TWD 6x01 "First Time Again" episode discussion... **SPOILERS WITHIN*

[JDP]

Fire truck deck guns push water out at 350+ gpm. Engines hold 350-500 gallons in the internal tank. How much of the quarry could you cover in a minute? How many gallons of a non-specified flammable liquid are you going to be able to find in the nearby area? Add to that the explosive limits of whatever you're spraying. Fuels have to mix at a certain ratio with air. This defines the upper and lower explosive limits. If you have ANY heat source nearby that is within that range, you've got an ignition source. Spraying flammable liquids puts an awful lot of vapor in the air, and if it lights off it will ignite everything in a big giant fireball. Think Carol and Terminus, except it's going to burn vapor all the way back to the dispersal point (under your feet). Paint thinners and the like are not that volatile, it will take several hours for them to evaporate. They are not like acetone or concentrated alcohol, which will evaporate in minutes. Plenty of time for delivering the flammables and igniting them before any dangerous air-fuel mix develops. And even if you were afraid of such a thing happening, you can simply ignite the zombie pit via cables and a battery at a safe distance. The point of the flammables is not to cause an explosion (which requires vaporization time to mix with the surrounding air) but to just burn the zombies. The explosion thing would be if you had access to the quarry explosives, which must be stored somewhere nearby (though maybe they stored them somewhere in the area where the zombies are trapped, so in such a case you could not try to gain access to them.) The availability of flammable liquids like paint thinners would depend on how many hardware stores are around the area. Most places in America have hardware stores around, even in the more rural areas.

[babomb]

It would be safer to destroy the exits from the quarry. Wouldn't require that much explosive material for that. All you have to do is make it so they can't walk out. Then wall off the exits. If they're contained in the quarry then you can take your time killing them off. Smash em, burn em, shoot em, blow em up from the top rim of the quarry. Over a period of time. You can't tell me not a single person in that group knows how to make crude explosives. It will draw a little attention at first, but it's already drawing attention. The more you kill the quieter the quarry gets. Or build a funnel point, like in the cave in Day, so only a few can get through at a time. Then find or build a captive bolt pistol like the dr. had in FTWD. Or use a spear. Burning them would be too chaotic to control.