Cracked Cracks the Zombie Apocalypse

[Thanas]

Do you even understand what is meant by pyrhic victory? Its one where the costs of doing so means you can't afford another such battle.

WWZ, with its massive economic, demographic and environmental costs qualify.

So the fuck what? Again, you haven't been reading my posts, I pointed out earlier, Pyrrhic or not, it was still a victory. This isn't a war where losing means you lose some territory, or watch your culture get assimilated into the conquerers, or get sold into slavery. If humanity lost the war THEY WOULD BE EXTINCT. Any victory, Pyrrhic or not, is preferable to this.

So let me get this straight.

You go: "We won"
Others: "Big win when half the world is destroyed."
You: "Who cares? We still won"

ad nauseam.

Please stop, it is not going anywhere and it gives me a headache.

[D.Turtle]

It's alright sweetcheeks, I can understand you being pissy because reality doesn't agree with what you think things should be like. But it isn't my fault that your definition of 'win' differs from the one the rest of humanity uses.

The threat facing humanity was extinction. They didn't go extinct and are still doing pretty damn well as the dominant species on the planet. It was a victory, they won, QED. Now be a dear and come back when you have an actual point to make rather than whining.

What the hell? Did you even read what I wrote?

I'll quote the relevant part for one last time:

If you think that losing most of the worlds population, infrastructure, knowledge, etc. constitutes a victory because humanity survived, then all power to you.

I don't.

We aren't even disagreeing on what happened. The only difference is that you count it as a win and I don't. I don't know what your problem is. We only differ on the interpretation of what happened.

[MKSheppard]

The threat facing humanity was extinction. They didn't go extinct and are still doing pretty damn well as the dominant species on the planet.

I'm sorry; but when the US has to basically retreat to the Rocky Mountains against....the zombie hoard which have no ranged attack; and whose hand to hand attack consists of clawing and biting at people....

...the same claw and bite attack can be defeated by simply getting into your car and rolling the windows up.

This is like Ivan Drago losing to...a fucking hamster.

....a fucking hamster.

[Simon_Jester]

Or emphasized more that it was the disruption, the lack of a secure rear area, that collapsed the military response.

As Shep has shown, that isn't a problem. Remember zombies attack people so this may be the only war where leaveing supply dumps nearly undefended is a good idea.

It's more than just the military.

Remember the concept of a "home front?" A secure civilian zone where weapons can be produced and shipped to the troops, where the soldiers' families are kept safe? This kind of scenario really fucks that up; that's what's missing because of the inability to secure the rear area.

Widespread zombie outbreaks* mean that there is no large secure area for the soldiers to protect. Put people in a refugee camp and you may have zombies pouring out of tents. Ship them on a bus and you risk having someone infected slip through your cordon, turn into a zombie, and start biting people on the bus.

Now, this is manageable. You can handle it. But it is a big source of stress for the troops on the front line: the knowledge that their families and friends are not safe, no matter how hard they fight here and now. That they, personally are not standing between their loved ones and the enemy in the sense that they would be in a war with well defined front lines.

It hurts morale. Combine that with other factors, and you have a much more plausible breakdown mechanism for a military response to zombies than "they overran us with zombie wave tactics!" If the first trooper to shout something batshit on the radio and trigger a panic that causes a breakdown of control is someone whose entire family was eaten and zombified last week... again, that makes a lot more sense than "they overran us with zombie wave tactics!" If the senior military officials are torn between concentrating enough trained manpower to sweep specific areas clear and spreading it enough to protect civilian areas rather than writing them off... again, that makes more sense than "they overran us with zombie wave tactics!"

It isn't about the materiel here, OK? I don't think anyone who knows anything at all is saying that the weapons aren't up to killing huge numbers of zombies.

What I'm saying is that if Brooks had wanted to make his description of the failed early-military response work better, he could (and should) have emphasized the psywar angle. The unconventional nature of fighting the zombies made it hard* to orchestrate what in theory would be a very simple war plan that even an amateur like Shep can draw up.

*In the book

Like, if all those guys at Yonkers were already demoralized because they were afraid of zombies killing their families while they were off fighting in New York. Or, hell, some of them probably had relatives in New York who were in that zombie wave.

I'm not sure why that would have them break. Morale would not be great, but it wouldn't cause them to slacken or desert.

Maybe, maybe not. I think, though, that it's a very plausible failure mechanism for purposes of telling a story. And I think that by ignoring its effects in World War Z, you are missing a large part of the point of the book- the part that's about how you need the right mindset going into a crisis in order to beat it, even if it would be "easy" to beat given the resources at your disposal.

To borrow Freefall's point, it's not like we lack the resources to do something like beating global warming. But the way our civilization is configured, we just... don't do it. Sure, there are complicated reasons that seem like good justifications to us on a day to day basis. Reasons why we don't individually commit all our efforts to the problem, why policymakers don't make radical reforms on the climate issue, why we don't demand that they do so.

World War Z is not a perfectly realistic novel; you may have missed the part where it features the dead rising to attack the living. But if you want to actually comprehend the book rather than just going "HA! The fools know nothing of the mysteries of the cluster bomb!"... you have to look at that symbolic aspect, the failure of crisis management.

That, far more than any deficiency of firepower, is what's preventing First World militaries from taking down the zombies effortlessly. They're ordered to do the wrong things, they're mentally rattled by the fact that they're fighting a war on their own soil under conditions they never expected to have to fight, and they're faced with an endless stream of nightmare scenarios that could (and do!) happen to their own families.

[weemadando]

Widespread zombie outbreaks* mean that there is no large secure area for the soldiers to protect. Put people in a refugee camp and you may have zombies pouring out of tents. Ship them on a bus and you risk having someone infected slip through your cordon, turn into a zombie, and start biting people on the bus.

Except you don't. Put everyone in a goddamn hotel and set the electronic doors to a lock-down mode and put a guy with an M-16 at the end of the hallway just in case anyone turns and breaks down a door. Congratulations, if anyone turns zombie and doesn't answer the phone for their 6 hourly check-in then you get a few guys in protective gear to open the door and kill them.

If you are in a camp scenario then put up fucking cyclone fencing to create manageable sections of the camp. Hell, there's a massive stock nowadays of Hesco barriers - you could easily use these for the same purpose.

The problem is that right now in the real world, the people who'd be dealing with this shit (military and medical authorities primarily) have SO FUCKING MUCH EXPERIENCE in managing large numbers of potentially hostile people, often in shitty conditions, that the kind of precautions that utterly negate the "rear area threat" are S.O.P.

Are you seriously telling me that guys who have been running convoys through Iraq and A'Stan for the past 8 years are somehow going to fall over themselves with incompetence because suddenly there might be some zombies on the road, rather than IEDs and well sited ambushes with HMGs and RPGs?

Or that medical personnel who deal with massive outbreaks of highly contagious diseases in refugee camps which feature daily, lethal violence amongst the inhabitants mightn't know the best way of segregating a population to balance physical and medical safety?

Or that police, who have extensive experience in dealing with civil disturbance/riots/high security needs might suddenly forget their stock of fucking fences/barricades that are designed to hold back a mob of angry protesters or even goddamn carbombs? Any half decent police force could set up a cordon that is will hold against all but the largest mobs in a fairly reasonable time. Meaning that they can maintain a watch while they clean out their secured area.

Of course, this is where part 2 comes in. Every single one of these groups is more than aware of the concept of "defence in depth". No one is going to set up a single length of chainlink fence and go: "well that's our job done, I guess no zombies will get in here." Again, that kind of stupid incompetence that is the crutch for this shit is so hideously irresponsible and against S.O.P. that it's inconceivable that any of the forces used in these books/movies would have ever actually done that.

That's the problem here - the level of contrived incompetence is beyond belief/SoD (choose at your discretion).

[Simon_Jester]

Widespread zombie outbreaks* mean that there is no large secure area for the soldiers to protect. Put people in a refugee camp and you may have zombies pouring out of tents. Ship them on a bus and you risk having someone infected slip through your cordon, turn into a zombie, and start biting people on the bus.

Except you don't...

OK, OK. Fair point.

The part that potentially elevates this to a problem in my eyes is the fact that you're not just securing specific points; you're having to relocate a large fraction of the American population, long distance, to areas you know are clear of zombies and can be kept clear while everyone is housed in carefully compartmentalized, fenced-off, well guarded refugee camps.

I'm not saying it's impossible, because it's NOT. With sufficient resolve, the deployment of enough military and police force with broad enough authority and equipment to quickly relocate urban populations, keep them safe and compartmentalized, and keep everyone fed while the city they used to live in is cleared, it's totally possible.

But I do think it contributes greatly to the overall strain the military would face in this situation: it's not as simple as "fly B-1 over here, drop cluster bomb on mob of zombies, game over." It's not an unsolvable problem; it is still a problem, one that makes success less trivial.

Are you seriously telling me that guys who have been running convoys through Iraq and A'Stan for the past 8 years are somehow going to fall over themselves with incompetence because suddenly there might be some zombies on the road, rather than IEDs and well sited ambushes with HMGs and RPGs?

...No, and I think the reason you thought I was is that there's a terminology problem. I think the home front aspect of this is a much bigger deal than the sense of the 'rear area' as 'the place our supply trucks drive through.'

The guys driving supply trucks are not the ones in danger here. The civilians are, at least not until pretty much everyone in the country is relocated into secure refugee camps, guarded in the ways you describe. Could we do that if we had to? I really do not know. I'm sure plans for it exist, and that the physical equipment to make it happen is around in large enough quantities.

But the mere existence of a plan is not enough to guarantee the plan's success. To me, it is at least possible to imagine such plans failing: not enough manpower being in the right places, the top levels of government screwing up the plans by trying to modify people's orders on the fly, and so on. Could such plans fail to the extent of forcing everyone outside of small fortified enclaves to retreat beyond the Rockies? I really doubt it. But I can certainly see it turning what 'ought' to be an easy thing to deal with on paper in a FEMA filing cabinet into something a lot harder to cope with.

"We know how to deal with X" does not always guarantee that X will be efficiently dealt with.

Of course, this is where part 2 comes in. Every single one of these groups is more than aware of the concept of "defence in depth". No one is going to set up a single length of chainlink fence and go: "well that's our job done, I guess no zombies will get in here." Again, that kind of stupid incompetence that is the crutch for this shit is so hideously irresponsible and against S.O.P. that it's inconceivable that any of the forces used in these books/movies would have ever actually done that.

That's the problem here - the level of contrived incompetence is beyond belief/SoD (choose at your discretion).

As long as the response is adequately prompt and forceful, yes. As I was trying to get at earlier, I know damn well that the resources and knowledge needed to solve a hypothetical zombie outbreak exist.

The resources and knowledge needed to solve a LOT of problems exist. Not all those problems get solved properly. From the literary point of view (which I agree with Freefall is really important here), the zombie outbreak is a tool for describing an unexpected threat that nets an inefficient, confused response.

The most obvious real life example that comes to my mind is Hurricane Katrina, which was probably big in the author's mind since he published the book the year after Katrina. We know how to do hurricane relief and flood control. We've known for decades that New Orleans depends on its levees. So why was it that Katrina seemed like such a clusterfuck? What went wrong?

From everything I have heard about Katrina, a lot of what went wrong was simple mismanagement: people in charge of disaster response who were not fit for the job, who were too slow to react to changing situations.

What would happen if a similar disaster were mismanaged on a national scale, instead of a regional one? Once you start thinking in those terms, while the specific plot of World War Z does not become more plausible, I think it's a lot easier to understand why someone might decide to take a look at a story of "disaster befalls civilization as we know it, major fuckups in disaster management drive us to the brink of collapse before we get our shit together and fix things."

[aieeegrunt]

Having to relocate a huge chunk of the the US population out of the cities, providing them with new housing, keeping them fed and watered and healthy and maintaining a semblance of order in the process would be a herculean potentially civilization destroying task WITHOUT the whole zombie thing. Killing zombies would be the easy part.

I feel sorry for Brooks; he makes the point over and over and over on every other page that WWZ is a case of humanity fucking itself up, and the zombie problem only happening as fallout of human greed and selfishness, and it doesn't matter because no known force in the universe is stronger than some fatty nerd's desire to nitpick and show off how damn smart he is because he found some plot hole or foolish inconsistency to make a fuss about.

Right, so we lock the population in Motel 6's with guards on every floor OMG BROOKS IS SO FUCKING STUPID LOOK AT HOW SMART I AM WITH MY ZOMBIE PROOF REFUGEE CAMP. Ok, so assume that you have the resources to move the bulk of the urban population to Motel 6's, that enough Motel 6's exist or can be built to do this. Now that you've turtled in your zombie fortresses, now what? Where are you getting the rations to feed your captive population? How are you making new clothing and other stuff for them? Hell, how are you going to keep your population content to sit in locked rooms waiting for one of them to potentially turn and eat the other occupants of the room? I suppose it's coming from the same magical replicators that made all the motel 6's for you since the infrastructure to build all of this is in the cities that were evacuated and Shep has undoubtedly just finished vaporizing with his military hardware. And knowing Shep's thoroughness there won't be a zombie or brick left standing. Not even the mighty cockroach would survive a Base Delta Sheppo. Brooks devoted an entire chapter to the logistical side of things, that of course got ignored.

Here is an even bigger problem. How are you going to convince the politicians at the top to endorse and enforce all of this early enough in the crisis for it to matter? It would be complete political suicide, even if the middle and lower tiers of the hierarchy were willing to blindly follow such orders. By the time things got dire enough that people like Obama and the current US houses of Representatives would be willing to risk their carreers and reelection chances over it the cities would have to be totally out of control with refugees swamping every exit highway and swarming all over the countryside at which point ZOMBIE FORTRESS MOTEL 6 is no longer an option. Again, Brooks tried to make this point practically on every other page, and again the fatty nerd desire to LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I'M SO FUCKING SMART taken to an absurd degree is impossible to satisfy.

You know I've yet to see a point brought up about how WWZ is so totally hopelessly stupid that wasn't overed IN THE FUCKING BOOK ITSELF.

[aieeegrunt]

shit double post

[Stravo]

You know I've yet to see a point brought up about how WWZ is so totally hopelessly stupid that wasn't overed IN THE FUCKING BOOK ITSELF.

That's the point. The amount of things that go wrong in order to get to the point where the world is fucked are piled on high so ridiculously that it takes you out of the realm of reason. You keep saying "it was explained in the book"

How the FUCK do you explain the US military folding after a single pitched battle and essentially giving up the country? Have you read the portion of the book concerning the Battle of Yonkers? Did you nod knowingly as Brooks piled on every single possible error that would give the zombie horde an advantage - MOP gear on the hottest day in the summer despite the fact that by then they knew it wasn't neccessary. Digging in for an armored assault when they knew damn well they were facing a slow moving meat shield? You can say it is satire of how the modern military mind set is "fighting the last war" and all that nonsense well guess what? The last war was against essentially a human meat shield because Iraqi insurgents have no armor or artillery to speak of and are certainly more dangeorus pound for pound than a fucking snarling zombie in a tux. And despite the fact that US military made errors in both Iraq and Afghanistan they still won both fucking wars. That tends to happen when you have overwhelming technical and logistical superiority - like when a 21st century military is facing a naked mindless human swarm armed with nothing but teeth.

The military made every single strategic and tactical blunder it could possibly make and still Brooks had to "fix" the fight by completely getting the physics of how modern weapons work on a naked human body wrong. Hell, where was the airforce? Combined arms tends to go out the window when you want to write the loss of a modern military machine to Ewoks...uh I mean zombies.

Please don't cling to the notion that this was a good story hence logic, reason and physics have to go out the window because Brooks covered it. That's fucking laughable. It's a good fairy tale and entertaining but "realistic" it sure as fuck is not.

[Thanas]

More importantly, how the heck did they not use machine guns? Mass charges by highly trained, intelligent and heavily armed soldiers were useless in WWI against guys with machine guns and bolt-action rifles.

I would expect a single MG gunner to reliably hold his position against hundreds, if not thousands of slow walking zombies. Heck, there is one German gunner who is credited with causing over a thousand casualties at Omaha alone. And this was against trained soldiers who ran, took cover, shot back and used smokescreens. And that is just MGs, not taking those things called air support (A-10 against zombies anybody?), artillery or grenade launchers or assualt rifles.

Really, the sheer bodycount trying to overwhelm a few companies of defenders should cripple the Zombie horde. Four US Army fireteams alone are four MGs unless I am mistaken. And those are 16 guys only.

Anybody would quickly realize that all the Zombies in Africa could most likely not swamp a single entrenched armored division.

[Bakustra]

More importantly, how the heck did they not use machine guns? Mass charges by highly trained, intelligent and heavily armed soldiers were useless in WWI against guys with machine guns and bolt-action rifles.

I would expect a single MG gunner to reliably hold his position against hundreds, if not thousands of slow walking zombies. Heck, there is one German gunner who is credited with causing over a thousand casualties at Omaha alone. And this was against trained soldiers who ran, took cover, shot back and used smokescreens. And that is just MGs, not taking those things called air support (A-10 against zombies anybody?), artillery or grenade launchers or assualt rifles.

Really, the sheer bodycount trying to overwhelm a few companies of defenders should cripple the Zombie horde. Four US Army fireteams alone are four MGs unless I am mistaken. And those are 16 guys only.

Anybody would quickly realize that all the Zombies in Africa could most likely not swamp a single entrenched armored division.

Because the units were under-equipped with ammunition and situated too poorly to effectively fight. Yes, this is comically inept, but the point was to highlight the perceived differences between the soldiery and the brass in the America of the time.

EDIT: Also, things like the zombie with his lungs hanging out were single incidents that spread throughout the survivors and caused panic, again thanks to ineptness from the brass.

[D.Turtle]

The problem with interpreting the Battle of Yonkers as a "worst-case, everything-that-could-have-gone-wrong-did-go-wrong, including idiotic leadership, and so on" battle, is that the book describes the same outcome of military opposition to the zombies everywhere else in the world (except Israel IIRC).

So, now you require every military force, everywhere in the world, to do the same mistakes, etc.

And thats where WWZ loses any semblance of plausibility.

[weemadando]

Having to relocate a huge chunk of the the US population out of the cities, providing them with new housing, keeping them fed and watered and healthy and maintaining a semblance of order in the process would be a herculean potentially civilization destroying task WITHOUT the whole zombie thing.

Except you don't fucking need to evacuate.

Just tell people to lock their fucking doors and then hide in the fucking attic or similar if they still aren't happy with their security then have the police/military cruise the streets killing everything else.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

If you wanted to get really technical you could just institute a "daily recognition code" system. Each day an item of a certain colour has to be placed in a visible window. If the wrong colour is there then the police/military clear the house/just fucking burn it down. Every other house has some MREs dropped off.

PROBLEM SOLVED ONCE MORE.

Or you know - do what I suggested before if you do have to move people. Just move them down the street to the nearest hotel that's been cleared.

The problem with most zombie scenarios (like the WWZ one) is that for some reason zombies tend to just magically fucking spawn like enemies in a bad FPS. There's no reason why clearing a hotel or similar structure should contain 10,000 zombies ready to dogpile SWAT when they clear it, but for some reason they always fucking do.

And as for the people who go: "It's a metaphor for the gov't mismanagement of Katrina". That's all well and good, but it's a bad metaphor. Because unlike Katrina and Nawlins, the Zombocalypse is a problem that can best be solved by liberal application of force, which it turns out that the US is more than capable of, unlike responding to a massive humanitarian crisis. You can't exactly machinegun a tidal surge to stop it from wrecking your city and displacing thousands, but you can sure as shit machinegun a zombie horde with no need to displace the civilians from the city.

[Thanas]

Because the units were under-equipped with ammunition and situated too poorly to effectively fight. Yes, this is comically inept, but the point was to highlight the perceived differences between the soldiery and the brass in the America of the time.

Okay. Previous american doctrine - in every modern war ever fought - was to bomb/shoot the enemy into submission with overwhelming firepower and munition expenditure. So they abandoned that due to...idiocy. They also apparently did not hand out reload ammo and other stuff. Fine, stupid, but okay.

However, even if every soldier just has his standard load of ammo then that still is completely stupid. That still leaves the machinegunners with at least 400 rounds each. Likewise, every riflemen still probably has two or three magazines. That still is overwhelming firepower against a slow moving mass of people. Heck, even if you assume the tanks have no reload, that still leaves each tank an impregnable fortress of death. In short, the only way the zombies could have won if the US had given its soldiers no ammo at all and told them to attack with bayonets.

[Stravo]

Of course we are just focussing on the Army and not the other branches of the military like for example the air force. We are led to believe that the generals in the army who adore air support since the days of WWII, in fact have advocated stongly that they could win a war through air power alone, would suddenly abandon strafing and bombing runs on the 8 fucking million strong zombie army marching up the interstate? No A-10's, no Spectre gunships, no F-15, 16, 18, 22, what have you bombing runs? No helicopter gunships chattering away with chainguns and anti-personnel rockets? Anyone remember the Iraqi highway of Death? Seriously.

The army waiting at Yonkers would have been waiting forever because nothing but some crispy fried stragglers would have made it that far. Especially with all the choke points leading out of the city which are a pilot's dream for interdiction strikes.

Notice how the airforce never figures into zombie apocalypse movies? Because helicopter gunships would have a fucking field day and be untouchable.

[Thanas]

Also - why does nobody ever uses chemical agents or nukes? I bet nobody would have any qualms nuking the Millions of african zombies assembling at the Suez channel. One tactical nuke, problem solved.

[hunter5]

While the nukes would be effective, I would have to imagine most chemical weapons just wouldn't have much effect on something that is already dead. The only one I can think of that would be useful would be napalm, and I am not entirely sure that is a chemical weapon.

[Stravo]

While the nukes would be effective, I would have to imagine most chemical weapons just wouldn't have much effect on something that is already dead. The only one I can think of that would be useful would be napalm, and I am not entirely sure that is a chemical weapon.

Depends on the zombie. Romero and WWZ zombies would probably be immune to standard chemical weapons - unless there are a class of weapon that melts or dissolves flesh. But against the 28 Days Later and Zombieland zombies which are just rage filled normal humans chemical weapons would be just as effective. All the Adrenaline in the world isn't going to save you from nerve toxin or having your lungs and insides burnt out.

[Raxmei]

They did use chemical weapons against zombies in 28 weeks later. The most effective chemical weapons in the universe, which a t-shirt over your nose will protect against even if the gas is concentrated enough to form a thick fog that kills exposed individuals in seconds. Air support was also used in WWZ; one of the main thrusts of the complaints over Yonkers was the severe underrating of their effectiveness.

BTW Thanas, it's about seven magazines per person.

[Imperial528]

While the nukes would be effective, I would have to imagine most chemical weapons just wouldn't have much effect on something that is already dead. The only one I can think of that would be useful would be napalm, and I am not entirely sure that is a chemical weapon.

Depends on the zombie. Romero and WWZ zombies would probably be immune to standard chemical weapons - unless there are a class of weapon that melts or dissolves flesh. But against the 28 Days Later and Zombieland zombies which are just rage filled normal humans chemical weapons would be just as effective. All the Adrenaline in the world isn't going to save you from nerve toxin or having your lungs and insides burnt out.

I think that chlorine gas forms hydrochloric acid when inhaled, but for that to be effective in a short time frame they'd need enough to displace all of the air in the target area, and the zombies would need to be moist.

[Rossum]

This has probably been asked before but how would a mess of dead zombies effect the local ecosystem? The human body is full of microbes and such and spread disease easily due to blood and such getting into the water table.

If you go up against a huge tightly packed mess of diseased humans (who are actually disease ridden corpses who are only up and about because the magical virus is so badass that it reanimates its host to spread itself) and start blowing them to giblets with artiliary and guns then wouldn't there be alot of blood seeping into the ground or getting carried by the wind?

Really the danger of zombies isn't the zombies themselves so much as whatever virus/curse is creating them. If its a virus, then it looks like the zombificaton feature is just the virus making sure to spread itself further. A virus spreads by replicating and infecting people, often the replicating process damages or kills the host it infects which results in the host dying and other potential hosts avoiding the area. If the dead host is animated and starts walking toward other humans then its basically working to carry its own infected blood around.

If it bites somebody then the virus spreads, if its blood splatters somewhere that an uninfected human comes across then the virus might spread as well. Its like... like Ebola or HIV except it makes the dead corpse move around to help spread itself.

Would turning a huge army of Ebola victims into mincemeat really be the best way of handling things? Even if the zombie virus itself isn't a problem then there are all sorts of other microbes in the human intestines that you don't want spraying all over the place. (Though I admit that shooting them is better than not shooting them if that prevents them from getting near the uninfected population).


But anyway, I haven't read WWZ and I don't think any of my posts were directed towards that setting. But the idea of Egyptian mummies being zombies... the idea is silly but I guess justified since its the pharoh and they thought of him as a god and were willing to build huge expensive tombs to put his corpse in. Putting the pharohs zombie down wouldn't be an option given their thought process and culture. Its still stupid and says something when a mindless zombie can beat a human if the human acts like an idiot.

[Joe Momma]

The problem with interpreting the Battle of Yonkers as a "worst-case, everything-that-could-have-gone-wrong-did-go-wrong, including idiotic leadership, and so on" battle, is that the book describes the same outcome of military opposition to the zombies everywhere else in the world (except Israel IIRC).

So, now you require every military force, everywhere in the world, to do the same mistakes, etc.

And thats where WWZ loses any semblance of plausibility.

A lot of the mistakes worldwide really didn't have much to do with the zombies directly. The handling of the refugee crises that led to wars between nations, the civil wars that erupted due to the measures taken, etc. And countries like Cuba not only made it through the plague without falling apart but actually came out well ahead by exploiting the situation.

Having to relocate a huge chunk of the the US population out of the cities, providing them with new housing, keeping them fed and watered and healthy and maintaining a semblance of order in the process would be a herculean potentially civilization destroying task WITHOUT the whole zombie thing.

Except you don't fucking need to evacuate.

To be fair, in the books a lot of places didn't evacuate. Even in the "abandoned" area east of the Rockies there are constant mentions of many places that held out just fine through the whole war with no or minimal support from the national government. When the book follows Todd Wainio across the US, even walking a single straight line across the country intersects numerous places that were doing okay on their own. Some of them were doing so well without the government that they rejected the military's arrival and had to be forcefully reintegrated.

There's plenty of silly things about WWZ -- personally, my biggest SoD strain was continuing to treat the outbreak as the result of a simple virus despite its multiple physics-defying properties that somehow make zombie perpetual-motion machines, but there are other valid objections that have been brought up here and in the previous related thread -- so there's no need to rail about problems that didn't exist in the book.

(OTOH, maybe it's a little too easy for me to buy into the epic mismanagement theme -- I've spent the last few years working with a variety of clueless managerial fuck-ups in both the public and private sectors to the point that I sometimes half-seriously wonder how human society keeps functioning even without a zombie plague. )

This has probably been asked before but how would a mess of dead zombies effect the local ecosystem? The human body is full of microbes and such and spread disease easily due to blood and such getting into the water table.

FWIW, in WWZ battlefield sanitation after an area was cleared was considered an important part of preventing future outbreaks. The virus was primarily concentrated in the brain, so a special type of incendiary ammo was manufactured to allow headshots to fry the inside of zombies' heads. Otherwise it was implied that the heads were removed and disposed of separately when possible.

Other than that there were some instances of battlefield infection such as bullet passing through a zombie's head and accidentally carrying infected brain tissue in the unfortunate person behind it, but it seemed the exception rather than the rule. Transmission usually required a bite from a zombie or some other means of direct physical contact with an open wound.

[Samuel]

Also - why does nobody ever uses chemical agents or nukes? I bet nobody would have any qualms nuking the Millions of african zombies assembling at the Suez channel. One tactical nuke, problem solved.

The Russians do in World War Z... to kill refugee columns allowing them to sort of how is infected and who isn't. See its satire and everyone knows the Russians don't value human life

The handling of the refugee crises that led to wars between nations, the civil wars that erupted due to the measures taken, etc.

Which aren't going to major problems on the world stage. Most nations aren't going to have civil wars or refugee problems leading to war.

And countries like Cuba not only made it through the plague without falling apart but actually came out well ahead by exploiting the situation.

Exactly how they did that when they'd have food shortages from the refugees is not really explained. Most countries would be fucked by the destruction of international trade.

There's plenty of silly things about WWZ -- personally, my biggest SoD strain was continuing to treat the outbreak as the result of a simple virus despite its multiple physics-defying properties that somehow make zombie perpetual-motion machines, but there are other valid objections that have been brought up here and in the previous related thread -- so there's no need to rail about problems that didn't exist in the book.

A magic virus from an ancient Chinese temple of Doomtm.

[Joe Momma]

Also - why does nobody ever uses chemical agents or nukes? I bet nobody would have any qualms nuking the Millions of african zombies assembling at the Suez channel. One tactical nuke, problem solved.

The Russians do in World War Z... to kill refugee columns allowing them to sort of how is infected and who isn't. See its satire and everyone knows the Russians don't value human life

It's also silly since if they're willing to slaughter everyone anyway, why not just drop bombs instead of chemical weapons? Especially with chem weapons potentially having more blowback for the troops on the ground.

The handling of the refugee crises that led to wars between nations, the civil wars that erupted due to the measures taken, etc.

Which aren't going to major problems on the world stage. Most nations aren't going to have civil wars or refugee problems leading to war.

OTOH, those sorts of situations can cause political and trade complications well beyond the countries directly involved. That would have added to the tenor of the times, so to speak. But conversely, many of the countries with said problems managed to deal with those and the zombies by themselves -- Israel and China both had comparatively little trouble with the zombies after their respective civil wars were ended.

And countries like Cuba not only made it through the plague without falling apart but actually came out well ahead by exploiting the situation.

Exactly how they did that when they'd have food shortages from the refugees is not really explained. Most countries would be fucked by the destruction of international trade.

They put the refugees to work as farming hands at first, which probably helped until international trade resumed with Cuba as a hub due to its location and government stability.

[MKSheppard]

Hordes. H-o-r-d-e-s hordes. A hoard is a store, a collection, what a dragon has.

Not according to HAB.

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.

Good satire, sure I get. Like Dr. Strangeshroom or Red Dawn. Red Dawn for all it's cheese at times did show the proper ending for a guerilla group -- they shoot a couple dozen commies, blow up a convoy or two...and then get hunted down and killed by helicopter gunships.

WWZ wasn't even good satire, it was just forced plot world.