Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by LastShadow »

FaxModem1 wrote: For me it was more the weirdness with the military unit there. If the troops are staying up for 50 hours straight, how does the lieutenant have enough free time for golfing and a corporal have enough time for a love affair? Or why was the government trying to keep a lid on the disease so badly, even when riots were openly happening because people thought they were killing homeless instead of zombies, to the point that social order disintegrated due to the 'injustices' the cops were doing.
Soldier thing aside, can you honestly say our current government and media wouldnt be in full denial mode and use the "police brutality" as a type of scape goat/cover-up while they attempt to figure put what they can do if anything?

The way our world works, you cant tell me thats not in the realm of possibilities.

As for the military folk, they may have been ...ya know...exaggerating, i highly doubt that ANYONE was golfing during this scenario.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by FaxModem1 »

LastShadow wrote:
FaxModem1 wrote: For me it was more the weirdness with the military unit there. If the troops are staying up for 50 hours straight, how does the lieutenant have enough free time for golfing and a corporal have enough time for a love affair? Or why was the government trying to keep a lid on the disease so badly, even when riots were openly happening because people thought they were killing homeless instead of zombies, to the point that social order disintegrated due to the 'injustices' the cops were doing.
Soldier thing aside, can you honestly say our current government and media wouldnt be in full denial mode and use the "police brutality" as a type of scape goat/cover-up while they attempt to figure put what they can do if anything?

The way our world works, you cant tell me thats not in the realm of possibilities.

As for the military folk, they may have been ...ya know...exaggerating, i highly doubt that ANYONE was golfing during this scenario.
We actually have a scene of the LT practicing his golf swing in an episode while a civilian is trying to get him to do something productive, with soldiers later reporting in later scenes that the troops are tired due to lack of sleep from keeping guard or going on runs for 50 hours straight. Or are you saying that Fear the Walking Dead was not what happened in the Walking Dead universe?

As for keeping it under wraps. this tends to be the reason something like Ebola or SARS is told to the public, so that they know the proper thing to do, and prevent turning a minor contagion into an outbreak. Can you imagine if say, swine flu, was treated the same way the zombie virus was in Fear the Walking Dead? The casualties would have been much higher because no one would have been alerted or reported to the authorities about what was happening, leading to many more people getting infected.

The only explanation for this is if it was something like The Stand's Superflu that the US didn't want the world to know they accidentally unleashed, dooming the world.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by LastShadow »

FaxModem1 wrote:
LastShadow wrote:
FaxModem1 wrote: For me it was more the weirdness with the military unit there. If the troops are staying up for 50 hours straight, how does the lieutenant have enough free time for golfing and a corporal have enough time for a love affair? Or why was the government trying to keep a lid on the disease so badly, even when riots were openly happening because people thought they were killing homeless instead of zombies, to the point that social order disintegrated due to the 'injustices' the cops were doing.
Soldier thing aside, can you honestly say our current government and media wouldnt be in full denial mode and use the "police brutality" as a type of scape goat/cover-up while they attempt to figure put what they can do if anything?

The way our world works, you cant tell me thats not in the realm of possibilities.

As for the military folk, they may have been ...ya know...exaggerating, i highly doubt that ANYONE was golfing during this scenario.
We actually have a scene of the LT practicing his golf swing in an episode while a civilian is trying to get him to do something productive, with soldiers later reporting in later scenes that the troops are tired due to lack of sleep from keeping guard or going on runs for 50 hours straight. Or are you saying that Fear the Walking Dead was not what happened in the Walking Dead universe?

As for keeping it under wraps. this tends to be the reason something like Ebola or SARS is told to the public, so that they know the proper thing to do, and prevent turning a minor contagion into an outbreak. Can you imagine if say, swine flu, was treated the same way the zombie virus was in Fear the Walking Dead? The casualties would have been much higher because no one would have been alerted or reported to the authorities about what was happening, leading to many more people getting infected.

The only explanation for this is if it was something like The Stand's Superflu that the US didn't want the world to know they accidentally unleashed, dooming the world.
I concede, valid points all. I guess my worldview is, well very pessimistic. I must have glossed over the parts with the golf, i have a tendency to be on forums while watching things so i miss a thing now and then hopefully it will come to a Streaming service near me so i can rewatch them, i watch so much i occasionally lose bits of info along the way.

As for government denial, they could be hiding something, they could also have just skipped over that, the show doesnt really show if its days, hours or weeks that go by between episodes, or if it varies, so there may have been info that went out, but it happened on a week that wasnt shown in the show itself.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by Simon_Jester »

Thing is, it is very much out of character for a government to try to cover up an ongoing pandemic. I can't think of a single instance of this happening in the 20th century except maybe, maybe in a totalitarian society. As a rule, rich countries don't do it because they want to make sure their population does what is needed to avoid disaster. And poor countries don't cover up disease outbreaks because of that factor plus the fact that it would interfere with their attempts to scream for help.

So if we bend the question back to the topic of the OP, realistically no, a zombie plague would not be covered up in any meaningful sense.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by madd0ct0r »

Simon_Jester wrote:Thing is, it is very much out of character for a government to try to cover up an ongoing pandemic. I can't think of a single instance of this happening in the 20th century except maybe, maybe in a totalitarian society. As a rule, rich countries don't do it because they want to make sure their population does what is needed to avoid disaster. And poor countries don't cover up disease outbreaks because of that factor plus the fact that it would interfere with their attempts to scream for help.

So if we bend the question back to the topic of the OP, realistically no, a zombie plague would not be covered up in any meaningful sense.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by Simon_Jester »

Okay, yes. AIDS is an exception to the general rule, but AIDS is such an exception in large part because there are countries who seem to have religious or cultural issues with actually treating the disease in an effective manner.

I'm not aware of zika in Venezuela, could you enlighten me?
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by jwl »

Considering that with zombies quite often it is portrayed that the only way of treating the disease in an effective manner is to kill them before they eat your brains, there might be certain religious or cultural issues with that.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by Flagg »

FaxModem1 wrote:
Flagg wrote:Yeah, I hate 90% of the criticism that 'Fear' gets because it's essentially people calling the characters stupid for not knowing "the rules" like everyone in ep1 of TWD did when Rick woke from his coma. In a lot of ways, he had it much easier than the cast of FTWD does, since they didn't have someone to tell him what's going on, what the rotting things attacking and eating people are, and how to put them down for good. It's just not a legitimate criticism of the show that "the characters aren't clairvoyant!!!". I mean if that part bothers you, why watch, since you had ample time to know what the premise was in the first place?
For me it was more the weirdness with the military unit there. If the troops are staying up for 50 hours straight, how does the lieutenant have enough free time for golfing and a corporal have enough time for a love affair? Or why was the government trying to keep a lid on the disease so badly, even when riots were openly happening because people thought they were killing homeless instead of zombies, to the point that social order disintegrated due to the 'injustices' the cops were doing.
The LT was a jackass and it was heavily implied he got fragged. And the "love affair" all happened while he was on duty and when he disappeared I'm assuming his superiors chalked it up to him going AWOL, because I got the feeling that that wasn't uncommon, at least at that point.
I do wish there had been some actual newscasts or radio reports shown before everything went blackout rather than viral videos and Internet reports, and that's a totally legitimate criticism. But the government would have a few reasons to keep things hushed up, if it were a bio weapon of their making that got loose, for instance. But the cause will never be revealed while Kirkman has any say, which is the right move IMO. Hell, my least favorite aspect from the original show was them going to the CDC, which even the writers and producers have since said was a mistake. Other reasons could be that the shit hit the fan so fast that before the government could make any official announcements, enough people abandoned ship to go get their families and get the hell out of dodge (like the cop Travis saw hoarding water in ep 2 of FTWD for example) that there just weren't enough people to get the word out, at least not before shit hit the fan in LA.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by LastShadow »

Flagg wrote:
FaxModem1 wrote:
Flagg wrote:Yeah, I hate 90% of the criticism that 'Fear' gets because it's essentially people calling the characters stupid for not knowing "the rules" like everyone in ep1 of TWD did when Rick woke from his coma. In a lot of ways, he had it much easier than the cast of FTWD does, since they didn't have someone to tell him what's going on, what the rotting things attacking and eating people are, and how to put them down for good. It's just not a legitimate criticism of the show that "the characters aren't clairvoyant!!!". I mean if that part bothers you, why watch, since you had ample time to know what the premise was in the first place?
For me it was more the weirdness with the military unit there. If the troops are staying up for 50 hours straight, how does the lieutenant have enough free time for golfing and a corporal have enough time for a love affair? Or why was the government trying to keep a lid on the disease so badly, even when riots were openly happening because people thought they were killing homeless instead of zombies, to the point that social order disintegrated due to the 'injustices' the cops were doing.
The LT was a jackass and it was heavily implied he got fragged. And the "love affair" all happened while he was on duty and when he disappeared I'm assuming his superiors chalked it up to him going AWOL, because I got the feeling that that wasn't uncommon, at least at that point.
I do wish there had been some actual newscasts or radio reports shown before everything went blackout rather than viral videos and Internet reports, and that's a totally legitimate criticism. But the government would have a few reasons to keep things hushed up, if it were a bio weapon of their making that got loose, for instance. But the cause will never be revealed while Kirkman has any say, which is the right move IMO. Hell, my least favorite aspect from the original show was them going to the CDC, which even the writers and producers have since said was a mistake. Other reasons could be that the shit hit the fan so fast that before the government could make any official announcements, enough people abandoned ship to go get their families and get the hell out of dodge (like the cop Travis saw hoarding water in ep 2 of FTWD for example) that there just weren't enough people to get the word out, at least not before shit hit the fan in LA.
I was going to make that same crack, about the cop stockpiling water, so clearly someone in charge knew some bad things were happening, and it wasnt just riots.

Now im not saying the Government is a bunch of shady asshats who would hide everything, but our government likes to hide things for "national security" reasons, so if the news might cause all hell to break loose they would hide it.

I liked the CDC episode, it gave hints but not too many, and it gave some of them hope where they may have had none before. Plus it gave a little insight into these zombie types, that were later confirmed in the killing of shane and his resurrection. But we still dont know if it was airborne or waterborne, or what, so we got some insight without too much, which was good.

And if the shit hit the fan that fast, then the military would have little time to properly react, leaving them very vulnerable.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by Ralin »

Simon_Jester wrote:Thing is, it is very much out of character for a government to try to cover up an ongoing pandemic. I can't think of a single instance of this happening in the 20th century except maybe, maybe in a totalitarian society. As a rule, rich countries don't do it because they want to make sure their population does what is needed to avoid disaster. And poor countries don't cover up disease outbreaks because of that factor plus the fact that it would interfere with their attempts to scream for help.

So if we bend the question back to the topic of the OP, realistically no, a zombie plague would not be covered up in any meaningful sense.
Usually when governments deal with a pandemic or other serious disease they have some idea how to deal with it. Even if we can't cure Ebola or AIDS they can offer advice like "Don't have sex with strangers without condoms" or "be careful whose blood you come into contact with."

Zombie virus apparently means that if you get bit, you die barring immediate amputation. General preventative warnings would involve things like, "Be sure to smash grandma's head in if she seems like she's dead but gets up and starts moaning incoherently" and "avoid homicidal cannibals.

Those cultural and religious factors that made AIDS an exception to the "no cover up" thing? I think zombie virus would hit a lot more of them. Would that be enough to make the US government cover up an incipient zombie virus plague? I dunno, but there's some real-world precedent and how people would react to zombie plague is pure speculation.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by Ralin »

I'd also speculate that there was some delay in the powers that be realizing they were dealing with a zombie plague. Because frankly, if reports started trickling up about psycho cannibals staggering out of car wrecks that only go down when the police shoot them in the head I think most officials' immediate reaction would be "fucked up new drug is getting popular."

Especially in a world where zombie movies aren't part of the cultural zeitgeist. How long it would take someone who hasn't grown up exposed to that idea to wrap their minds around it is another one of those open, probably unanswerable questions.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by Zwinmar »

From what I remember of the show it does not show the military setting up any real defense, much less a defense in depth with doesn't really take all that long to set up.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by jwl »

I would note that any cover-up would be much less likely to work in developed countries because of the internet.
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Re: Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

Post by Ralin »

jwl wrote:I would note that any cover-up would be much less likely to work in developed countries because of the internet.
Well, I'm two episodes into rewatching the series and it...didn't really work?

I mean, the pilot has a teenager going to school armed because he's afraid of zombie attacks. Videos are clearly on the internet and going viral, even if people don't understand exactly what it is that they're seeing. The information was out there; social inertia and a lack of enough people talking about it openly is what let the government keep a lid on things to the extent that they did.

And despite the show's stated goal of "showing the zombie apocalypse from the beginning" it jumps pretty quickly from "Mostly normal with everyone nervous about something they don't know exactly what" to full-blown post Katrina style Army garrisons in residential areas.
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