Feasibility of Zombie Holocaust

[Gemini]

Are we completely overlooking the Theological aspect here? Is everyone here Atheists?

[Wyldwraith]

I'm not, However, the problem with introducing theological arguments into these debates are numerous. Here are the Top 3 Reasons its a *Bad Idea*. 1) A theological argument has as its foundation elements of "faith", in whatever form that loaded word/concept takes for you. The inherent problem there is that a persuasive or informative statement based upon the intrinsically unprovable nature of faith is a non-starter. By that I mean: How do you intelligently, reasonably, *non-offensively* respond to a statement that is unconfirmable, and has no elements that can be examined/critiqued by use of reason/logic. 2) To elaborate on the element of giving offense. Religion, or more specifically faith, is the ultimate social powder keg waiting to go BOOM when discussed, rationally examined and again, critiqued. This is inevitable when faith enters a discussion that a variety of different individuals are taking part in, because those participants come from a wide variety of walks of life, with each participant almost certainly cherishing a theological/philosophical position varying wildly from the positions of their fellow participants. This specific issue is only compounded by the need for all of us here to remain within the boundaries of politely acceptable conduct. There's that old saying about not discussing religion or politics, due to the anger and heated conflicts that often arise from such conversations. 3) Lastly, and this goes partially back to reason #1. We like to get down to the nitty gritty and explore every potential detail/possible detail of the subject matter under discussion. These conversations/debates tend to center on the tangible details we draw from canon. I mean no offense when I say that the intangible nature of religious/faith issues can cause offense faster than any issue I've ever seen. ------ As for the # of individuals, amount of equipment and necessary starting position(s) to beat back the undead and secure a significant amount of land upon which a community/communities can be established as foundation of the rebuilding effort... I reject the feasibility, or even desirability of a worldwide-scale operation against the undead. Too much required manpower, firepower and other supplies to make it workable. Like the previous poster I'm all about locating a favorable conjunction of geographic features to give a survivor enclave being established the maximum chance of surviving against undead and hostile human threats, as well as granting logistical advantages (such as building around a large freshwater spring, or at the base of a mountain stream/river, where snow melt can augment water resources. It's much more possible to purge a single geographical region than huge tracts of infested lands. Guess that puts me in the Wait Them Out camp. Build up a self-sufficient enclave that can act as a rallying point for scattered survivors to journey towards. All this assumes that I'm wrong about military effectiveness. In light of all the veterans of urban combat that are also accustomed to coping with harsh and undeveloped environments, I maintain that even a sizable minority fraction of the military which survives to regroup somewhere is capable of eliminating literally hundreds of thousands of zombies with an economy of force deployed. One could even take a page from WWZs Redecker Plan and manipulate zombie horde movements via baiting them into a desired position with a substantial number of human beings. It's harsh, but a couple thousand humans in trucks/military transports etc could draw zombies like flies to feces. If you can then anticipate where a large concentration of undead will be at a specific time, you need relatively little in the way of military ordinance to massacre them. Lure a mass of zombies onto a bridge over a large drop then collapse the bridge, lure them into one of the literally THOUSANDS of towns in the US built dangerously close to and beneath sizable dams, then blow the dam. The opportunities are endless, and many potential operations that could yield six digits of destroyed zombies could be carried out by a couple dozen individuals from the Army Corps. of Engineers. Worried about the vast numbers of zombies created when L.A is overrun? What about some carefully positioned and extremely oversized charges detonated deep in the San Andreas Fault? The Big One could do a thorough job of neutralizing the threat of the L.A zombies moving east en masse. The list goes on and on and on. It's stuff like this that makes it impossible for me to believe the military would be helpless in the face of the undead. Take the simple and classic overrun roadblock so common in survival horror movies. We see the hapless soldier doggedly firing their weapons into the center mass of zombies who continue getting up and moving forward until they overrun the troops amid screams and spraying of blood. The reality would be more like executed Failure to Stop drills. Two taps to the torso, 1 to the head. Which quickly leads these trained combatants to realize the headshots are doing the work. The vehicle-mounted .50 machineguns begin strafing the horde at average neck level, causing masses of ghouls to drop due to spinal cord damage and bullets that went a bit high into the heads. Multiple SAWs open up in a devastating storm of downrange lead, literally tearing bodies to pieces as the range closes. Claymores/Shaped charges are detonated, the concussive shock of which liquefies soft tissue and pulverizes bone, disabling God-only-knows how many zombies. Thats just a couple of platoons worth of firepower. Completely unsupported by the nastier elements of mechanized infantry, pre-ranged artillery strikes, or (my personal favorite) the decades-old cry over the radio "BROKEN ARROW!" Which is essentially the descent of the fury of God Almighty on a specific area in response to fixed positions being overrun. Zombies are tough, but they're just tinder when the GPS-guided 5,000lbs JDAMS you can hit a toilet bowl with start to fall from 25,000 feet. Again I say, the collateral damage would be hideous, but shamblers have no answer to a bloated/runaway military-industrial complex of the world's last superpower.

[SRP76]

Are we completely overlooking the Theological aspect here? Is everyone here Atheists? What theologial aspect? Religion only affects how certain people would react to the dead. The zombies themselves are unchanged. They wil eat anyone in front of them, regardless of what that person believes or is doing at the time.

[Gemini]

What theologial aspect? Religion only affects how certain people would react to the dead. The zombies themselves are unchanged. They wil eat anyone in front of them, regardless of what that person believes or is doing at the time. The aspect is, perhaps it is a higher being that is responsible for the reanimation and automation of walking corpses, in which case the condition would defy all science and logical reasoning ..perhaps the "when there's no more room in hell" quote could be a viable explanation. And I say this with no leanings toward any particular faith.

[Rancid Carcass]

The aspect is, perhaps it is a higher being that is responsible for the reanimation and automation of walking corpses, in which case the condition would defy all science and logical reasoning ..perhaps the "when there's no more room in hell" quote could be a viable explanation. I think this is the passage you're looking for: "This is what the great LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with zombies. The Nile will teem with the dead. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The living dead will go up on you and your people and all your officials. For you are getting too big for your britches trying to figure my shit out." — Exodus 7:1–4: 2010: Redux

[deadpunk]

The aspect is, perhaps it is a higher being that is responsible for the reanimation and automation of walking corpses, in which case the condition would defy all science and logical reasoning ..perhaps the "when there's no more room in hell" quote could be a viable explanation. And I say this with no leanings toward any particular faith. This is an interesting aspect of GAR's films. You never see a church. For all we know, holy water will dispel the effects of a bite and zombies can't encroach upon Holy Ground... However, if that were the case, I think that survivors would have figured it out rather quickly and the movies would have been entirely different following Night. We can logically assume that the holy rollers immediately ran to their nearest place of worship on the first night. (And personally, I think an old school Catholic Church would make for an ideal fortress, but I digress...) Had the religious aspect panned out for the saved, most people would have jumped on the Jesus Band Wagon and it would all be history.

[Wyldwraith]

Another reason not to like the "theological origin", If God is causing hundreds of thousands of cannibal corpses to rise in one great wave worldwide then there is no hope, and no point even bothering to resist for five seconds. Since the God of most monotheistic traditions tends to doom those who don't accept His/Their edicts to eternal damnation, we could actually end up arguing whether or not attempting to avoid being eaten by zombies would cause you to end up in Hell when you die, and THAT is NOT a conversation I see going well. Why? One reason: Some folks will (reasonably enough) recoil in absolute revulsion from a God that demands His flock roll over and allow themselves to be eaten alive, OR ELSE. Those same folks are likely to say unflattering things about such a God, then some other wise-ass is going to bring up the Old Testament behavior of the Judeo/Christian God as they draw certain parallels. Followed by a Holy Flame War erupting here. ::shudders:: All right, believe I detailed the crux of the reason that discussing whether or not the Divine sent legions of cannibal corpses after the living is a BAD IDEA. Your mileage may vary, but I sincerely doubt it.

[Gemini]

This thread got way, way, off topic.. so I'll try to boil it down here. Max Brooks' zombie vision: infection spread only by bite, zombies slow shamblers Human Extinction Threat Level: 6 (slow spread, easy extermination of zombies) GAR zombie vision: all dead rise regardless of cause of death, bites spread the infection only in that they cause death, zombies slow shamblers. Human Extinction Threat Level: 8 (quick spread, zombies easily exterminated but their numbers would swell much higher than in Brooks' vision before we could mount an effective response; this also would be a permanent threat and the entire world would need to learn to immediately destroy the brain of any deceased to keep the threat at bay) DOTD 04 vision: infection spread only by bite, zombies fast and maniacal Human Extinction Threat Level: 9.5 (quick spread due to viciousness and speed of outbreak, z's ranks would swell dramatically, difficult to exterminate due to their formidable attack; nuclear weaponry perhaps our only option) Does anyone disagree with the above threat levels? Any other mainstream zombie scenario (save ROTLD) I am forgetting about?

[bd2999]

Really as far as zombie stuff 28 DAys Later is most likely because it just requires the disease to drive normal people insane and into killers. They are still alive so no worries about how to bring the dead back. It is spread through body fluids and so on. I think as far as slow zombies not being able to spread something like an infection is not always true. You have to consider how personel this would be if the dead were return by whatever means. Families would die first, you cannot kill that it is your brother for example. Then they infect others and it goes on from there. Sure if you have a cool military response and gun them down at the start you can deal with it but just consider how fast things get out of hand and how long it would take for everyone to even realize what is going on. Then with the panic from that alone people would die all over and add to the numbers. The military would have issues with zombies regardless because they are not something you really set out to fight and head shots are harder than you would think on numerous foes. The faster zombies would be more of a threat but even they can be dealt with if you deal with it fast. The problem is the initial state of panic is enough time for them to greatly increase their number and just tare through populations. If it is from one area you can always localize the starting point and lock it down. You have more of a problem if the dead are just starting to come back for no real reason. It is not localized, no area or disease to quaranteen or anything. Just one big mess because you can have it under control but it could flair up again any time and you can never be sure you got them all. Not to mention how many people would probably just start kicking the bucket when you cannot get food at the store anymore. I doubt I could live in such a scnerio for sure. People are often more dangerous during any crisis let alone one that can be this personel.

[Mike70]

Really as far as zombie stuff 28 DAys Later is most likely because it just requires the disease to drive normal people insane and into killers. They are still alive so no worries about how to bring the dead back. It is spread through body fluids and so on. true but that scenario makes zero sense as well. the infected in 28 days later are supposedly driven stark staring mad by a "rage virus", yet they don't attack each other. what are they unionized? the whole eating and drinking thing is equally ludicrous. the soldiers say they want to see how long it would take for one of them to starve to death. that is ridiculous because they would die from dehydration long, long before they ever got close to starving to death. i guess what i am saying is that none of these entirely fictional scenarios makes even a little bit of sense.

[hadrian0117]

Well, that's a factor that you don't see in Zombie Flicks. In a Vampire or Werewolf flick, there's always somebody who steps forward and says: "I saw this in a movie, (X) defeats (Monster)."... Well, the characters in The Return of the Living Dead were familiar with Night of the Living Dead "You mean the movie lied!" Not that it helped them. It would be very hard to have a "genre savy" character in a Romero Living Dead film since Romero more or less started the genre as we know it. I've always assumed that they take place in an alternate universe where the idea of making movies about reanimated corpses the eat people never caught on. Max Brooks played with this idea. He never mentions Romero by name, but does describe "movie zombies" indentical to Romero's and points out how "real zombies" differ. I've read fan fiction that plays with the idea too. I don't remember the title, but there's a story in the fiction section where a zombie outbreak takes place in the future that follows Romero's rules to the letter and a time traveler get's sent back to '60s to the set of NoLD to figure out why Romero was able to predict it so well.   It turns out Romero got most of his ideas from the time traveler.

[Gemini]

I'm not sure why 28 Days Later would even be a consistent subject in a zombie forum, considering it's not a zombie movie. Certainly inspired by Romero, but not a zombie movie.

[JDFP]

I'm not sure why 28 Days Later would even be a consistent subject in a zombie forum, considering it's not a zombie movie. Certainly inspired by Romero, but not a zombie movie. Oh boy, here we go again. I agree with you completely that "28 Days Later" is NOT a zombie movie and does NOT have zombies, but this is another of those topics here that has been around the block more than Lindsay Lohan. Haha, Gemini, I dig your jive, you're going to be fun around here... j.p.

[Gemini]

Oh boy, here we go again. I agree with you completely that "28 Days Later" is NOT a zombie movie and does NOT have zombies, but this is another of those topics here that has been around the block more than Lindsay Lohan. Haha, Gemini, I dig your jive, you're going to be fun around here... j.p.

[Wyldwraith]

@Geminin: In regards to fast-moving zombies, why do you say nuclear weapons would be our best bet? As depicted in Dawn '04 fast-movers still tend to cluster, and any concentration of hostiles is highly vulnerable to air-to-ground weapons, bombs, artillery, TANKS etc. If the fast-movers are spread solely by bite there must be an epicenter of the epidemiology. Even if they rise like GAR zombies from every recently dead, unsecured corpse, they're going to be concentrated in the major metropolitan areas. Hell, why can't you simply deploy thermobaric devices and flash-incinerate everything short of reinforced concrete and tempered steel in a given area. We've had nasty devices capable of creating 2000 degrees+ F. infernos which last for 3-6 minutes since the late 70s/early 80s. To say nothing of simple napalm or white phosphorous. I'm not normally a big believer in the "Burn 'Em" strategy, because it's remarkably difficult for civilians to strategically deploy incendiaries capable of human cremation in whole or part, but the military has a variety of nasty devices to do exactly that. I mean, if you're willing to write off the city, how many wide-dispersion incendiary devices that can be delivered from either a couple hundred miles away or from 40-50,000ft up do you need to literally burn an entire city to the ground, or at LEAST raise the ambient temperature high enough to boil the brain inside the derma? If we're really discussing feasibility of a global threat, it doesn't make sense to bypass the successes or failures of the harshest/most destructive measures employed by militaries being directed by ever more desperate politicians, staring at the red stain rapidly engulfing the map of their nation (indicating the vast amount of territory being lost to the Infected by the hour). We live in an age of automated intelligence-gathering. It's no longer reasonable to assume our government would remain in the dark for long as to what was transpiring in its urban centers. Re-tasked satellites, overflights of UAVs, old fashioned recon flights...a lot has happened to America in the last decade to beat into the government's skull the need to speed its crisis response time. How do we weigh these facts in our ideas/potential scenarios of what may transpire should the dead rise?