have just not explained the battle at all and just had it lost offscreen by fiat like how the zombies should have existed in the first place

I mean seriously. So what if he only went as far as wikipedia? That's enough to write an entertaining story that has a veneer of plausibility about it.

I also left out
"damn, if only they had launched all their TIE fighters. An entire death star, blown up by 2 squadrons of rebels."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Damn, if only they had placed soldiers on top of buildings where they didn't have to worry about being over run

I quote more... hell, I have the growing temptation to actually put the entire chapter up because, weirdly enough, most of these questions are actually addressed right in the fucking book:

Why didn't they put us on the roofs? They had a shopping center, a couple of garages, big buildings with nice flat tops. They could have put a whole company right above the A&P. We could have seen the whole valley, and we would have been completely safe from attack. There was the apartment biulding, about twenty stories, I think... each floor had a commanding view of the freeway. Why wasn't there a rifle team in each window?

You know where they put us? Right down on the ground, right behind sandbags or in fighting holes. We wasted so much time, so much energy preparing these elaborate firing positions. Good "cover and concealment," they told us. Cover and concealment? "Cover" means physical protection, conventional protection, from small arms and artillery or air-dropped ordinance. That sound like the enemy we were about to go up against? Was Zack now calling in air strikes and fire missions? And why the hell were we worried about concealment when the whole point of the battle was to get Zack to come directly at us! So backasswards! All of it!

So again, comical incompetence from the higher-ups, rather than complete failure to even address the option.

Can I make a request that we limit criticisms to the people who've actually read the book? I'm getting a little tired of quoting massive sections of text to address arguments that would never have been made if the people making them actually read the book and realized they were already addressed.

[Ghost Rider]

As the last five to six times, all this ranting shows is the different levels of suspension people have. Some can enjoy shambling mounds becoming an unstoppable monster that is only defeated by the pluck of the heroes, other cannot.

Adding details, to some, looks professional. To others, it looks as if said author gave a glance and never looked harder.

As for the zombies, they are an easy fave because they are the mindless horde. You don't have to add anything to them and they are an easy threat for both size and for destruction.

As for limiting people? No, because we don't do it for anywhere else where we see unsupported assumptions taken as fact and proof is as flimsy as a wet noodle. You debate said wall until you get bored and look somewhere else, as with much of the internet.

[Gunhead]

So we're again at "LOLZ t3h inc0mptenz!!". If those quotes O.K Damien posted are the measure of Brook's research into military weapons, I can sum up his research real easy. He browsed wikipedia.

-Gunhead

Actually, now that we are on the subject, what *is* the actual lethality rate of a artillery barrage against an exposed army? Like if we take a fully equipped M109 battery and pitted it against a infinite horde of somali's armed with AK's charging across an open field, how many thousands would die before the battery ran out of ammo and was overrun?

That's a lot of variables, but for a bog standard 155mm shell the blast radius is roughly 4-5m depending on the terrain and other factors. Anything made of squishy human stuff, specially if it's standing will be violently blow to bits inside this area. Shrapnel will be lethal up to ranges of 20m from the point of impact. Now I'll use a Finnish artillery battery as a basis, since those are more familiar to me. That's 12 guns with 60-80 rounds per gun if stocked for intense action. Roughly 720 rounds can be fired before they're dry, now assuming 5 casualties per round that would be around 3500 from just the blast effect alone. How many would be killed / wounded by shrapnel your guess is good as mine. Range is a non issue, unless the horde is close enough to close the distance to the guns in less than 15 minutes, because at that point all rounds are expended. A trained gun crew can send on it's way six rounds per minute, really good ones can get eight.
This is a total over simplification btw and is based on textbook performance of ammunition and rate of fire that is expected of a trained artillery crew.
My personal opinion the casualty rate would be a lot higher.

-Gunhead

[Samuel]

Can I make a request that we limit criticisms to the people who've actually read the book? I'm getting a little tired of quoting massive sections of text to address arguments that would never have been made if the people making them actually read the book and realized they were already addressed.

I have read the book- I just haven't memorized whole sections or have it on hand to read off of. And remember, this only applies to US forces- believe it or not, it fails to adress every other military on the planet who apparently managed to fuck up as well.

I'd like to see how well your trucks run after they are fouled by a carpet of zombie corpses.

Than use bulldozers.

[Serafina]

If you want to avoid most of these issues, just don't go with "worldwide zombie plague". Just pit them against a small group of people with limited resources (which you already have in most cases anyway) in an isolated situation. You don't need to destroy the whole world in order to have a good story.

[lance]

Yes, but that starts to fall apart once we get to the stage where the military is involved. Even if they do not know to aim for the head specifically yet, soldiers will learn quick. And if you're sending armor against hordes of unarmored, shambling, corpses, fragmentation rounds would be the first choice, since they are meant to kill people in the first place.

What if the military got largely infected through vaccinations/water supply? Which actually makes them just as inept.

So I guess military has to be occupied/weakened some how.

One idea I had was a zombie apocalypse in 40K where the Space Marines and guard are fighting chaos legions elsewhere the normal people deal with zombies.

[Swindle1984]

All this discussion of high explosives really makes me yearn for some kind of "Mythbusters versus Zombies" scenario. I mean, if anyone's good at rigging up massive explosions on a shoestring budget and on short notice...

I've done my homework and been trained in bomb detection and disposal (disclaimer: I am NOT EOD/bomb disposal; my job would only involve evacuating people, determining if a threat exists, and locating a bomb for the professionals to dispose of, and there's not much chance of me ever having to do that. I'm far more likely to use my hazmat training at an accident or meth lab.).

It is ridiculously easy to make explosives. Urine and cow shit can be processed in your kitchen to make a bomb; you don't need to add anything, just eliminate contaminants. The Unabomber used match heads in most of his pipe bombs and they worked just fine. RDX, the main ingredient in C4, can be made from products available in most grocery stores, hardware stores, outdoor stores, etc. ANFO, which is what Timothy McVeigh used, can be made any number of ways and is far from difficult to make. TATP is incredibly easy to make, and it's favored by terrorists who have limited access to materials and dumbass teenagers who want to blow a crater on the lawn; it's also incredibly easy to blow yourself up with it because it's so sensitize, and it has a shelf-life of about a week before it decomposes and becomes progressively more sensitive until it spontaneously detonates on its own. I recently read in the news some kid in Taiwan (or maybe it was Japan, I forget) blew his arm off with a TATP bomb another kid had sold him.

Building a frag bomb is so easy, any uneducated moron can do it without even knowing how to do it effectively; a properly designed one is just as easy, you only need to employ a little thought into its design. Shaped charges are also easy to make.

It's not just the explosives and bombs they go into that are easy to build, you can turn literally anything into a detonation device. Cell phone, kitchen timer, motion detector, thermometer (your body temperature warming the room as you enter it sets if off), mousetrap, radio, fuse, cigarette, mercury switch from an A/C unit, camera flash, you name it, I've seen someone find a way to use it to set off a bomb. And don't even think about cutting a tripwire to prevent the bomb it's attached to from going off; not only is that how many of them are detonated (when the tension is released, not when it's increased), but I've even seen a design where if you pulled the tripwire, it made contact and set off the bomb; if you cut the tripwire, it hit a different contact and set off the bomb. I "died" twice during training, the first one was because I broke a hair-thin wire that was almost invisible; I was looking right at it and stepped on it and never saw or felt it. This is why our troops invested in silly string to find IED's in certain areas.

In a shit's-hitting-the-fan scenario, if somebody with a little know how and a shopping cart to load with raw ingredients wants to make explosives for blowing up zombies, or even improvised mortars and rocket artillery, it wouldn't be hard to rig something up in a day or two. You would be amazed at how easy it is to make military-grade explosives at home; frankly, it's amazing that more would-be terrorists aren't making effective bombs. Look at the idiot shoebomber; he had TATP in his shoes and instead of setting them off with a shock (which ain't hard) in the bathroom so he could have privacy and blow a hole in the plane, he tried to set his shoes on fire in the middle of the aisle. The only reason more people don't blow stuff up is because most people are idiots.

As anti-zombie weapons, a concussion explosive (offensive grenade, many pipe bombs) wouldn't be much use, unless it was so big it blew apart the brain. Frag weapons would be more useful, but only if it put a ball bearing or shrapnel through the brain. You need LOTS of explosives, enough to completely shred the zombie and all his buddies, to make the explosives lethal to them. Otherwise, all bombs are good for is blowing off limbs and slowing the zombies down. Or demolitions, to create barricades or bury zombies under a building/overpass. Which again, would require lots of explosives and more know-how than it takes to make a simple pipe bomb.

[Swindle1984]

So we're again at "LOLZ t3h inc0mptenz!!". If those quotes O.K Damien posted are the measure of Brook's research into military weapons, I can sum up his research real easy. He browsed wikipedia.

-Gunhead

Actually, now that we are on the subject, what *is* the actual lethality rate of a artillery barrage against an exposed army? Like if we take a fully equipped M109 battery and pitted it against a infinite horde of somali's armed with AK's charging across an open field, how many thousands would die before the battery ran out of ammo and was overrun?

That's a lot of variables, but for a bog standard 155mm shell the blast radius is roughly 4-5m depending on the terrain and other factors. Anything made of squishy human stuff, specially if it's standing will be violently blow to bits inside this area. Shrapnel will be lethal up to ranges of 20m from the point of impact. Now I'll use a Finnish artillery battery as a basis, since those are more familiar to me. That's 12 guns with 60-80 rounds per gun if stocked for intense action. Roughly 720 rounds can be fired before they're dry, now assuming 5 casualties per round that would be around 3500 from just the blast effect alone. How many would be killed / wounded by shrapnel your guess is good as mine. Range is a non issue, unless the horde is close enough to close the distance to the guns in less than 15 minutes, because at that point all rounds are expended. A trained gun crew can send on it's way six rounds per minute, really good ones can get eight.
This is a total over simplification btw and is based on textbook performance of ammunition and rate of fire that is expected of a trained artillery crew.
My personal opinion the casualty rate would be a lot higher.

-Gunhead

But remember, zombies don't die from blood loss, having shrapnel punch through the heart, lungs, etc. You'd have fewer casualties because many of those zombies would maimed and blown to pieces... and still crawling along to eat you.

Also, weren't a lot of troops at Yonkers equipped with M249 SAW's and M240's, which aren't exactly conducive to headshots?

[weemadando]

But you forget about the simple distinction between an actual kill and a "mission kill".

A zombie mightn't be killed by the shrapnel, but the damage done to the musculo-skeletal system may well be sufficient to immobilise or otherwise significantly reduce it's effectiveness.

Even if we are pretending that they're magic and that their muscles etc are running on magical-dead-vibes rather than a rich, nutrient filled oxygenated blood, like they're designed to, then this kind of damage will do wonders.

Take it from me, the man who's injured himself repeatedly in a variety of manners. Once you have a ligament or tendon in your knee busted, then you cannot physically move at much more than a hobble because your joint does not physically function correctly anymore. Regardless of pain thresholds, the mechanisms of the joint just don't work.

[Gunhead]

But remember, zombies don't die from blood loss, having shrapnel punch through the heart, lungs, etc. You'd have fewer casualties because many of those zombies would maimed and blown to pieces... and still crawling along to eat you.

Also, weren't a lot of troops at Yonkers equipped with M249 SAW's and M240's, which aren't exactly conducive to headshots?

As a wise mystical spirit said "Shoot enough bullets and the headshots will come". All bits of flying metal will damage flesh to some extent. Putting a lot of them in the air causes headshots.
I was not talking about blood loss. 4-5m is the range where flesh based things are turned to paste. It's a low estimate. I'm really scared of crawling bags of meat when I'm sitting in an armored vehicle. Or in a building.

P.S Pieces of metal moving at high speeds are not stopped by things made out of meat. You do the math.

-Gunhead

[Uncluttered]

So we're again at "LOLZ t3h inc0mptenz!!". If those quotes O.K Damien posted are the measure of Brook's research into military weapons, I can sum up his research real easy. He browsed wikipedia.

-Gunhead

Brooks has a military library, uses military advisors, and stinet librarians. You can have your own opinion on how he uses it, but not your own facts. Also he's not a big fan of Wikipedia.

[Uncluttered]

If you want to avoid most of these issues, just don't go with "worldwide zombie plague". Just pit them against a small group of people with limited resources (which you already have in most cases anyway) in an isolated situation. You don't need to destroy the whole world in order to have a good story.

Prosecution is tendering Exhibit B: Alderaan

[Oni Koneko Damien]

But you forget about the simple distinction between an actual kill and a "mission kill".

A zombie mightn't be killed by the shrapnel, but the damage done to the musculo-skeletal system may well be sufficient to immobilise or otherwise significantly reduce it's effectiveness.

Even if we are pretending that they're magic and that their muscles etc are running on magical-dead-vibes rather than a rich, nutrient filled oxygenated blood, like they're designed to, then this kind of damage will do wonders.

Take it from me, the man who's injured himself repeatedly in a variety of manners. Once you have a ligament or tendon in your knee busted, then you cannot physically move at much more than a hobble because your joint does not physically function correctly anymore. Regardless of pain thresholds, the mechanisms of the joint just don't work.

You have to remember, though, that a zombie can still remain a danger even when it's largely immobilized, unlike a human. All it takes is one successful bite, even if that bite's delivered by a legless zombie that dragged itself over to your ankle. "Mission kill" for zombies would be different than "mission kill" for humans simply because until their jaws stop working, they remain a possibly lethal threat.

Besides, the book states that only about 1 in 20 zombies caught in the initial barrage still had the capability of movement, 'movement' being defined as anywhere from still walking to writhing a little on the ground and snapping their teeth.

[AniThyng]

But you forget about the simple distinction between an actual kill and a "mission kill".

A zombie mightn't be killed by the shrapnel, but the damage done to the musculo-skeletal system may well be sufficient to immobilise or otherwise significantly reduce it's effectiveness.

Even if we are pretending that they're magic and that their muscles etc are running on magical-dead-vibes rather than a rich, nutrient filled oxygenated blood, like they're designed to, then this kind of damage will do wonders.

Take it from me, the man who's injured himself repeatedly in a variety of manners. Once you have a ligament or tendon in your knee busted, then you cannot physically move at much more than a hobble because your joint does not physically function correctly anymore. Regardless of pain thresholds, the mechanisms of the joint just don't work.

You have to remember, though, that a zombie can still remain a danger even when it's largely immobilized, unlike a human. All it takes is one successful bite, even if that bite's delivered by a legless zombie that dragged itself over to your ankle. "Mission kill" for zombies would be different than "mission kill" for humans simply because until their jaws stop working, they remain a possibly lethal threat.

Besides, the book states that only about 1 in 20 zombies caught in the initial barrage still had the capability of movement, 'movement' being defined as anywhere from still walking to writhing a little on the ground and snapping their teeth.

And they simply don't break and retreat, they just keep coming and coming, it's not like another human army that at some point will say "fuck no we're not going over the top after the last wave got blasted to bits".