Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

[FaxModem1]

Another example of a society post-death equals zombies is Fido. Space radiation causes every human who dies to become a zombie after death. So, there's two worlds, the wastelands, where the zombies roam free, and the controlled gated communities, where zombies are used as manual labor. It also creates a bit of a class divide, as the company in charge of everything makes funerals illegal unless you can pay for them, otherwise your body is converted into a worker and is either working in one of the town's factories or sold to one to a costumer as their own private zombie.

It's essentially if Lassie was a zombie, but it does show the recovering society did from a zombie apocalypse sometime in the 1950s.

[Guardsman Bass]

Even aside from research to try and find a cure for zombification, I'd expect a post-zombie society under Romero Rules to have a very extensive medical infrastructure even compared to today. We want to stop preventable deaths and outbreaks of diseases before they happen now, but a post-zombie society would have the extra incentive of preventing mass zombification.

So . . . universal health care in Zombie Land! I actually don't think you'd have to have super-gated communities and the like - it'd be enough just to wipe out any swarming zombies, have periodic night and day patrols, and then stronger doors/windows on the ground level of houses and buildings. After a while the only zombies you'd be dealing with in most places would be one or two at a time, and they could be put down easily.

[biostem]

Even aside from research to try and find a cure for zombification, I'd expect a post-zombie society under Romero Rules to have a very extensive medical infrastructure even compared to today. We want to stop preventable deaths and outbreaks of diseases before they happen now, but a post-zombie society would have the extra incentive of preventing mass zombification.

So . . . universal health care in Zombie Land! I actually don't think you'd have to have super-gated communities and the like - it'd be enough just to wipe out any swarming zombies, have periodic night and day patrols, and then stronger doors/windows on the ground level of houses and buildings. After a while the only zombies you'd be dealing with in most places would be one or two at a time, and they could be put down easily.

I would expect that patients with a significant chance of death would be required to be restrained or muzzled, bars or metal shutters on 1st floor windows would be commonplace, and things like puncture/bite resistant clothing would be pretty standard.

Something like a trench knife may come back into favor for soldiers, or as a common piece of equipment for those who may spend a lot of time away from shelter.

You may find that last rites practices include a careful in-the-ear spiking upon confirmation of the patient's passing.

[Esquire]

So . . . universal health care in Zombie Land!

Screw universal - I expect mandatory health care in Zombie Land. Eat your fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly, and don't smoke - because the alternative is eventual decapitation.

[Raw Shark]

Screw that. Drink up! Smoke 'em if you've got 'em! They're just gonna decapitate you someday, anyway!

[jwl]

Even aside from research to try and find a cure for zombification, I'd expect a post-zombie society under Romero Rules to have a very extensive medical infrastructure even compared to today. We want to stop preventable deaths and outbreaks of diseases before they happen now, but a post-zombie society would have the extra incentive of preventing mass zombification.

So . . . universal health care in Zombie Land! I actually don't think you'd have to have super-gated communities and the like - it'd be enough just to wipe out any swarming zombies, have periodic night and day patrols, and then stronger doors/windows on the ground level of houses and buildings. After a while the only zombies you'd be dealing with in most places would be one or two at a time, and they could be put down easily.

I don't see how reducing premature deaths is going to reduce zombification. People are going to die someday.

[Esquire]

Yes, but in a controlled setting with people around to decaptitate them before reanimation. If you, say, have a stroke and die alone in a hotel room or something, you'll probably be zombified before anyone notices.

[Guardsman Bass]

I don't see how reducing premature deaths is going to reduce zombification. People are going to die someday.

If a ton of people get sick and die at the same time, you'll have a larger zombie outbreak that you'll have to contain. Not to mention, as Esquire pointed out, you preferably want people to die of old age in a controlled setting, whereupon you can promptly bolt them in the head upon death or decapitate them to prevent zombification.

That's not even getting into the Walking Dead, where "everyone infected" means that people are more vulnerable to regular diseases that we have now - a bad flu outbreak in a Walking Dead world that got its shit together (or never collapsed) might kill a ton of people who would otherwise live in the real world.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm wondering if cryonics/cryopreservation will become more commonplace as a way to avoid zombie breakouts.

[Borgholio]

Freezing someone will still kill them. So you'd have a zombsicle waiting for power to fail so it can defrost and eat your brain. Better just to cut off the head and then bury or cremate as normal.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Hmm true. Oh well, so much for vast underground caverns filled with cryopreserved bodies.

[biostem]

I'm wondering if cryonics/cryopreservation will become more commonplace as a way to avoid zombie breakouts.

To what end, though? Do you want the zombie intact for some reason, or are you talking about as a preventative measure to be taken as soon as a person is declared dead? If you did want the specimen intact, and even if you froze them, I still wouldn't forego sturdy straps, bars, or a good old steel box, to physically confine them...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Honestly, I'm not sure entirely what end I was thinking of (it was one of those "hey, what about..." ideas while I was on the train). IN hindsight I would say as a preventative measure that doesn't involve desecrating the corpse (well, less so then decapitation anyways) that allows families to have closure: "no, your loved one won't be a zombie and still has their head. And in fifty years we might be able to revive them too!"

[jwl]

What makes you think that freezing a zombie is going top have any impact on it's ability to get up and eat your brains? Their muscle cells are already dead and rotting, I don't see how freezing them is going to make a difference.

[Borgholio]

Freezing will prevent it from moving entirely? I mean it can't move if it's a solid block of ice.

[Darth Tanner]

Freezing will prevent it from moving entirely? I mean it can't move if it's a solid block of ice.

It shouldn't be able to move if its dead and rotting either... if the magic/virus/space bats are negating one they can negate another. Being frozen solid would perhaps prevent movement, but only if the freezing of its flesh and internal liquids is stronger than its magic ability to move at all without an energy input into its muscle tissue.

[Borgholio]

Being frozen solid would perhaps prevent movement, but only if the freezing of its flesh and internal liquids is stronger than its magic ability to move at all without an energy input into its muscle tissue.

Well it's never stated that the zombies are really all that strong. They are shambling piles of flesh, so they wouldn't be strong enough to move if rock solid and they had to work against the ice.

[Purple]

Why ice than? Just poor concrete over them. It's much simpler and probably cheaper than freezing them and keeping them frozen.

[Elheru Aran]

Spraying concrete, plaster or some other quick-drying substance would be an interesting tactic for zombie control. Concrete has lime in it, which would hasten the zombies' natural (or un-natural, given how they hold together longer than they should) decomposition. Plaster tends to heat up as it dries to a surprising degree; it could potentially cook the zombies. Expanding foam might be useful in this regard as well.

[biostem]

Honestly, I'm not sure entirely what end I was thinking of (it was one of those "hey, what about..." ideas while I was on the train). IN hindsight I would say as a preventative measure that doesn't involve desecrating the corpse (well, less so then decapitation anyways) that allows families to have closure: "no, your loved one won't be a zombie and still has their head. And in fifty years we might be able to revive them too!"

A long narrow metal spike, driven through the ear into the brain, or up through the nostril, will do the trick without removing the head. Since a person doesn't turn until *after* they're dead, there isn't really a "bringing them back".

[Patroklos]

So . . . universal health care in Zombie Land! I actually don't think you'd have to have super-gated communities and the like - it'd be enough just to wipe out any swarming zombies, have periodic night and day patrols, and then stronger doors/windows on the ground level of houses and buildings. After a while the only zombies you'd be dealing with in most places would be one or two at a time, and they could be put down easily.

I think the more likely approach, especially if for some reason society is collapsing or just recovered from one, is to just kill anyone with a likely fatal condition up front and nuetralize the body.

Some thoughts.

1.) Wait until winter, done. It doesn't matter if you think frozen muscles work. We have established that they require uninjured working brains to function when you freeze one damage to the brain is catastrophic.
2.) If you live someplace with an geographic variation at all whether that be a coast line, even the slightest elevation variation, major river but especially a sea of jagged concrete constructions incomprehensible to many living people let alone a zombie the problem will take car of itself after a few days. They will all end at the bottom of a river bed/ocean, gouge or stream course, canal, steep drainage ditch, etc. if they haven't bwwn outright killed themselves from falling off cliffs/overpasses/buildings/whatever in short order. I guess Kansas may have issues but they will all end up mired in irrigation ditches eventually.
2.) There is no way a natural death rate would in any way hinder a response. First of all the vast majority of deaths are of the old and infirm so that doesn't bode well when they comprise the recruits for a close quarters combat muscle based enemy. Not only that, they are dead old and infirm, and the body goes through quite a few rapid changes if it takes even an hour to turn which further reduce their physical abilities. Sure the zombies don't have pain or fear so that can augment their ability to utilize what strength they have but there is no scenario where a 72 year old infirm dead grandma in some state of decay is any match for a military age young person.
4.) "But not all of them died from natural causes" you say. "Most of them died from a giant plague/space radiation/whatever." Well, whatever killed them did exactly that. It killed them. Or in other words it physically incapacitated what is normally a pretty robust organism when it comes to overcoming environmental hazards. If someone is dead chances are they are pretty physically fucked up but at the very least weaker than a healthy mk1 human.
3.) If I took a two year old, an entity with infinity more self preservation instincts and intelligence than a zombie, and let them just run lose in even the most rural of settings they would probably be dead in a day or two. If there are people actively hunting them probably minutes. There is nothing a zombie is better at than a two year old. A two year old is probably physically stronger than most zombies actually. So if you can't think of a scenario where the military gets overwhelmed by a horde of two year olds chances are you can't think of one for zombies either.

[Q99]

Sufficiently cold, frostbite destroys muscles.

Sufficiently hot and humid, rot and fungal infection.

Sufficiently hot and dry, dehydration.

Sufficiently mountainous, laugh as the zombies cannot climb for crap.

The butter zone for zombies is small.

[FaxModem1]

Sufficiently cold, frostbite destroys muscles.

Sufficiently hot and humid, rot and fungal infection.

Sufficiently hot and dry, dehydration.

Sufficiently mountainous, laugh as the zombies cannot climb for crap.

The butter zone for zombies is small.

Depending on the type of zombie, fungal infection may not take as it has to compete with the magic zombie virus which kills other infections in the host.

[Korgeta]

Let's assume you have "slow zombies", like in The Walking Dead. Even with the disease/plague being airborne, could such zombies truly defeat an organized and disciplined military force?

Even without resorting to just running hordes down with tanks & APCs, couldn't armed & trained soldiers simply form a line and just use lights/noise makers to lure zombies to them, then just mop them up as needed?

I watch the walking Dead TV show, and am a fan of the zombie genre in general, (but haven't yet watched Fear the Walking Dead). From what I've seen and read, it seems that the spread was more due to random people who die in spread out locations, coupled with general ignorance of the disease, (apparently the zombie genre never took off in the Walking Dead universe), and finally combined with general confusion & panic, is what really led to the military's defeat.

The again, it is probably the case that if someone, who was savvy enough to catch on to what was happening, went around shooting infected people in the head, that they'd be arrested and treated as a psycho or serial killer, with the authorities not accepting what they reasoning was, until it was too late.

What are your thoughts?

People who generally write zombies overrun the military etc do dumb down military fighting capacity or underestimate just how brutal and effective soldiers are, let alone the power of the weapons they have at their disposal, take the M60 rifle for example it isn't going to leave you with pea shaped holes in the body, its going to rip up muscle and bone and decapitate your jaw. Even if it weren't a head shot it would be literally impossible for a zombie to withstand gun fire and not be knocked off feet (they have no control of balance) or able to get up.

The only way zombies can be a legitimate threat is by overwhelming numerical superiority, running zombies would be a more serious threat as they will be melee force with no fear or sense of retreat, but with the right weapons they too can be dispatched easily.

Even if zombie genre wasn't invented here, there is a contingency plan for everything including scenarios where people turn on each other in brutal fashion and as long as the military is quick then it would be stopped. Look at rioting or the riots in Britain a few years backl, it got so bad and spreaded like a epidemic that the authorties got tough and imposed curfew with the army and everything stopped pretty quickly.

Point is that if there a newly discovered epidemic that no one knew was in fact a zombie infestation, quarantine and curfew would pin down the source of the problem fast.

[Zaune]

You know, John Wyndham solved this problem when he accidentally sort-of invented this genre with The Day Of The Triffids. Just have something else go horribly wrong during or shortly before the outbreak that leaves the military and police with a bunch of other stuff to worry about as well as the zombies. A major war that's seen a huge chunk of the army posted overseas, maybe? A skeleton crew of reservists, non-combat arms and half-trained recruits led by someone who got posted home after the second grenade turned up in his tent could probably lose to Romero Rules zombies. Or a natural disaster that's similarly saturated the government's ability to contain crises. Or, if you like a bit of social commentary with your zombie-killing action, maybe the Republicans went through with that government shutdown and the emergency responders stopped showing up to work because their last two pay-cheques bounced...