Cracked Cracks the Zombie Apocalypse

[DudeGuyMan]

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.

This. This. This.

Even with a zombie's ability to ignore most damage, 95% of them were fucked right up when the army cut loose with the heavy shit. All the stuff about how they're harder to kill than humans was an explanation for the remaining 5%, not an intended explanation for why the heavy shit was eventually shelved. They blew the battle due to a series of incompetent decisions by the commanders, not invincible zombie-wank.

The stuff about the air force being grounded, and so forth, comes in a completely different part of the book and the explanation given there is (if I recall correctly) wholly economic in nature.

[Joe Momma]

The stuff about the air force being grounded, and so forth, comes in a completely different part of the book and the explanation given there is (if I recall correctly) wholly economic in nature.

Yes, it was. They still used the more fuel-efficient prop-driven cargo planes for transporting supplies, but the fighters, stealth bombers, etc., were mothballed since the expense of operating and maintaining them wasn't very cost effective given the particular enemy they were fighting at the time.

[weemadando]

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.

But that's the point. If a zombie is immobile and "over there", then it's not really a threat anymore is it? You can just roll a steamroller over there later at some point or start a molotov throwing competition once everything else is dealt with.

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".

Again, at some point there will be enough of a physical impediment to their progress (likely to be a nice chest high wall of ex-zombies and their bits) that it becomes a moot point.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

But that's the point. If a zombie is immobile and "over there", then it's not really a threat anymore is it? You can just roll a steamroller over there later at some point or start a molotov throwing competition once everything else is dealt with.

I see it more like being held in the same category as a land-mine. Immobile, but can easily kill a person if it's stepped on. Definitely a threat worth keeping track of, unlike a normal person crawling around with their bowels hanging out.

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".

Again, at some point there will be enough of a physical impediment to their progress (likely to be a nice chest high wall of ex-zombies and their bits) that it becomes a moot point.

Happens more than once in the books. Basically when the army's taking on million-strong swarms, they create a mountain of corpses around their fortifications and resort to just capping heads when they pop over the top. Even then, they still have to sort through the mountains in full armor afterward to take out numerous stragglers who just got tangled in the corpses.

[weemadando]

But that's the point. If a zombie is immobile and "over there", then it's not really a threat anymore is it? You can just roll a steamroller over there later at some point or start a molotov throwing competition once everything else is dealt with.

I see it more like being held in the same category as a land-mine. Immobile, but can easily kill a person if it's stepped on. Definitely a threat worth keeping track of, unlike a normal person crawling around with their bowels hanging out.

Who, throughout history have a nasty habit of winning VCs, MoHs etc for continuing to shoot/throw grenades, something a zombie doesn't have the luxury of.

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".

Again, at some point there will be enough of a physical impediment to their progress (likely to be a nice chest high wall of ex-zombies and their bits) that it becomes a moot point.

Happens more than once in the books. Basically when the army's taking on million-strong swarms, they create a mountain of corpses around their fortifications and resort to just capping heads when they pop over the top. Even then, they still have to sort through the mountains in full armor afterward to take out numerous stragglers who just got tangled in the corpses.

Or you can just, you know, burn it. Or pour acid on the top or seal the whole pile in concrete. Or drive tanks back and forth over it. You know, things that aren't fucking retarded choices that endanger people.

[DudeGuyMan]

Unless fuel for burning corpses is at a much higher premium than manpower in the zombie-ravaged economy and you'd rather just have some guys with handguns and bite-proof gauntlets root through the pile with rakes. It doesn't sound like particularly dangerous work, really. Just incredibly disgusting.

Anyway, I'd like to raise the question of whether a modern (or any) military is really all that well-equipped to utterly exterminate a population of millions upon millions of anything. Even zombies that foolishly walk about in the open and shuffle directly toward anyone they see.

If mean if we assume that 10% of the world population gets turned at one point or another, that's still 600 million zombies. Less than 80 million died in all of WW2, soldiers, civilians, disease, genocide, and starvation combined.

That's a fucking lot of bodies to blow up, even if they're too dumb to take cover. Does the military really keep enough ammunition on hand to just sort of... hop up and do that? Maybe they do, I don't know. I know the main reason Yonkers was a fuckup in the book, all the other mistakes aside, was because they didn't have enough ammunition for the heavy weapons that were quite effectively blowing apart zombies.

[Bakustra]

I think that they'd have to resort to nuclear weaponry to hope to kill that many. But that raises its own problems, and assumes that the zombies do flock ordinarily and that it spreads like a pandemic where resistors are minimal. But if resistors and carriers are common for zombification, that means that zombies will be pretty evenly distributed geographically. Or, alternatively, if we have Romero-style zombies where the dead rise, then you'd have similar situations.

Either way, poorer nations are going to be hard-hit.

[DudeGuyMan]

Also, I'd like to point out that the thing about how zombies never run away or surrender needs to be looked at in the proper context. It's not "Rawr zombies are super unstoppbale warriors!" It's more like "Our logisitical requirements just went up a giant shitload in comparison to killing humans."

[Bakustra]

Also, I'd like to point out that the thing about how zombies never run away or surrender needs to be looked at in the proper context. It's not "Rawr zombies are super unstoppbale warriors!" It's more like "Our logisitical requirements just went up a giant shitload in comparison to killing humans."

It's also worth noting that for all the emphasis on the brute-force capabilities of artillery, its greatest effect is psychological, much like land mines and suppressing fire. None of those would have a psychological effect on zombies, so they suddenly drop in effectiveness.

[weemadando]

Also, I'd like to point out that the thing about how zombies never run away or surrender needs to be looked at in the proper context. It's not "Rawr zombies are super unstoppbale warriors!" It's more like "Our logisitical requirements just went up a giant shitload in comparison to killing humans."

It's also worth noting that for all the emphasis on the brute-force capabilities of artillery, its greatest effect is psychological, much like land mines and suppressing fire. None of those would have a psychological effect on zombies, so they suddenly drop in effectiveness.

OK, go right ahead with that. But lets look at what happens when a single 120mm mortar round hits a crowded area. First Markale Massacre - that's 68 dead and 144 injured from a single round.

For sure there's a psychological effect there, but don't kid yourself that arty doesn't also have exceptional lethality.

[Bakustra]

That assumes that zombies crowd themselves. They did in the Brooks novel, but on the other hand other zombies may well avoid flocking and move in dispersed groups, making it harder to kill them with artillery. Remember that we're talking about a wide range of theoretical zombies, not just a narrow subset.

[weemadando]

That assumes that zombies crowd themselves. They did in the Brooks novel, but on the other hand other zombies may well avoid flocking and move in dispersed groups, making it harder to kill them with artillery. Remember that we're talking about a wide range of theoretical zombies, not just a narrow subset.

If you can find me an example in zombie fic where you don't have a densely packed crowd of zombies somewhere in it, then you can go and call yourself champion of the internet.

[Bakustra]

That assumes that zombies crowd themselves. They did in the Brooks novel, but on the other hand other zombies may well avoid flocking and move in dispersed groups, making it harder to kill them with artillery. Remember that we're talking about a wide range of theoretical zombies, not just a narrow subset.

If you can find me an example in zombie fic where you don't have a densely packed crowd of zombies somewhere in it, then you can go and call yourself champion of the internet.

Thank you for missing the point.

[Gunhead]

That assumes that zombies crowd themselves. They did in the Brooks novel, but on the other hand other zombies may well avoid flocking and move in dispersed groups, making it harder to kill them with artillery. Remember that we're talking about a wide range of theoretical zombies, not just a narrow subset.

If you can find me an example in zombie fic where you don't have a densely packed crowd of zombies somewhere in it, then you can go and call yourself champion of the internet.

Thank you for missing the point.

You'd be right if there was a point to be missed. Zombie hordes have two things going for them. Resilience and numbers. They need to have an overwhelming mass to punch through any even semi defended place. They disperse and this will not happen. It's just as well. If they disperse, they're easier to fend off as there are fewer of them to fend off at once. Clump together and indirect assets will blow them to pieces. Even if spread out, they're still vulnerable to indirect fire, but now it just has to concentrate fire to any mobs of suitable size and leave smaller straggler groups to direct fire weapons.

-Gunhead

[Bakustra]

You'd be right if there was a point to be missed. Zombie hordes have two things going for them. Resilience and numbers. They need to have an overwhelming mass to punch through any even semi defended place. They disperse and this will not happen. It's just as well. If they disperse, they're easier to fend off as there are fewer of them to fend off at once. Clump together and indirect assets will blow them to pieces. Even if spread out, they're still vulnerable to indirect fire, but now it just has to concentrate fire to any mobs of suitable size and leave smaller straggler groups to direct fire weapons.

-Gunhead

I'm not disputing that, but thank you for leaping to conclusions.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Who, throughout history have a nasty habit of winning VCs, MoHs etc for continuing to shoot/throw grenades, something a zombie doesn't have the luxury of.

But wait, if they're continuing to do that, they wouldn't be 'mission killed', which was your initial claim. So which is it? Are legless zombies 'mission killed' despite still having the ability to bite ankles, or are they as dangerous as similarly incapacitated people who might still be able to point a gun? I'm a little confused as to what point you're trying to make here as it seems to change with every post.

Or you can just, you know, burn it. Or pour acid on the top or seal the whole pile in concrete. Or drive tanks back and forth over it. You know, things that aren't fucking retarded choices that endanger people.

Which would have been great options if people had those sorts of resources to spare at the time. At that point the US was operating on a shoestring economy, bordering on reverting to a barter system. A majority of its military hardware was mothballed, only bringing out what was most efficient at killing zombies and saving the big guns for the occasional well-entrenched secessionists.

As was asked by others: How much acid would it take to dissolve several million bodies? How much gas would it take to drive a tank over that many?

OK, go right ahead with that. But lets look at what happens when a single 120mm mortar round hits a crowded area. First Markale Massacre - that's 68 dead and 144 injured from a single round.

For sure there's a psychological effect there, but don't kid yourself that arty doesn't also have exceptional lethality.

Which, again, the book addresses. 95%, at least, of zombies in an artillery strike zone are completely incapacitated. Of the rest, it's pretty same to assume a vast majority are reduced to writhing/crawling around. The lack of psychological effect is all the zombies outside the blast-zone failing to run away or even give a shit about the damage.

[DudeGuyMan]

So yeah, anyone want to talk about my last post?

If 10% of the American population gets zombied, that results in a "force" many times larger than the complete armed forces of China and which needs to be exterminated to the last man. If the plague is widespread and civil order has broken down, that makes logistics even more of a pain. Sure you'll still be able to move things around, it'll just be more difficult and time-consuming than it would be otherwise.

Pick apart the logic behind the plague becoming that widespread in the first place if you will. But once we accept it as a premise, it's not difficult to imagine things getting really ugly for a while. Until eventually the military realizes zombies aren't particularly hard to kill, but there's shitloads of them, and adopts simple efficient killing methods that allow them to wipe them all out. Which they do in the book.

I mean for all the shit that went down it wasn't really the apocalypse, the humans won, and that grunt was talking about the fuckups at Yonkers while having a beer at a baseball game, not while huddled in a cave somewhere lamenting the fall of civlization.

[Sarevok]

An Apache can carry 1200 rounds of 30 mm ammunition and about 80 rockets IIRC. Thats enough to wipe out several thousand zombies. Lets call it 10000 zombies per AH-64

An Abrams has 55 rounds of main gun rounds and 11000 machine gun bullets. It can also keep squishing zombies as long as there is fuel for the engines. So thats about 30000 zombies per tank.

A Bradley has about 1200 rounds of 25 mm shells and nearly 3000 machine gun bullets. Plus 4x TOW missiles. It can also keep squishing zombies indefinately as long as fuel holds. Lets call it 15000 zombies per M2.

10% of US population is 30 million people. It would take 3000 sorties by AH-64 helicopters or 1000 tanks a single day to kill.

Of course my math is ludicrously simple. But the point is the kill ratios of vehicles vs defenseless targets is even more ludicrous. The US has thousands of tanks and gunships. Each of them can slaughter thousands of unarmed humans on their own. You do the math.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

<snip>

10% of US population is 30 million people. It would take 3000 sorties by AH-64 helicopters or 1000 tanks a single day to kill.

Of course my math is ludicrously simple. But the point is the kill ratios of vehicles vs defenseless targets is even more ludicrous. The US has thousands of tanks and gunships. Each of them can slaughter thousands of unarmed humans on their own. You do the math.

'Ludicrous' is a fitting word, yes. Is that another 'conservative lower-limit'? Let's run through a few of the underlying assumptions here:

1) Every bullet finds at least one target.
2) Every bomb hits the exact number of targets to be most effective.
3) None of the weapons hit the same target twice, accidentally or otherwise.
4) All targets are conveniently massed in a flat area with no obstructions, perfectly convenient for these vehicles to get to, with perfect visibility and no cover whatsoever.
5) No gas is expended getting to and from the targets' location.
6) Breakdowns, instrument failures, etc. do not exist.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot, but that's just off the top of my head. Yeah, under ideal conditions military hardware can wtfpwn legions upon legions of fleshbags. The book doesn't deal with ideal conditions. It deals with a country that had already given up two thirds of its land, has to balance fueling its vehicles with feeding its own damn people, has to balance between shooting zombies and concentrating on well-armed secessionists. A country that is still in the midst of recovering from transplanting its entire government, military chain of command and the logistical nightmare of all remaining assets to the safe zone, and is trying to retake a massive variety of different terrains, from dense urban to heavy forests to underwater to mountainsides, very little of which offers those convenient, massive flat areas for zombies to gather in easy-to-shoot hordes.

And you know what? The US still won. They shepherded their resources, didn't waste gas and bombs on enemies that could be killed with simple rifles, bullets and a little elbow-grease, took back the territory inch by inch, room by room, building by building, acre of forest by acre of forest, clearing out zombies, armed secessionists and other threats while dealing with the disease, starvation and other issues that come with a massive die-off. And in the few instances where the zombies were massed in large, flat areas (The Battle of Hope goes into this in detail)? They got easy owned by massed firepower.

Funny how the book continues to answer these supposedly scathing criticisms people keep trying to make.

Or do you think it would have been a better story if they just flattened all the infested cities with nukes, carpet-bombed the suburbs and set up a hundred-mile line of tanks to roll across the country, Sherman style, turning it into Fattynerd Pandora Mk.2?

[DudeGuyMan]

No dude, X thousand bullets in a machine gun totally equals X thousand headshots/kills. And monster-trucking over zombies in a heavily armored vehicle the fuel efficency of which is measured in gallons per mile is totally the best way to wipe out millions upon millions of zombies in a vast continent-spanning country where the fuel production and distribution infrastructure is totally fucked.

Also, I don't see how any of this stops the country from going completely to shit. It has to go to shit by definition before there can be enough zombies for carpet-bombing them to be viable. And if things weren't shit before, they will be after you obliterate all the cities in a zombie-slaughtering airstrike frenzy.

Once the country HAS gone to shit and you're dealing with massive numbers of refugees and drastically reduced production and such, why not shelve the heavy weapons, put all that fuel in people's heaters and supply trucks, and just shoot the shit out of zombies with foot infantry?

[DudeGuyMan]

Or to put it another way, the fact that tanks-versus-zombies is ludicrous overkill is NOT a reason to use tanks to kill zombies unless you have unlimited resources.

[MKSheppard]

No dude, X thousand bullets in a machine gun totally equals X thousand headshots/kills.

Considering the height of zombie tactical brilliance is to shuffle or walk towards humans while moaning

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAInS

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAINS

or

*gurgle*

*moans creepily*

I'd say the amount of ammunition of any kind required for a kill drops dramatically -- we're not talking thousands of rounds expended per kill as is the norm for human-vs-human wars; but more like 10~ or so per kill.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

I'd say the amount of ammunition of any kind required for a kill drops dramatically -- we're not talking thousands of rounds expended per kill as is the norm for human-vs-human wars; but more like 10~ or so per kill.

Exactly, and where there's a 10-to-1 bullet to kill ratio for vehicles, it's far closer to a 1-to-1 ratio with a disciplined guy holding a rifle. Saves a LOT in gas, logistics, sheer manpower (it doesn't take a full crew of trained mechanics/engineers to maintain a guy with a rifle), and the threat in question doesn't have the usual things (rifles, bombs, etc.) that make tanks a necessity in the first place. When the country's in the shitter as far as resources are concerned, if a guy with a rifle can do the job of a tank, go with the rifleman and save the tank for things that can shoot back.

[MKSheppard]

But lets look at what happens when a single 120mm mortar round hits a crowded area. First Markale Massacre - that's 68 dead and 144 injured from a single round.

That's actually a pretty good example, Ando.

Gunhead's earlier rough calculations using his experience in the FDF are based on the difficulty you have in killing people in any sort of prepared position with artillery. Your example is much more indicative of what zombie casualties would be like -- since the zombies would be completely in the open and would not have any self preservational sense -- they would not seek cover after the first rounds land.

That's always been a big problem in artillery planning -- most causalties are caused by the first rounds because people quickly seek cover -- hence the emphasis on TOT barriages in which every round arrives within seconds of each other for maximum lethality.

Zombies on the other hand, don't self preserve. So you can just have a M1131 Stryker FSV with a FIST officer on board call in single rounds all fucking day long on zombies massed on the interstate highway and achieve hundreds of casualties with each single round.

[Simon_Jester]

So yeah, anyone want to talk about my last post?

If 10% of the American population gets zombied, that results in a "force" many times larger than the complete armed forces of China and which needs to be exterminated to the last man. If the plague is widespread and civil order has broken down, that makes logistics even more of a pain. Sure you'll still be able to move things around, it'll just be more difficult and time-consuming than it would be otherwise.

Shep has a point. Zombies require a lot less ammunition to kill than humans, humans take cover and zombies don't. Thus, ammunition reserves stretch out a lot farther than they would against a human opponent, because there's no need to expend massive amounts of it on blowing up random bits of the landscape that the enemy might be hiding behind.

But you're right, the real nightmares in this kind of crisis are sorting out infected human refugees that are not yet zombified, and the risk of random zombie attacks in the rear area. Even there, though, the threat is greatly reduced becasue zombies, unlike human guerillas, lack the intelligence to time their attacks when their enemy is vulnerable. They attack in daytime when they can be easily shot as well as night, and across open fields as readily as in close terrain. The biggest problem, the one that might actually make trouble and force the abandonment of relatively heavily infested territory, isn't the zombie swarms (one notes that the zombie horde at Yonkers was blown up by a fuel air bomb after the Army forces broke and ran for it). It's the dispersed groups that keep wandering around and crashing into things.

You need to have armed guards on everything you're not willing to write off; the sheer manpower constraints that imposes are your biggest problem in my opinion.