Cracked Cracks the Zombie Apocalypse

[Drone]

How would a lighter vehicle like a Stryker fare? Does the US have any of those in reserve in the States as opposed to deployed overseas?

The LAV is pretty much ideal, 13 tons, 25mm Bushmaster (standard round is a high explosive one that pretty much makes people into pink mist), wheeled and narrow enough to fit on streets, a number of variants including logistics ones that can make the company more or less self contained, pretty high ammo capacity, a diesel engine that gets pretty good gas mileage considering it's size, and while not well armored, zombies aren't pounding their way through solid steel. There's certainly companies of those in reserve.

[[R_H]]

As far as I know, only the USMC uses the LAV-25

[Oni Koneko Damien]

If you're dealing with whole cities totally infested with Zombies (extremely implausible save biowank), you can bomb them. Fuck the 30 survivors in a city of 100,000. Firebombs away! It'll burn itself out eventually.

No.

As mentioned earlier, zombies are more of a 'natural disaster' type threat than actual monsters, and if anyone said 'fuck those thirty people' in the midst of any other disaster, it would be a sucky story and generally shitty thing to do. The point of the military is to, allegedly, protect its citizens, they can damn well do a little extra work (which really isn't all that much extra in this case) and extract some survivors. Meanwhile the fatty nerds who are furiously stroking themselves to mental images of cities full of zombies getting leveled by heavy artillery can just fuck off.

If a city is significantly (<95% infected), then you can roll into the city, and anounce over loudspeaker that all humans should stay indoors until further notice. Then, you send up big flares and shit, get as much attention from zombies as you can, and gun them down as they come into the streets en masse. You know what 120mm canister shells from an Abrams does to tightly packed streets full of people?

After they're all redead, you broadcast that it's safer to come out now, and you get them to follow you in convoy outside the city to a makeshift quarantine zone.

That is one of the worst ideas for dealing with a natural disaster I have ever heard. Doubly so if you're actually trying to minimize death to the poor shmucks caught in the middle of it.

[Simon_Jester]

Jester, what kind of zombie situation would be as such that several thousand armored vehicles could not deal with it? Are you assuming that the entire country is already overrun entirely?

Adam, you're getting it backwards.

What kind of zombie situation would be such that several thousand armored vehicles are needed to deal with it? What could an armored company in that situation do that an infantry company in Humvees can't, that justifies the increased expense of the armored units.

The only real advantage of armored vehicles is that they are 100% zombieproof even if you stupidly drive them into the middle of a thousand of the things. But there is never a logical reason to drive a vehicle into the middle of a mob of zombies in the first place, not when you have guns. It makes so much more sense, regardless of how many of them there are, to maintain a standoff distance, to shoot and scoot.

And for shooting and scooting, infantry in humvees or, hell, technicals are good enough. No they are not zombie proof, yes it is conceivable that one isolated fire team in their vehicle could somehow wind up getting stranded and mobbed. That's what the rest of the army is for: mutual coverage.

The point is not that tanks are "not enough." It is that they are too much: the massive increase in cost does not justify the increase in firepower and protection, because you simply don't need that much extra firepower and protection against an enemy that doesn't have ranged weapons and isn't smart enough to take cover when people are shooting at them.

In open country where there's room for mobility you don't need tanks because being immune to a million zombies or whatever is not valuable when you can so easily outrun the things. In urban country you don't need tanks because ultimately you're going to have to clear the buildings house to house anyway, Just In Case; the mission of drawing the bulk of the threat out and into kill-zones doesn't require tanks if it's done intelligently.

[SAMAS]

Which is why you stick with the Bradleys and other IFVs. Not as resource-intensive as the big tanks, and still actually Zombie-proof.

And again, They're actually present, so you don't have to wait until somebody goes and makes piddly little technicals.

[Simon_Jester]

Which is why you stick with the Bradleys and other IFVs. Not as resource-intensive as the big tanks, and still actually Zombie-proof.

And again, They're actually present, so you don't have to wait until somebody goes and makes piddly little technicals.

Well, most nations do field a substantial IFV force, so yes up to a point.

However, even tracked IFVs are fairly expensive; the only thing that makes them worthwhile in this scenario is the sunk cost of having already built swarms of the things. Even then, I wonder whether their cost-effectiveness in the field during the Time of Zombies* would be anywhere close to that of motorized infantry patrols.

See, I'm not advocating a technical as the solution to all problems- but a technical carrying a fire team of infantry and a Carl Gustav would probably take down more zombies per dollar invested in fielding them than a Bradley would, if they were used competently.

I would suspect the same of a fire team of infantry in a Humvee armed with a Mk. 19: a functionally equivalent force (motorized infantry with relatively low-end heavy weapons). We already have those too, you know...

*Meant in most literal, and generic, sense possible: "time during which there are zombies." We could be talking about regular military sweeps to police up isolated outbreaks, or we could be talking about systematic operations to recover huge infested areas.

[Thanas]

That depends - seeing as how the only dangerous Zombie outbreaks are actually in the cities, they are actually quite effective when deployed immediately.

[Simon_Jester]

Apologies to Thanas about the edit. My post originally read:

"Well, most nations do field a substantial IFV force, so yes up to a point.

However, even tracked IFVs are fairly expensive; the only thing that makes them worthwhile in this scenario is the sunk cost of having already built swarms of the things... and I still suspect that their cost-effectiveness in the field during the Time of Zombies would compare poorly to that of motorized infantry patrols."

But I'm really, really not sure about what he says. I mean, in theory you can try to counter a zombie outbreak in a city by driving armored vehicles into downtown and parking them while zombies pound futilely on the impenetrable armor... but that's not going to get rid of the outbreak. Sooner or later you wind up having to do infantry sweeps through the buildings.

So the role of any kind of mechanized military force is going to be to draw the bulk of the zombies out and leave only stragglers behind for the infantry sweeps. That role can equally well be performed by lighter, easier to maintain vehicles with lighter weapons, as far as I can tell.

[Drone]

As far as I know, only the USMC uses the LAV-25

This is true. The Stryker is the Army's version/knockoff, which pretty much missed the point of the design. They're old, but they work well, and there's at least 4+ BN worth of them in use.

[MKSheppard]

No.

Why not?

Zombies are attracted to people or living things in just about every zombie movie. Just figure out what zombies are attracted to (Human voices, human smells, pheremones, etc etc); and make up a device that mimics those attractors.

Sort of like a turkey call.

I mean; why the fuck should I risk people's lives by sending them into possible zombie infested buildings to clear them out, when I can save a lot of lives by getting all the still-mobile zombies into an open clearing and then wiping them out.

Yes; I know that this method will only handle the still mobile zombies; you still will have to be on alert as you go into the buildings for the immobile or semi mobile ones who broke their legs, back etc. But your risk is vastly reduced.

As mentioned earlier, zombies are more of a 'natural disaster' type threat than actual monsters, and if anyone said 'fuck those thirty people' in the midst of any other disaster, it would be a sucky story and generally shitty thing to do.

So sorry to break this to you; but there's something that the emergency services do in a major mass event like this, called 'triage' -- in which you make decisions over who lives and who dies.

Ok; we got 20-30 people who are holding out on a rooftop and surrounded by 10,000 zombies; and they only have enough food or water for a couple days?

Easy call; send a UH-60 or CH-47 in to airdrop more food/water or evacuate them from the rooftop.

We have 20-30 people who are barricaded in a small series of apartments that they've connected in the middle of some high rise, and the entire high rise is full of zombies; and they have no easy way of getting to the roof? Sucks to be them.

The point of the military is to, allegedly, protect its citizens, they can damn well do a little extra work (which really isn't all that much extra in this case) and extract some survivors.

I covered that point above -- some people will just be too much work for too little gain due to fate or rather poor tactical decision making by the people themselves.

It's one thing to rescue someone from a rooftop; another to fight through a subway system to rescue some people who have barricaded themselves in a service access tunnel.

Meanwhile the fatty nerds who are furiously stroking themselves to mental images of cities full of zombies getting leveled by heavy artillery can just fuck off.

But that's exactly what would happen.

"Fox Shep One; I have Zebras in sight; estimated size, Company strength, grid coordinates {INSERTED}, fire for effect."

*artillery lands a couple of shells into a courtyard full of zombies, blowing 90% of them into pink mist*

"Fox Shep One; rounds were on target, good work. Proceeding to do clean up of survivors."

*FO team then calmly headshots each zombie that has survived with scoped rifles and moves on to the next concentration of Zombies*

In any case; eventually there would be enough of a proliferation of unmanned UGVs available like the Northrup Grumman CaMEL robot LINK to eventually have a platoon of Strykers roll into a possibly infected area; and three of the Strykers drop their ramps and let out a bunch of UGVs which are controlled by the guys in the C3I Stryker.

You can now then safely and carefully clear confined spaces without having to send people in harms way.

[MKSheppard]

The point is not that tanks are "not enough." It is that they are too much: the massive increase in cost does not justify the increase in firepower and protection, because you simply don't need that much extra firepower and protection against an enemy that doesn't have ranged weapons and isn't smart enough to take cover when people are shooting at them.

Except that tanks exist and are available in the massive quantities needed (see my previous recount of how many M1 Abrams the Army has around).

The ideal anti-zombie vehicle you want would be something like this:



The M1117 Guardian ASV. It can fire a .50 caliber machinegun or 40mm Grenade launcher from a one-man turret -- the army has 1,800 of them with about 56 being produced each month at a plant near New Orleans. The problem is the majority of them are in Vietraq -- and at 56 a month; you really can't produce enough fast enough to equip anti-zombie forces.

Another example would be the German Fennek -- it's I think even lighter than the M1117; and has a mount for a Remote Weapons Station controlled within the vehicle; as well as options for rather tall extensible remote observation mast with a good LLTV/IR camera on that mast.

The big problem with both vehicles is that they were built explictly for internal security/policing/reconnaisance tasks -- those are very small components of any army; and thus built in small numbers -- this means the production lines are not scaleable up to the numbers needed for a Zombiepocalypse -- in 2003 the Army only had 49 M1117s in it's entire inventory, all held in Military Police Units and the plant was producing about 1 vehicle every three weeks.

[Simon_Jester]

The point is not that tanks are "not enough." It is that they are too much: the massive increase in cost does not justify the increase in firepower and protection, because you simply don't need that much extra firepower and protection against an enemy that doesn't have ranged weapons and isn't smart enough to take cover when people are shooting at them.

Except that tanks exist and are available in the massive quantities needed (see my previous recount of how many M1 Abrams the Army has around).

Yes; that's the only thing that makes using them sane: that they're a sunk cost.

Even then, I suspect that the rifle patrols are going to give a better return on investment, assuming they're reasonably careful about not deliberately barging into the middle of zombie hordes so they can call down box barrages on everything around them.

[PainRack]

Jester, raising and outfitting an infantry based army IS expensive. You're still going to need vehicles and other motor transport to such men, you're still going to need trucks to supply the ammunition, you're still going to need fortifications. One of the interesting difference between mechanised/armoured infantry and foot infantry is their speed of operations and defensive tactics. Unlike foot, AI digging in takes less time, giving you a defensive base and perimeter against zeds much faster.

That's why tanks/IFV are still going to be used against the zeds. Its going to be much easier to set up a defensive base with them than without them, and you're going to be guranteed utter safety unlike normal operations.

[MKSheppard]

Stryker is the Army's version/knockoff, which pretty much missed the point of the design.

Wrong.

OK, a primer.

In the 1970s a Swiss company named MOWAG introduced the Pirhanra series of 4x4, 6x6, and 8x8 wheeled armored vehicles.

The LAV-25 was a variant of the MOWAG Piranha I 8x8 as part of a program to acquire rapid reaction force vehicles to equip the RDF (Rapid Deployment Force) proposed through the Carter Administration into the early Reagan Administration. The US Army actually type classified the LAV-25 as a Mxxxx vehicle and was going to procure a lot of them, until it changed it's mind and backed out, leaving the USMC as the only operator of the LAV-25.

In the 1990s, the Canadians picked the MOWAG Piranha IIIH 8x8 to be the LAV III which would replace a lot of worn out kit.

By the 2000s, the US Army picked a LAV III derivative as the Strkyer.

So it's really a knockoff of the Canadian LAV III.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

No.

Why not?

Zombies are attracted to people or living things in just about every zombie movie. Just figure out what zombies are attracted to (Human voices, human smells, pheremones, etc etc); and make up a device that mimics those attractors.

Sort of like a turkey call.

I mean; why the fuck should I risk people's lives by sending them into possible zombie infested buildings to clear them out, when I can save a lot of lives by getting all the still-mobile zombies into an open clearing and then wiping them out.

Yes; I know that this method will only handle the still mobile zombies; you still will have to be on alert as you go into the buildings for the immobile or semi mobile ones who broke their legs, back etc. But your risk is vastly reduced.

The "no" was addressed at Grif's belief that we should firebomb a city with survivors in it... just because.

As far as luring zombies out, I'm all for any method that works and minimizes risk.

As mentioned earlier, zombies are more of a 'natural disaster' type threat than actual monsters, and if anyone said 'fuck those thirty people' in the midst of any other disaster, it would be a sucky story and generally shitty thing to do.

So sorry to break this to you; but there's something that the emergency services do in a major mass event like this, called 'triage' -- in which you make decisions over who lives and who dies.

Ok; we got 20-30 people who are holding out on a rooftop and surrounded by 10,000 zombies; and they only have enough food or water for a couple days?

Easy call; send a UH-60 or CH-47 in to airdrop more food/water or evacuate them from the rooftop.

We have 20-30 people who are barricaded in a small series of apartments that they've connected in the middle of some high rise, and the entire high rise is full of zombies; and they have no easy way of getting to the roof? Sucks to be them.

Yeah, but you know what's even worse than just leaving them there, where they have little chance of survival? Bombing the entire complex for no discernable reason than fatty nerd desires.

Look at it logically: What's the point of firebombing the city? To reclaim the land? You just bombed it to rubble! It'll be years before you can get any productive use out of it. To contain the zombies? They're already contained, you'll have to devote resources to a full perimeter around the city to catch stragglers whether you bomb it or not. Zombies are pathetic, a city full of zombies is only a conceivable threat to anyone else who happens to be in the city, why make yourself an even bigger threat to the few survivors?

The point of the military is to, allegedly, protect its citizens, they can damn well do a little extra work (which really isn't all that much extra in this case) and extract some survivors.

I covered that point above -- some people will just be too much work for too little gain due to fate or rather poor tactical decision making by the people themselves.

It's one thing to rescue someone from a rooftop; another to fight through a subway system to rescue some people who have barricaded themselves in a service access tunnel.

Again, even if you consider them not worth the effort of rescuing, you don't carpet bomb the entire subway system... just for the hell of it.

Meanwhile the fatty nerds who are furiously stroking themselves to mental images of cities full of zombies getting leveled by heavy artillery can just fuck off.

<snip>

You can now then safely and carefully clear confined spaces without having to send people in harms way.

[/quote]

Again, I have nothing against that. What I take issue with is firebombing the survivors... just because.

And Grif's rescue idea has some other issues as well. Calling out as many zombies as possible beforehand? Fine, all for it. Telling any theoretical survivors to come out on their own after that? Retarded. Really fucking retarded. Basic rule of any rescue situation is once you're in a relatively safe place, you don't move until qualified people come for you. If you're performing the rescue, you never tell them to move unless you 1) know they're all healthy enough to move, and 2) know they can get from point A to point B safely. Otherwise you take the time and effort to go in and personally escort/carry them out. Are you certain there are no zombie stragglers left in the building? No? Are the survivors in a temporarily secure location? Yes? Then they can wait until you're certain about that first question.

[weemadando]

Yeah, but you know what's even worse than just leaving them there, where they have little chance of survival? Bombing the entire complex for no discernable reason than fatty nerd desires.

Look at it logically: What's the point of firebombing the city? To reclaim the land? You just bombed it to rubble! It'll be years before you can get any productive use out of it. To contain the zombies? They're already contained, you'll have to devote resources to a full perimeter around the city to catch stragglers whether you bomb it or not. Zombies are pathetic, a city full of zombies is only a conceivable threat to anyone else who happens to be in the city, why make yourself an even bigger threat to the few survivors?

Actually the "firebomb it" angle it makes whole layers of sense.

1) You're losing a literal handful of civilians to neutralise a bigger threat without exposing your men to room-to-room clearance risks. The bodycount maths is unpleasant and borderline, but then we look at point two.

2) You're not really losing infrastructure. Turns out that in a city depopulated by zombies, having one less high rise apartment block isn't going to really be a big gap in city planning. In fact, having a nice new selection of green-spaces in the city post Zompocalypse is an upside.

3) By firebombing you're not only killing the immediate threat, you are destroying the persistent infection vectors as well - burning up the virus/mongoloid ju-ju.

4) Given standard zombie thought processes, creating a 30 floor roman candle is about the best tactical option out there. Every zombie in the city will be making a beeline for it and then you can instigate Operation Zombie Juicer on the surrounding streets:

[Shroom Man 777]

What is wrong with firebombing? The Allied forces firebombed Germany and killed countless thousands of civilians just to blow up some Nazis or factories or Nazi factories that factorized Nazis. Assuming that each zombie is a spherical mass of iron modern weapons are more accurate than WW2 weapons, bombing the shit out of zombie concentrations/cities full of zombies would be no more or less acceptable than bombing Nazi concentrations/cities full of Nazis, with or without massive civilian casualties. The fact that the zombies will be roaming and will not duck or take cover, and the fact that the zombies have not fortified their positions, means that they will also be more killable than the Nazis. With proper planning, and by spacing the individually dropped bombs and Daisy Cutters so that their blast waves will interact for maximum murderosity, the killiness will be enhanced to a degree more effective than that seen in WW2. Assuming the return of the living dead also brings back Saint Curtis LeMay, I see no problem with enacting this solution.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Actually the "firebomb it" angle it makes whole layers of sense.

1) You're losing a literal handful of civilians to neutralise a bigger threat without exposing your men to room-to-room clearance risks. The bodycount maths is unpleasant and borderline, but then we look at point two.

But... oh for crying out loud, zombies aren't that big of a threat! They're less dangerous than rioters with head-colds! These aren't nazis or arabs or yellow people who can use guns, bombs, start insurgencies or plant IEDs. They're staggering automatons, human-strength and below, with no intelligence or direction.

2) You're not really losing infrastructure. Turns out that in a city depopulated by zombies, having one less high rise apartment block isn't going to really be a big gap in city planning. In fact, having a nice new selection of green-spaces in the city post Zompocalypse is an upside.

Wait, now I'm confused, what are we firebombing here? The entire city or just one apartment? I was responding to Grif's assertion that we should just bomb the entire city to rubble, just because. If the zombies are confined to one complex and rescue/resupply is unfeasible? Box them in, give the survivors a chance to come out on their own.

3) By firebombing you're not only killing the immediate threat, you are destroying the persistent infection vectors as well - burning up the virus/mongoloid ju-ju.

Yeah, it would also get rid of swine flu.

4) Given standard zombie thought processes, creating a 30 floor roman candle is about the best tactical option out there. Every zombie in the city will be making a beeline for it and then you can instigate Operation Zombie Juicer on the surrounding streets:

So... why are we doing this on a building that has people inside when, if we're in a city, we've got any number of buildings to choose from, at least some of which should be without survivors? Hell, uncertain about all the buildings? Set fire to a large tree, it's only giving up its life for the greater good, after all!

[Shroom Man 777]

The only problem in this is that people may not want to bomb their own civilians, but this isn't a big a problem as we make it out to be. Again, as Saint Curtis so wisely foresaw, an XB-70 traveling at Mach 3.2+ would be able to fly to any zombie-infested city anywhere in the world within hours and deliver an appropriately megadeathy payload in good time. With its deathload and its speed, the XB-70 is the ultimate zombie-killing machine and even if the nations whose cities gets bombed tries to resist with SAM sites, at the altitude and speed the XB-70 travels, it can easily evade any attempt at interception and successfully nuke the target nations.


Graph me, Shep.

[adam_grif]

That is one of the worst ideas for dealing with a natural disaster I have ever heard. Doubly so if you're actually trying to minimize death to the poor shmucks caught in the middle of it.

I'm not aware of any fucking natural disasters that you can lure out into the open and destroy with a 120mm smoothbore gun. But no, we can't do an obvious easy fix that puts fewer lives at risk by lurin the zombies out and then blasting htem when they come into the open, because THIS IS A NATURAL DISASTER AND WE DON'T FIREBOMB EARTHQUAKES.

But... oh for crying out loud, zombies aren't that big of a threat! They're less dangerous than rioters with head-colds! These aren't nazis or arabs or yellow people who can use guns, bombs, start insurgencies or plant IEDs. They're staggering automatons, human-strength and below, with no intelligence or direction.

Orly? Then how did they infect >95% of a city's population? I guess gun control really is going to undo us! If they have no intelligence, how can they seek out human targets and identify other zombies? How can they even walk around and make their way towards their victims if they have no direction?

They need to be killfuckotronned.

Wait, now I'm confused, what are we firebombing here? The entire city or just one apartment? I was responding to Grif's assertion that we should just bomb the entire city to rubble, just because. If the zombies are confined to one complex and rescue/resupply is unfeasible? Box them in, give the survivors a chance to come out on their own.

Urban centers contain mostly houses and commercial infrastructure. Presumably important industrial areas will be saved if possible, but that's a secondary concern. Bombing a city with some incendiaries and setting it on fire is an extremely cheap way of killing the zombies and sterilizing all infection vectors. It's also infinitely safer than sending dudes door to door to wipe them out and rescue survivors, who might already be infected and are unlikely to be useful in the long run (30 average people out of a city are unlikely to be doctors and nurses and engineers). The people who lived there are already dead (except for some tiny, insignificant fraction of its former population), so its not like you're setting up anybody's house.

The resources, lives and time you save not dicking around with slow rescue operations for like 30 dudes can be better spent on cities that are still holding out fairly well. The only possible reason you would have for rescuing the 30 people is if the zombies had already starved to death or you knew that there was a research team working on the zombie virus cure inside and alive.

Yeah, it would also get rid of swine flu.

Oh you're so right, your solution of sending around soldiers to blast the heads off the people with the swine flu and rescue the few stranded survivors is a much better response to the swine flu outbreaks.

So... why are we doing this on a building that has people inside when, if we're in a city, we've got any number of buildings to choose from, at least some of which should be without survivors? Hell, uncertain about all the buildings? Set fire to a large tree, it's only giving up its life for the greater good, after all!

Presumably he's talking about situations in which not the entire city is infected, or in which some areas are worse than others.

[Artemas]

Why wouldn't a fully enclosed and lightly armoured truck like a humvee be counted as zombie-proof?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

I'm not aware of any fucking natural disasters that you can lure out into the open and destroy with a 120mm smoothbore gun. But no, we can't do an obvious easy fix that puts fewer lives at risk by lurin the zombies out and then blasting htem when they come into the open, because THIS IS A NATURAL DISASTER AND WE DON'T FIREBOMB EARTHQUAKES.

And this is why it helps to read the entire thread before compulsively replying. You just might catch the points where I explain, several times, exactly what my problems with your retarded 'rescue' plan are.

Taking the next part piece by piece...

Orly? Then how did they infect >95% of a city's population?

A wizard did it. Really, this was explained much earlier in the thread: We don't know, we're just taking an infected city/country/world as a given, not worrying about how it got to that point but rather worrying about what we do when it is at that point. It doesn't matter how they took over the city, all that matters is their capabilities now.

I guess gun control really is going to undo us! If they have no intelligence, how can they seek out human targets and identify other zombies?

Same way a moth seeks out its mate from miles away by scent alone. Instinctual responses don't require intelligence.

How can they even walk around and make their way towards their victims if they have no direction?

Instinctual response. 'Direction' implies a plan, a goal, intelligence. Brooks' style zombies (the main topic of this thread) don't have that. QED.

They need to be killfuckotronned.

Then why don't you grab a crowbar (I'd suggest a gun, but I really don't trust your judgment with ranged weaponry) and join the rest of the fat nerds who think zombies are some sort of challenge.

It's also infinitely safer than sending dudes door to door to wipe them out and rescue survivors, who might already be infected and are unlikely to be useful in the long run (30 average people out of a city are unlikely to be doctors and nurses and engineers).

...

The only possible reason you would have for rescuing the 30 people is if the zombies had already starved to death or you knew that there was a research team working on the zombie virus cure inside and alive.

If this forum and your posts within it formed the whole of my knowledge about who you are as a person, I'd say you're an inhumane shithead.

So you have no real reason to bomb the city, got it. It's good to have it verified that your moral outlook is "Bomb it for the hell of it, fuck the survivors".

Oh you're so right, your solution of sending around soldiers to blast the heads off the people with the swine flu and rescue the few stranded survivors is a much better response to the swine flu outbreaks.

Please, stop, the irony of this statement is killing me.

Presumably he's talking about situations in which not the entire city is infected, or in which some areas are worse than others.

This changes the fact that burning an empty building will cause less death than burning a building with living people in it... how? Or hell, who even needs fire? If the city isn't totally fucked yet, then just surround one pre-designated building with spotlights, wait 'til night and turn them on, it will provide just as much visual attraction to a zombie as fire with the added benefit of not being as likely to kill a bunch of innocents.

------------

Bottom line: If Grif learned to read, he'd be a lot less amusing.

[Simon_Jester]

1) You're losing a literal handful of civilians to neutralise a bigger threat without exposing your men to room-to-room clearance risks. The bodycount maths is unpleasant and borderline, but then we look at point two.

There is no reason to assume that the math works out at all. Just how many civilians are holed up in that service tunnel where you can't get at them? One? Ten? A hundred? Also, what's the level of risk? Clearing a linear tunnel of zombies is liable to be pretty easy, actually, because there's no place for them to hide and they'll just come shambling straight into your machine guns. Clearing a maze of tenement housing could be one hell of a lot more difficult.

2) You're not really losing infrastructure. Turns out that in a city depopulated by zombies, having one less high rise apartment block isn't going to really be a big gap in city planning. In fact, having a nice new selection of green-spaces in the city post Zompocalypse is an upside.

This can never make the plan a good idea; it can only make it less of a bad idea. And it's not reliably true: what if they holed up in a subway tunnel, are you going to collapse it on the zombies and kill everyone? What if they holed up in a more expensive building, say one that contains heavy machinery valuable in its own right over and above the civilians?

3) By firebombing you're not only killing the immediate threat, you are destroying the persistent infection vectors as well - burning up the virus/mongoloid ju-ju.

This can also be done fairly easily as a matter of battlefield cleanup during an infantry sweep, or during the mechanized operations that are intended to draw the bulk of the zombies out where they're easier to kill. Using buildings as impromptu cremation pyres is ludicrously expensive and needlessly compounds the cost of an already horribly costly disaster.

4) Given standard zombie thought processes, creating a 30 floor roman candle is about the best tactical option out there. Every zombie in the city will be making a beeline for it and then you can instigate Operation Zombie Juicer on the surrounding streets:

Are zombies attracted to fire? I was not aware of this being true of the generic zombie.

Urban centers contain mostly houses and commercial infrastructure. Presumably important industrial areas will be saved if possible, but that's a secondary concern. Bombing a city with some incendiaries and setting it on fire is an extremely cheap way of killing the zombies and sterilizing all infection vectors.

Do you KNOW how much cities cost to build? They're not cheap. Destroying them (and coincidentally destroying not only the homes of survivors in the city and the dead, but also of the probably-numerous refugees who escaped the city) means writing off investments in the billion-dollar range.

I have to agree with Oni on this one. The only reason to advocate what you're talking about it brutality for the sake of brutality because one finds brutality entertaining.

[Shroom Man 777]

One point is that America could say it is freedomizing, say, the Rest of the World, from zombies by firebombing their cities. The rest of the world agrees to having America's XB-70s kill their zombies, especially if they can't deal with such hordes of zombies. So they allow the Americans to blow up their zombie-infested cities.

Only, afterwards, the Rest of the World realizes that getting their cities blown up sucks and the Americans just laugh at them.

[Simon_Jester]

Unfortunately, President Grif also bombed our own cities, so they will get to laugh at us too, for not realizing that having our own cities blown up sucks.