Cracked Cracks the Zombie Apocalypse

[[R_H]]

Say what you will about Max Brooks, he managed to get a few things about hypothetical combat against zombies right, especially in regards to the Romans. Basically they regarded zombies as just another hazard of the wilds and quickly developed efficient ways to deal with them. The only large battle they had against zombies involved one legion noticing a swarm of several thousand, digging two spike-lined trenches in a v-shape to funnel them into a killing zone, slaughtering the few that didn't fall in the pits, and then taking their sweet time to oil up and burn the ones stuck in the trenches.

Romans??? Refresh my memory, please.

[weemadando]

It's in the Zombie survival guide which is, aside from a bit of wanking of various weapons and tropes, fairly reasonable.

[MKSheppard]

Say what you will about Max Brooks, he managed to get a few things about hypothetical combat against zombies right, especially in regards to the Romans.

So he comes up with a way for the ROMANS to defeat zombie hoards, but can't find a way for the world in 2000~ to defeat the Zomboid hoards cheaply and efficiently?

[Bakustra]

Say what you will about Max Brooks, he managed to get a few things about hypothetical combat against zombies right, especially in regards to the Romans.

So he comes up with a way for the ROMANS to defeat zombie hoards, but can't find a way for the world in 2000~ to defeat the Zomboid hoards cheaply and efficiently?

Hordes. H-o-r-d-e-s hordes. A hoard is a store, a collection, what a dragon has. A horde is a large group. A dragon's hoard is likely to contain a horde of coins and gems.

Secondly, people have already tried to explain the concept of satire to you, but you still remain as impervious to human communication as ever, it seems.

[Rossum]

That was from some kind of Zombie Files graphic novel thing, right? I read it a while ago at Barnes and Noble. That same book had the ancient Egyptians burying their zombie mummies in the pyramids and tombs to keep them from escaping.

Oh, and you know how the egyptians would remove the corpses brian when mummifying them? Yeah, turns out that wasn't just ceremonial and they did it to keep the zombie from attacking the embalmers (There's a hilarious picture of like four guys holding down a slathering zombie on an embalming table while the high priest is trying to lobotomize the thing by sticking a metal hook up the zombies nose or eye socket or whatever. I don't think they put a gag on the damm thing while doing it.).

The case file for the Egyptian thing has some archeologists opening up a tomb to find a room with a mummy in it and noticed that there were marks in the walls as if it tried to claw its way out and its fingers were worn down to the bone. So I guess Max Brooks zombies can still claw at doorways despite having all their major vital organs romoved and stuffed full of embalming fluid and left in a stone room in the desert for years. The mummy wasn't alive and kicking after all those centuries thankfully, it just survived long enough to claw at the wall for years.

Damm those ancient Egyptian burial guys must have been morons. If it was me, I'd cut the things head off before enbalming it (If I had to do that at all) stick the head in a jar, and just put a mask over the empty neck. I'd make up something about keeping his face immortal or whatever. The romans at least knew how to handle stuff.

As for why modern militarys suck against shambling zombies... maybe in Max Brooks world then the zombies the romans fought were all malnourished while in modern society we are all well-fed ad thus make better zombies.

===

Come to think of it, if zombies are shamblers than the only people who would be caught by zombies would be people who are really out of shape. Like horribly obese people or those people who drive around on motor scooters at Walmart. But then the zombies would be fat and slow and driving scooters as well. Maybe zombified fat people are faster than they are in life? Like fast zombies except obese?

Fat Zombie: Brains! *huff* *Puff* Brains! *gasp* *Wheeze*!

Old lady on scooter: Help! Somebody help me... can't this thing go any faster?!

America got the worst of it with over 40% of the population being zombified in the first day. Because they were too out of shape to outrun a dead person.

[Bakustra]

I see that you don't get satire or what the purpose of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z were either. The ZSG is essentially a collection of fakealysis of zombies, while WWZ is a novel in the mode of zombie flicks, of which the most famous examples are either social satires or horror-comedies. So WWZ satirizes then-current developments in the world, like the debacle over armoring Humvees, a sense that the military brass were obsessed with gadgetry above all else, etc. So the US Army is initially incompetent. That's the point.

[Molyneux]

That was from some kind of Zombie Files graphic novel thing, right? I read it a while ago at Barnes and Noble. That same book had the ancient Egyptians burying their zombie mummies in the pyramids and tombs to keep them from escaping.

Oh, and you know how the egyptians would remove the corpses brian when mummifying them? Yeah, turns out that wasn't just ceremonial and they did it to keep the zombie from attacking the embalmers (There's a hilarious picture of like four guys holding down a slathering zombie on an embalming table while the high priest is trying to lobotomize the thing by sticking a metal hook up the zombies nose or eye socket or whatever. I don't think they put a gag on the damm thing while doing it.).

The case file for the Egyptian thing has some archeologists opening up a tomb to find a room with a mummy in it and noticed that there were marks in the walls as if it tried to claw its way out and its fingers were worn down to the bone. So I guess Max Brooks zombies can still claw at doorways despite having all their major vital organs romoved and stuffed full of embalming fluid and left in a stone room in the desert for years. The mummy wasn't alive and kicking after all those centuries thankfully, it just survived long enough to claw at the wall for years.

Damm those ancient Egyptian burial guys must have been morons. If it was me, I'd cut the things head off before enbalming it (If I had to do that at all) stick the head in a jar, and just put a mask over the empty neck. I'd make up something about keeping his face immortal or whatever. The romans at least knew how to handle stuff.

As for why modern militarys suck against shambling zombies... maybe in Max Brooks world then the zombies the romans fought were all malnourished while in modern society we are all well-fed ad thus make better zombies.

===

Come to think of it, if zombies are shamblers than the only people who would be caught by zombies would be people who are really out of shape. Like horribly obese people or those people who drive around on motor scooters at Walmart. But then the zombies would be fat and slow and driving scooters as well. Maybe zombified fat people are faster than they are in life? Like fast zombies except obese?

Fat Zombie: Brains! *huff* *Puff* Brains! *gasp* *Wheeze*!

Old lady on scooter: Help! Somebody help me... can't this thing go any faster?!

America got the worst of it with over 40% of the population being zombified in the first day. Because they were too out of shape to outrun a dead person.

Keep in mind, with Egyptian myth, if the body isn't intact, the soul is doomed to complete and utter destruction. Beheading, especially on somebody who could have been quite well-respected before infection, would be right out.

[Freefall]

So he comes up with a way for the ROMANS to defeat zombie hoards, but can't find a way for the world in 2000~ to defeat the Zomboid hoards cheaply and efficiently?

Uh, the humans win in World War Z.

I'm always puzzled as to why everyone acts like that whole book begins and ends with the Battle of Yonkers.

[Bakustra]

So he comes up with a way for the ROMANS to defeat zombie hoards, but can't find a way for the world in 2000~ to defeat the Zomboid hoards cheaply and efficiently?

Uh, the humans win in World War Z.

I'm always puzzled as to why everyone acts like that whole book begins and ends with the Battle of Yonkers.

Because an asshole fanboy used it in a versus and kept bringing up Yonkers and the majority of people here didn't bother reading it and put their hands over their ears and hum loudly whenever somebody brings up anything else from the book.

[D.Turtle]

Uh, the humans win in World War Z.

I'm always puzzled as to why everyone acts like that whole book begins and ends with the Battle of Yonkers.

If you call most of the world being overrun before the tide slowly turning a "win", then yes the humans won World War Z.

I personally don't think you can call all of mainland Europe being overrun, everything east of the Rockies being overrun, most of Japan being overrun, etc. a win.

[Bakustra]

Uh, the humans win in World War Z.

I'm always puzzled as to why everyone acts like that whole book begins and ends with the Battle of Yonkers.

If you call most of the world being overrun before the tide slowly turning a "win", then yes the humans won World War Z.

I personally don't think you can call all of mainland Europe being overrun, everything east of the Rockies being overrun, most of Japan being overrun, etc. a win.

Was humanity exterminated?
Did industrial civilization come to an end?
I'm pretty sure that humanity came out on top.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Uh, the humans win in World War Z.

I'm always puzzled as to why everyone acts like that whole book begins and ends with the Battle of Yonkers.

If you call most of the world being overrun before the tide slowly turning a "win", then yes the humans won World War Z.

I personally don't think you can call all of mainland Europe being overrun, everything east of the Rockies being overrun, most of Japan being overrun, etc. a win.

Actually I call the fact that the humans didn't die out and re-took the world as a win. If a baseball team is losing by eight points in the fifth inning, but come back at the bottom of the ninth to scrape by with a two-point lead, does that not count as a 'win' to you either? Seriously, what definition of 'win' are you operating by here?

[SAMAS]

One without the surprise guest appearance of King Pyrrhus, I would think. If you've lost more than half your landmass and population, you haven't so much won as you have survived.

[Simon_Jester]

To extend Oni's baseball analogy, though, a lot of people complain about the World War Z setting because it's like having the New York Yankees scrape by in a hard-fought victory after being down eight points in the fifth inning... against a Little League team.

The complaint is not that the guys with machine guns lost; it's that they ever had a chance of losing.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Is this seriously being argued here?

"Yeah, sure, the humans came out on top. They survived, maintained their civilization and most of their industrial capacity. They re-took their lands, beat back the zombies and now live in a world where they aren't spending each night desperately wondering how they're going to survive the next day. They overcame the threat that faced them and didn't go extinct, but that's not a victory!"

I guess Britain wasn't on the winning side of WW2 because London got bombed. Same for the US because Pearl Harbor got hit, it's obviously a Pyrrhic victory at the very best.

Exactly what standard are you setting for 'win' here? Do the winners have to be able to tea-bag the losers in victory? Here, silly me, I was thinking that when the threat facing you was extinction, then not going extinct would qualify as winning that battle. Destroying the thing threatening you with extinction, as opposed to simply escaping it, is just icing on that win cake.

[Ghost Rider]

As Simon said, there are many who do not believe that against the foes of WWZ a pyrrhic victory should've happened. For the sake of the narrative, it works. There needs to be tension and a need to press the story forward. For others, the suspension doesn't hold and they expected a curbstomp.

[Vendetta]

I see that you don't get satire or what the purpose of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z were either. The ZSG is essentially a collection of fakealysis of zombies, while WWZ is a novel in the mode of zombie flicks, of which the most famous examples are either social satires or horror-comedies. So WWZ satirizes then-current developments in the world, like the debacle over armoring Humvees, a sense that the military brass were obsessed with gadgetry above all else, etc. So the US Army is initially incompetent. That's the point.

Hilariously, the gadgetry they were obsessed with at the time, proud herds of Strykers roaming free across the plains and all that, would be perfect for fighting a zombie outbreak. 16ton armoured vehicles with machineguns on top in huge numbers = win (against zombies).

[Bakustra]

I see that you don't get satire or what the purpose of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z were either. The ZSG is essentially a collection of fakealysis of zombies, while WWZ is a novel in the mode of zombie flicks, of which the most famous examples are either social satires or horror-comedies. So WWZ satirizes then-current developments in the world, like the debacle over armoring Humvees, a sense that the military brass were obsessed with gadgetry above all else, etc. So the US Army is initially incompetent. That's the point.

Hilariously, the gadgetry they were obsessed with at the time, proud herds of Strykers roaming free across the plains and all that, would be perfect for fighting a zombie outbreak. 16ton armoured vehicles with machineguns on top in huge numbers = win (against zombies).

Sure, but that's secondary to the purpose, which was to satirize the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the fuck-ups by the Pentagon that seemed to characterize the war.

To extend Oni's baseball analogy, though, a lot of people complain about the World War Z setting because it's like having the New York Yankees scrape by in a hard-fought victory after being down eight points in the fifth inning... against a Little League team.

The complaint is not that the guys with machine guns lost; it's that they ever had a chance of losing.

Well, those people simply have brain damage when it comes to fiction. If they don't want suspense or its illusion, then what do they want from fiction?

[D.Turtle]

Was humanity exterminated?

No, but probably at least 2/3 or more of the world's population is dead.

Did industrial civilization come to an end?

Considering the massive loss of life, the rest being displaced, etc. industrial civilization was probably (or should be) set back a hundred years or so.
[/quote]I'm pretty sure that humanity came out on top.[/quote]
Did they defeat the zombie menace? Yes, however even calling this a pyrrhic victory is being too generous.

Actually I call the fact that the humans didn't die out and re-took the world as a win. If a baseball team is losing by eight points in the fifth inning, but come back at the bottom of the ninth to scrape by with a two-point lead, does that not count as a 'win' to you either? Seriously, what definition of 'win' are you operating by here?

This is more like the baseball team barely winning with the entire team injured and unable to play again for the next season.

Is this seriously being argued here?

Why, yes, apparently it is.

"Yeah, sure, the humans came out on top.

Barely.

They survived,

Most didn't.

maintained their civilization and most of their industrial capacity.

Bullshit. They are set back at least a hundred years or more.

They re-took their lands,

With no one to repopulate it.

beat back the zombies and now live in a world where they aren't spending each night desperately wondering how they're going to survive the next day.

Yeah, instead most of the population left has useless skills, is traumatized and depressed to no end, and now have to live with a standard of living that is more comparable to a third world country.[/quote]

They overcame the threat that faced them and didn't go extinct, but that's not a victory!"

The price was too high.

I guess Britain wasn't on the winning side of WW2 because London got bombed. Same for the US because Pearl Harbor got hit, it's obviously a Pyrrhic victory at the very best.

You are completely missing the sense of scale as to the destruction that happened. Its more comparable to the situation of Germany in "The Big One" from Stuart.

Exactly what standard are you setting for 'win' here? Do the winners have to be able to tea-bag the losers in victory? Here, silly me, I was thinking that when the threat facing you was extinction, then not going extinct would qualify as winning that battle. Destroying the thing threatening you with extinction, as opposed to simply escaping it, is just icing on that win cake.

You know there are things between black and white, winning and losing, etc.

Well, those people simply have brain damage when it comes to fiction. If they don't want suspense or its illusion, then what do they want from fiction?

For this discussion I don't care about the realism of what happened. I do care about the results of the destruction that occurred in the book. Look at the effects of a civil war on any country. The Zombie outbreak in World War Z is far worse than a civil war occurring in every country on Earth.

[Bakustra]

People keep using the term "Pyrrhic victory". I do not think it means what you think it means.

In order for the victory to be pyrrhic, the victors must be so depleted by their victory that they are vulnerable to further attacks. Now, there are serious problems with the premise being applied to WWZ, but with a more general form, the exact opposite emerges. Humanity overall is initially defeated so minimally that it is able to come to a more permanent victory and, with knowledge of how to fight zombies, further defeats would require some significant outside factor.

Also, industrialized civilization was not set back 100 years, judging by the narrator's ability to travel around the world and the overall technology available worldwide.

[Simon_Jester]

Exactly what standard are you setting for 'win' here? Do the winners have to be able to tea-bag the losers in victory? Here, silly me, I was thinking that when the threat facing you was extinction, then not going extinct would qualify as winning that battle. Destroying the thing threatening you with extinction, as opposed to simply escaping it, is just icing on that win cake.

Put it this way.

If an Olympic wrestler gets into a fight with a ten year old child and wins, no one is surprised. If an Olympic wrestler gets into a fight with a ten year old child and wins narrowly, after being badly injured, people are going to wonder. Because that should be a very easy fight for the wrestler to win. You'd normally expect him to win handily, without being injured and without having to try all that hard, because he's so much stronger than his opponent.

In World War Z, the world's militaries are the wrestler. They ought to be far more powerful than their opponent, the zombies. The fact that the war is hard-fought, that so much is lost and so many are killed before the winners triumph, is itself something people complain about. It's like a novel where a ten-year-old child nearly defeats a huge Olympic wrestler, who only wins at the end by a narrow margin.

That premise wouldn't work well outside of comedy. That is why milgeeks tend to complain: given the disparity of strength (in the general sense) between the two sides in the war, it requires contrivances for the war to be a close-run thing. Which, in World War Z, it is: while humans do not lose the war against the zombies, it is entirely conceivable that they might. Entire continental landmasses are overrun by zombies; areas of millions of square miles almost entirely depopulated, with the survivors forced to accept a greatly reduced standard of living (note all the white-collar workers who wind up doing factory or menial labor).

Civilization isn't ended, but it's a very destructive and costly conflict... against a seemingly weak opponent.

[Bakustra]

That's still a brain-damaged approach to fiction. It's like complaining that the Fellowship didn't just ride Eagles all the way to Mordor and drop the Ring in from the air. While it's a plot hole that they didn't consider it, having them do so would have ruined Lord of the Rings entirely. Similarly, having a book wherein the dead begin to rise... and the US ARMY (and some other losers from foreign countries) defeat them handily would lack any dramatic tension and would only be workable as a comedic short story, or perhaps a novella.

[Thanas]

There is a very succesfull movie where that happens in the exact way, you know.

[Bakustra]

There is a very succesfull movie where that happens in the exact way, you know.

What? Shaun of the Dead? Like I said, it works for a comedy (and movies are more approximately novella-length in many cases), but which serious films have "dead rise, get machine-gunned" as a premise?

EDIT: Wait, are you talking about The Mist? Because the ending for that was controversial and I would argue that it's very different thematically from a zombie flick anyhow.

[Simon_Jester]

That's still a brain-damaged approach to fiction. It's like complaining that the Fellowship didn't just ride Eagles all the way to Mordor and drop the Ring in from the air. While it's a plot hole that they didn't consider it, having them do so would have ruined Lord of the Rings entirely.

A point. Though it's mainly milgeeks who do this, mind: the same sort of people who say "just nuke Pandora," often enough.

When it comes to zombies and the military, I think their frustration is somewhat understandable, because it often requires a higher degree of plot-inspired stupidity in the zombie story.

The analogy to an Olympic wrestler (nearly) losing to a ten year old child may be good: there are entertaining stories where that happens, but it's so unlikely that it requires an explicit suspension of disbelief for the audience, and a good movie maker will know that and plan the story accordingly.