Cracked Cracks the Zombie Apocalypse

[adam_grif]

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.

Rampant idiocy. There are no such situations in which zombies are not a significant threat to military personnel in which they could take over most of the world, and infect the super-majority of the population of numerous cities. That there are more of them makes them more threatening, not less. It is implicitly required that they MUST be a threat, otherwise this NEVER COULD HAVE HAPPENED. If they aren't a threat, why do the survivors need help?

Regardless of how easy it is to massacre zombies when you're in an AFV with a .50 cal pointed at them 600 meters away, running in-doors in tight spaces where the power is out is the dumbest thing you can do for your own survival. This means it is dangerous. Even if you can march door to door killing 100 zombies for every 1 soldier that gets scratched or bitten, in a city of 100,000 where 10% of them remained in-doors after you lured them out, 100 soldiers will get infected in the process of cleaning the place looking for survivors.

Saying that Q clicked his fingers and everyone was infected by a retarded, easy to kill zombie that is no threat to anybody is a completely asinine and worthless situation to discuss, even by the already abysmally low standards of these boards for alternate reality scenarios.

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

...

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

I don't think you know what intelligence is. Being able to recognize something as food takes intelligence, being able to identify something as friendly takes intelligence, and being able to coordinate gross motor movement towards achieving the goal of BRAAAAAAAAAAAINS requires intelligence. All animals with brains have some degree of intelligence, and these tasks are not achievable without it.

Saying "oh it's not intelligence because they're not thinking about it" is unquantifiable, unverifiable nonsense.

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.

If you think they can't be a threat, then why are you getting your panties in a twist about forcing the survivors to RISK THEIR LIVES combating something that is less threatening than "rioters with a cold"? You say "they aren't a threat", then turn around and act like they are.

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".

No you giant retard, the reason is that more people are going to die searching the city for survivors than will be rescued. And soldiers who can fight this shit off are more valuable than most of the people they could potentially rescue anyway. Cities are fucking huge, and zombies are fucking everywhere. You don't know where most of the survivors are going to be. Like it's been pointed out before, if there's survivors on a roof with a flaregun, then it's an easy rescue because there's no danger involved anyway.

When people are scattered in unknown places, many of whom can't communicate with you for various reasons, rescuing them is a fools errand and you're going to get lots of people killed. The costs outweigh the benefits. This is called pragmatism.

I bet you're one of those idiots who thinks it's worth getting 5 people killed to rescue 1 person.

This changes the fact that burning an empty building will cause less death than burning a building with living people in it... how?

Did he even specify he was talking about lighting up a building with known survivors inside?

[Shroom Man 777]

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.

Oh no, Murrica won't bomb its own cities. America can outsource domestic city-bombing to other countries like Russia!

Man, that would be ridiculous. Countries waging some kind of bizarro proxy-war wherein they blow up each other's zombie cities!

America: Hey, Russia! Let me lend you a hand! *bombs zombie-infested Leningrad*

Russia: Thaaanks man. Let me return the favor! *bombs zombie-infested LA*

America: Why you... erm, I mean, hey, that was really nice of you. I owe you one. *bombs Moscow*

Russia: Don't mention it! *bombs Washington DC*

[Simon_Jester]

No you giant retard, the reason is that more people are going to die searching the city for survivors than will be rescued. And soldiers who can fight this shit off are more valuable than most of the people they could potentially rescue anyway. Cities are fucking huge, and zombies are fucking everywhere. You don't know where most of the survivors are going to be.

Correspondingly, you don't know how many of them there are. You could be killing thirty people by carpet-bombing the city... or three thousand. Do you know? Do you care?

I bet you're one of those idiots who thinks it's worth getting 5 people killed to rescue 1 person.

Since in this case you have no idea whether you're rescuing one person or fifty, that strikes me as an inane argument, even aside from the point that there's a rule-utilitarian calculation at work here: do we want to base military calculations on the assumption that it is not worth risking the lives of soldiers to protect an indefinite-but-presumed-small number of civilians?

Maybe. But don't pretend that's not going to have costs.

[Shroom Man 777]

Man, by that logic they should've firebombed Baghdad like it was Tokyo or Dresden. Republican Guard are much more smarter and durable than zombers. The idea of sending troops there to freedomize people when the enemy might be hiding behind some rocks and shit waiting in ambush, without flattening the entire city and killing civilians and enemies alike, is certainly absurd am i rite?

[Ritterin Sophia]

Shroomy, can you please cut it out? I'm trying to make heads or tails of what the fuck it is you're rambling about but you're making it nearly impossible, you may as well be typing in 1337-speak.

[weemadando]

The specific scenario that I thought I was addressing was for a fucking over-run city with a number of survivors in an infested high rise that can be counted on one hand with an innumerable amount of zombies.

But it turns out that someone decided to tie the goalposts to a fucking rocket and let fly.

Hence, I'm an smarmy bastard evil sociopath.

[Shroom Man 777]

Shroomy, can you please cut it out? I'm trying to make heads or tails of what the fuck it is you're rambling about but you're making it nearly impossible, you may as well be typing in 1337-speak.

Sorry, mangs. What I'm trying to say with my previous post was that, according to adam_grif's fatty nerd shitlogic, an entire zombie-infested city should be bombed to the stoneage irregardless of any uninfected civilians hiding inside, because sending troops in would be too much of a risk, thus justifying firebombing or some shit. But according to this shitlogic, an entire, say, Iraqi city should also be firebombed to the stone age irregardless of any innocent civilians hiding inside, because sending troops in would be an even greater risk - because insurgents/Fedayeen/Muj/whatever are even more dangerous to the troops than shambling undead mongoloid hordes. So, I'm just saying that adam_grif's fatty nerd shitlogic is fatty nerd shitlogic, because no one firebombs cities filled with enemies more dangerous than undead mongoloids and the US military and other non-fatty militaries actually send soldiers in to clear out cities full of enemies more dangerous than undead mongoloids. That is what I'm trying to say.

Sorry, adam_grif. Love you, man.

[Xon]

I did some hacking about on a project that I'd called "Valencia".

Wish you had continued that. It's only been 3 years so there is still hope right?

[Sarevok]

Yeah I agree with shroom. Taking out an entire city full of zombies at for only about a hundred soldiers is amazing. Some WW 2 city fights killed hundreds of thousands. A pitiful enemy like zombies do not warrant destroying a city and killing all non infected survivors.

[Shroom Man 777]

UNLESS these cities you were bombing aren't your cities! Say, the USA (or any major military power) goes "hey, Bakalakadakastan, you've got a zombie problem, want me to solve it?" and Bakalakadakastan goes "Sure thing!" and the USA firebombs an entire city full of shamblers and goes "hey, we got rid of those zombies for you and we also totally ruined your major city, which means that your country's post-zombiewar growth and development will be set back for decades due to reconstruction while reassuring America/my country's superiority over your nation and everyone else's!"

A militarized nation could "help" its neighbors by destroying their zombies... but at the same time also ruining them economically, thus getting rid of potential competitors in the post-WWZ world! Hah!

[Rossum]

On the subject of firebombing vs non-firebombing, how far into the the WWZ campaign are we planning to start dropping bombs? Do the guys in charge or the bombing operations hold off on the high explosives until they actually know what kind of zombies they are looking at or do they just start blasting the second somebody mentions that shamblers are around?

Besides, zombies are technically humans (well, undead/infected/mongoloid humans or whatever) are these zombies all green and moaning and walking around with their arms outstretched while saying "We are zombies, we are zombies, we eat brains! We eat Brains!" and have big red X's painted on their clothes for easy identification or do they tend ot look like really drugged out humans?


Hell, maybe these zombies are Shaun of the Dead zombies and are really kind of stupid and only react to things that stand out or make loud noises. Maybe the zombies start wandering in crowds and a few of the lucky survivors discover that they can blend in with the survivors by shambing around, looking stupid, and holding their arms outstretched. From the helicopters up above, it might look like 95% of the population has been zombified but its more like 80% or 75%... some of them are civilians who are pretending to be zombies so they can sneak out of the city.

Or hell, maybe the zombies normally shamble around stupidly but are afraid of fire and bombing the city makes them start sprinting away and they spread all over the countryside.

I'd recommend surrounding the city, blockading it, and then sending in rescue teams or whatever to see if there are survivors or at least get information on what kind of zombies these are. I'm pretty sure the military has the knowhow to make zombie-proof walls or fences (or park a bunch of cars or trucks in the road so zombies can't move that way) Contain the city, shoot any zombies that are attacking the work crew, then find a way to herd them into containment areas so they cna be dealt with later. If they are a bunch of shamblers with near animal-like intelligence then it shouldn't be impossible to herd them around. Hell, maybe grab Paris Hilton and dangle her from the bottom of a helicopter to lure the zombies into fenced-in areas.

Lock up as many zombies as you can, shoot any stragglers, and of course make sure to search for survivors.

Remember, every building full of valuables that you don't firebomb is a building full of valuables that you can 'decontaminate' later and if all the valuables inside were to vanish and get turned into cash to fill the city coffers then who's going to complain? If 95% of the city gets turned into zombies and most of the infrastructure is left in place (although put under the control of the government to make sure they decontaminate it properly) then the surviving 5% get to split the wealth of the stuff that remains (or rather the city gets to loot the place to its hearts content, the point is that abandoned buildings full of the former possessions of zombified people are more valuable than burned up piles of rubble).

If it turns out that the buildings are full of disease then go ahead and burn them or decontaminate them as you wish, just don't burn up any more stuff than you have to.

Actually, would it be even possible to put up a zombie-proof blockade around a city? I'm pretty sure it would be a monumental feat but its got to be easier than going door to door with guns shooting all the zombies and its got to be less expensive then burning up billions of dollars of infrastructure.

I'm guessing that the military could drop or park a bunch of large storage containers in the roadways (or park a bunch of vans in the road) and then dump sandbags or barrles in as well to cover up any gaps. Depending on how smart the zombies are then this might be enough to keep them contained (if they have a herd mentality then other tactics could keep them contained). Then of course there is razor wire, landmines an that rapidly solidifying foam that can make decent barriers.

Would likely require doing some zombie-herding to keep the zombies in the center of the city while the barricade is set up, but once the outer perimeter is secured then the cleanup should be easier.

But then again there would probably be zombies in areas with less access to walls and existing stuff to contian the zombies in. In those cases then guns would work just as well... and bombing zombies who are away from expensive infrastructure would probably make more sense.

[Simon_Jester]

Rossum, while I find your approach to be... impressively informal, I like your thinking.

Basically, classical zombies are straightforward enough to kill that it just doesn't make sense to destroy huge amounts of infrastructure to get at them, not unless you've tried and failed other, less collateral-happy tactics.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

The specific scenario that I thought I was addressing was for a fucking over-run city with a number of survivors in an infested high rise that can be counted on one hand with an innumerable amount of zombies.

But it turns out that someone decided to tie the goalposts to a fucking rocket and let fly.

Hence, I'm an smarmy bastard evil sociopath.

Just trying to clarify the difference between yours and Grif's position. But even with a city jam-packed with zombies and a handful of survivors, why bomb the city? If the only living people in that city are that handful of survivors, then logically the only people actually threatened by the zombies in the city... are that handful of survivors. If you bomb the city, you can't ever hope to re-use that land without a cripplingly huge economic investment. You're already going to have to enforce an anti-zombie perimeter around the city whether you bomb it or not, so that's not a valid argument. Basically there's no logical reason to actively bomb the city.

As for Grif, tell you what nerd-boy: When you actually bring up a point that's 1) not retarded, and 2) not already addressed one to five pages ago, I'll stop pointing at you and laughing.

[weemadando]

The specific scenario that I thought I was addressing was for a fucking over-run city with a number of survivors in an infested high rise that can be counted on one hand with an innumerable amount of zombies.

But it turns out that someone decided to tie the goalposts to a fucking rocket and let fly.

Hence, I'm an smarmy bastard evil sociopath.

Just trying to clarify the difference between yours and Grif's position. But even with a city jam-packed with zombies and a handful of survivors, why bomb the city? If the only living people in that city are that handful of survivors, then logically the only people actually threatened by the zombies in the city... are that handful of survivors. If you bomb the city, you can't ever hope to re-use that land without a cripplingly huge economic investment. You're already going to have to enforce an anti-zombie perimeter around the city whether you bomb it or not, so that's not a valid argument. Basically there's no logical reason to actively bomb the city.

As for Grif, tell you what nerd-boy: When you actually bring up a point that's 1) not retarded, and 2) not already addressed one to five pages ago, I'll stop pointing at you and laughing.

I think I'm looking at a scenario where we don't have a worldwide total zombification, but maybe a few cities or states which have been badly over-run. Hence you really want to get this shit locked down and sorted out quickly, but also don't want to expose too many more people, and also don't want to completely level the place.

If you are dealing with a truly world-wide zombocalypse, then at somepoint you might just have to say: "well, the only survivors are those of us who happen to be in NORAD/whatever time to get on the red phones and tell everyone else alive with nukes to let fly and we'll see them once the radiation clears."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

So I was thinking, I may have missed it earlier in the thread, but has anyone actually gone in and discussed exactly how one would go about clearing a Brooks' zombie packed apartment? Because the more I think about it, the more retardedly easy it seems.

1) Clear the perimeter, make sure there's no zombies outside. Easy to do as zombies are retarded.
2) Establish firing positions, open up the front doors and use air-horns, pretty lights and whatever to lure as many out as possible. Should be able to get most in the main hallways and in any rooms whose doors are open.
3) After no more zombies come out of any outside doors, repeat the process, then do it a third time to be sure.
4) Send in teams with riot gear, be very methodical, searching every room. Manageable numbers of zombies? Cap'em there and then. Unmanageable? Retreat slowly and lure them back out to your firing line. They'll follow because they're stupid, you can take your time because they're slow.
5) Repeat for every floor, snagging any survivors along the way.
6) Profit!

Seriously, this would be significantly, massively easier than clearing the average house in Iraqistan because zombies aren't going to be waiting in entrenched firing positions or setting booby-traps. They'll stumble directly towards you as soon as they see you. The people you send in don't even have to wear kevlar. Just give them riot gear, specially designed from head to toe to protect the user against the worst people can throw at them (including bites), and they come with nifty plastic shields as well!

With a minimum application of intelligence, you could easily clear almost any building of zombies with zero casualties. The only risks would be, say, unstable structures, which is a risk rescue crews in any situation face.

Nah, too easy, let's firebomb the place!

[Oni Koneko Damien]

I think I'm looking at a scenario where we don't have a worldwide total zombification, but maybe a few cities or states which have been badly over-run. Hence you really want to get this shit locked down and sorted out quickly, but also don't want to expose too many more people, and also don't want to completely level the place.

If you are dealing with a truly world-wide zombocalypse, then at somepoint you might just have to say: "well, the only survivors are those of us who happen to be in NORAD/whatever time to get on the red phones and tell everyone else alive with nukes to let fly and we'll see them once the radiation clears."

Ah, okay. I was looking at it from the WWZ point of view: There are heavily infested areas in a lot of places throughout the world, but people have established large tracts of safe areas. Basically land needs to be taken back, but the lines between infestation and safe zones have been pretty well drawn already. In WWZ they were able to re-take everything by simply moving slowly through all infested territory, airplane-wreckage-search-team style and clearing it inch by inch.

[weemadando]

So I was thinking, I may have missed it earlier in the thread, but has anyone actually gone in and discussed exactly how one would go about clearing a Brooks' zombie packed apartment? Because the more I think about it, the more retardedly easy it seems.

1) Clear the perimeter, make sure there's no zombies outside. Easy to do as zombies are retarded.
2) Establish firing positions, open up the front doors and use air-horns, pretty lights and whatever to lure as many out as possible. Should be able to get most in the main hallways and in any rooms whose doors are open.
3) After no more zombies come out of any outside doors, repeat the process, then do it a third time to be sure.
4) Send in teams with riot gear, be very methodical, searching every room. Manageable numbers of zombies? Cap'em there and then. Unmanageable? Retreat slowly and lure them back out to your firing line. They'll follow because they're stupid, you can take your time because they're slow.
5) Repeat for every floor, snagging any survivors along the way.
6) Profit!

Seriously, this would be significantly, massively easier than clearing the average house in Iraqistan because zombies aren't going to be waiting in entrenched firing positions or setting booby-traps. They'll stumble directly towards you as soon as they see you. The people you send in don't even have to wear kevlar. Just give them riot gear, specially designed from head to toe to protect the user against the worst people can throw at them (including bites), and they come with nifty plastic shields as well!

With a minimum application of intelligence, you could easily clear almost any building of zombies with zero casualties. The only risks would be, say, unstable structures, which is a risk rescue crews in any situation face.

Nah, too easy, let's firebomb the place!

If you are dealing with an apartment complex filled with Brooks zombies and no survivors inside, then just keep firing thermobaric rockets and flamethrowers into that baby. No risk is better than some risk.

If you have a rescue scenario then yeah, you lock it down as tight as you damn well can and see if you can just use a cherry-picker/ladder-truck to rescue the survivors before returning to plan A.

If neither of the above are acceptable, then your plan seems reasonable. But it may be worth considering assaulting from the top of the building as you have less risk of a spontaneous zombie moshpit crushign you in stairwells.

[Joe Momma]

So I was thinking, I may have missed it earlier in the thread, but has anyone actually gone in and discussed exactly how one would go about clearing a Brooks' zombie packed apartment?

A variant tactic from the book for clearing out buildings that had open doors on the roofs/open balconies/etc. was having someone get to the top of an adjacent building and start making some noise. The zombies would stumble out and shuffle over the railings/off the rooftops/etc., with the subsequent fall either killing them or rendering them immobile for easy elimination afterward.

That particular tactic would not be viable all of the time, but in the book where many buildings in the abandoned areas had been sitting for a few years completely subject to the weather without any maintenance or other care to stave off the effects of weatherization there were plenty of broken windows and other openings to exploit. That would be much less likely for a recent outbreak.

Combining that with your ground-floor set-up to get the ones that come out the bottom could make the early stage even easier, though you'd want to set your gunners back far enough to avoid getting splattered by exploding zombie-balloons from above.

[Rossum]

Rossum, while I find your approach to be... impressively informal, I like your thinking.

Basically, classical zombies are straightforward enough to kill that it just doesn't make sense to destroy huge amounts of infrastructure to get at them, not unless you've tried and failed other, less collateral-happy tactics.

I'll admit that I have no real knowledge of military tactics or operations so I didn't want to argue too much about what sort of weapons or vehicles would be used. But since zombies are effectively brain dead people who can't use guns or perform military tactics, or to put it another way are two-legged wolves (or some kind of carnivorous sheep depending on how violent these particular zombies are) then they should be pretty easy to outsmart.

Besides, zombies are rotting corpses that apparently need to eat. If you can seal up the whole city and keep them contained then eventually they should starve to dead, eat eachother, get eaten by bugs, or otherwise die of natural causes without having to send in teams of people after them. Sure, it would take a long time and the place would be a horrific mess full of zombies that starved to death but then again killing them with headshots would likely result in the same quantity of zombie corpse. Even if these are supernatural zombies that never die out then locking them up would still be a good idea.

Plus, if it turns out that you can use zombies for something then might as well keep them around if its possible. I mean, if these are supernatural perpetual motion zombies that never starve to death or rot and only bite people to spread their curse then just tether the bunch of them to some wheels and have them power generators forever.

As for killing them, keep in mind that you have to dispose of them as well. I don't pretend to know the exact procedures needed to dispose of diseased human corpses but its probably going to involve chemicals and cremation to handle the blood dripping out of them. I figure if you can set up crematoriums and just have the zombies walk into properly constructed disposal areas then it would involve less risk of people getting infected by handling the corpses.

I'm actually getting some uncomfortable vibes as I type this but if all the zombies are wandering hungrily to eat flesh and are mindless then you could probably get some big trucks and bait them with pig carcasses or something. Have a ramp extend and the zombies go inside. Then, drive them to a disposeal facility and dump them into a fire pit or something. I said I'm getting bad vibes as I type because it reminds me of how the Nazis set up their extermination camps by luring people onto trains and then sending them to camps where they were efficiently killed and disposed of.

I mean, these zombies are basically humans who are really stupid, homicidal, and infections. You can headshot them easily but you still have a diseased zombie corpse on the ground that you're going ot have to clean up. Letting animals eat them could spread the disease, burning them sends up ash and crud, letting them bleed all over the place could get their blood into the water system (I'm not sure if that's possible but I wouldn't want to risk it). The most efficient method of killing and disposing them would most likely involve luring and transporting as many of them into "death camps" as possible while killing the stragglers. Then, keep the captured zombies in containment areas while you run tests on them (these are freaking zombies, you need to have scientists run tests on them to at least figure out a vaccine for it or see what happened) then gradually kill them off and cremate the remains.

Plus, these were all people once, for the sake of record keeping it would be nice to be able to ID as many of them as possible. That way its easier to handle the vacant properties and money left by the zombified people in a somewhat legal matter. While the survival of the human race is always the top priority, I'm sure the governement guys want to at least keep a semblance of law in their country.


Oh, and in the event of a zombie apocalypse, have everyone wear gas masks that strap securely to their head. Air drop them to survivors if possible. That way, they won't be breathing in any germs caused by the rotting zombies and also in the unfortunate event that they are bitten and turned into zombies then they won't be able to bite anyone!

Gas masks, heavy gloves (so getting scratched by them won't be infectious unless they touched something else), and maybe some full body covering as well. I suppose each gas mask should also come with a radio built in thats designed so that command can locate each person with a mask and communicate with them to see if they've turned. Gas mask zombies might not be able to bite anyone but the covering would make it difficult to tell if they are zombies or not. All the more reason to avoid shooting zombies if possible since I'm of the opinion that it would not always be 100% obvious if someone is a shambling zombie or just really tired after surviving the near end of civilization.

And in the unlikely event that the zombies do actually beat the military or whatnot and only a few plucky survivors are able to survive it all. I'm sure the survivors would enjoy being able to root around in abandoned buildings looking for stuff instead of having everything burned to the ground.

[DudeGuyMan]

I mean, if these are supernatural perpetual motion zombies that never starve to death or rot and only bite people to spread their curse then just tether the bunch of them to some wheels and have them power generators forever.

You, sir, are a genius. This was the best/most hilarious sentence of the thread.

[Uncluttered]

Oh, and in the event of a zombie apocalypse, have everyone wear gas masks that strap securely to their head. Air drop them to survivors if possible. That way, they won't be breathing in any germs caused by the rotting zombies and also in the unfortunate event that they are bitten and turned into zombies then they won't be able to bite anyone!

Fantastic!! This is the most creative way to halt the spread yet!

[MKSheppard]

Hate to Necro this thread; but I just read another zombiepocalypse book -- Plague of the Dead by Z.A. Recht.

OK. The book actually is written decently with okay plotting and actual grammar.

But it suffers from a key problem with many zombiepocalypse books/movies.

They show how the world fell to the zombies in the first place.

OK.

In Plague, the initial zombie virus outbreak occurs in Africa, which is plausible -- it then spreads through air travel to other parts of africa and the rest of the world; but for a good while, the majority of the zombie plague is in Africa.

All good and dandy?

So Recht has the world's militaries quickly set up a qua-r-an-tine around Africa, with naval vessels sinking ships that try to break the quarantine, and the US gets the job of ensuing that nobody jumps from the African continent to the Eurasian continent via land.

So what they do is setup a quarantine line along the Suez canal. Recht makes explict references to Combat Engineers blowing up or flooding the bridges or tunnels that go across the Canal.

In fact, the last rail bridge across the Canal being blown up by Engineers is shown "on screen".

They then lay out multiple lines of defense; sandbags and barbed wire on the Canal banks as line one, move back some more, I forget what the second line was, but the third and last line was tanks and other AFVs.

It's also mentioned explictly that the Ronald Reagan CVBG is nearby providing qua-r-an-tine via sinking ships with F-18Es.

All of you with me so far?

OK. So the zombified inhabitants of Cairo (it's stated that there are tens of thousands of zomboids in the swarm) slowly approach the Suez Quarantine line, following some hapless driver in a truck who is trying to flee the zombies.

The truck driver gets blown up by Apaches of course; and you see some off screen rocket fire and chaingun fire from the Apaches before they return to base Winchester (all ammo expended) from the other side of the Suez.

So the Zomboids reach the Suez, and the guys in the first line start to shoot at the zombies with M-16s and other small arms. They start knocking off the zombies, etc etc.

The zombies start to actually cross the Canal via Zombie body bridges -- as in they start building a corpse bridge across the Suez.

It's only at about that point that the military realizes:

"Hey, you know what, we have artillery, why don't we start using it?"

So they start shelling the mass of zombies.

Of course, by this time it's too late, and the zomboids start crossing the Suez and biting the faces off the soldiers in the first defensive line. Things quickly unravel after that point, with a mass retreat called, and of course even more biting off of faces occurs.

Later in the book, they also briefly describe characters in a safe house outside of DC watching footage of the clearance operations in DC going horribly wrong; with troops standing in a line executing zombies, and then being rushed from the other side by zombies...

I'm sure you can figure out all the things wrong with that. While DC isn't that close to major military bases, it's close enough to enough minor military bases to have light armored vehicles like uparmored humvees on base.

There's also an amusing subplot involving a USAMRIID doctor who gets the full Gitmo treatment because she leaked data on the Morningstar Virus to the media -- specifically the parts about how the virus reanimates it's hosts once they're dead.

Now of course; I could understand the Gitmo treatment if it was something actually dangerous to the government, like for example Morningstar started out as a USAMRIID biological weapons experiment in the 1970s, or that it was something that was created in Soviet BW labs, and we gave asylum to the guy who created it and he works now at USAMRIID.

But for something as crucially important to fighting the virus outbreak like the fact that you have to kill someone twice unless you shoot them in the head?

But hey, let's ignore that so we can grind our Gitmo analogy.

[weemadando]

So yet again, it's pure and utter redartation beyond all belief that leads to the world getting messed up. What a fucking shock.

[Xon]

At least the Walking Dead has the excuse that a super-flu wiped out over 3 billion people inside of a month before the zombies started rising.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

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.