WWZ

[Replicant]

The written reasons dont work for Yonkers but the reality is that no group of 5,000 soldiers of any military on this planet is going to carry enough ammunition to destroy 1 million plus zombies that will never lose morale and can soak up small arms rounds easily if you do not aim properly.

A battle like this will inevitably end with the tanks and other vehicles driving around until they run out of fuel physically crushing all the zombies in their path while the soliders on foot just straight out run out of ammunition and have to flee or die.

[Sky Captain]

The written reasons dont work for Yonkers but the reality is that no group of 5,000 soldiers of any military on this planet is going to carry enough ammunition to destroy 1 million plus zombies that will never lose morale and can soak up small arms rounds easily if you do not aim properly.

If they have nuclear weapons and suitable delivery method then it would be easy especially if zombies come in densely packed horde. Airburst few nukes over the horde and no more zombie horde.

[Guardsman Bass]

The problem for some of us is how much was made of him claiming to have had multiple military advisors while writing that crap. It was not portrayed at the time of publication as being intended as satire. Not even close.

I have no idea how they were marketing it back in 2006, but including military advisor help on some of that doesn't exactly preclude it from including satirical elements. I highly doubt they were selling the book as 100% realistic back then.

If they have nuclear weapons and suitable delivery method then it would be easy especially if zombies come in densely packed horde. Airburst few nukes over the horde and no more zombie horde.

I don't think they'd support doing that over New York City. Maybe if you could bait them over into some part of the US away from any important water supplies . . .

[biostem]

Something like a cruise missile that can drop 100's or 1000's of small sub-munitions would do the job admirably, and it'd only need conventional explosives.

[Imperial528]

You could use the M270 MLRS. One square kilometer killzone of unprotected people.

[Patroklos]

Were they attracted to loud noises in the book also? If so a sterio and one of these:



should work wonders.

[Borgholio]

Were they attracted to loud noises in the book also? If so a sterio and one of these:

should work wonders.

Yes, they were. By the end of the book, the Army would use loud music to attract the zombies and then mow them down from a fortified position.

[Ted C]

Except that the zombies also ignored the soldier in Korea for having a limp... a homeless person for being drunk... It makes no sense considering the lengths of 'sniffing' the zombie did of Pitt compared to the zombies charging past other sick people in the city scenes where there was no option for 'sniffing'.

As to the movie zombie behavior, perhaps their tendency to overlook sick or injured people is related to how they ignore each other, not a desire to only infect healthy hosts. Once a zombie bites someone, it immediately stops attacking them and moves on. It's the disease's mechanism for spreading the infection faster, but it can be tricked by other diseases or adverse medical conditions.

How the zombies can tell is still completely unexplained, but at least there seems to be a plausible "why".

[Gaidin]

Were they attracted to loud noises in the book also? If so a sterio and one of these:

[img]http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/uyZtGTHlH34/maxr ... lt.jpg[img]

should work wonders.

Your big problem would be power. Their stereo system by itself only required high voltage batteries for the system they'd need. This would need a generator. Though, granted they might want to run the stereo they'd use for attracting the hoard off a generator anyway, a system of these such as to be useful would take a lot of fuel. I think the gas(or other fuels) had more important uses by this time.

[Sea Skimmer]

You could power a pretty damn good stereo system with a alternator stripped out of a car and powered by a wind mill hung above a wood fire. The power demands for audio are not that significant when all you need to do is make a regular loud noise, not mix thirty different speakers together with power hungry receiver gear. Be even more effective if you put a trumpet like cone on front of the speaker to improve range and then rotate it.

[Patroklos]

Gas would probably be very easily available to run a few generators given the quickness of society's collapse as seen in the movies. Not counting the hundreds of millions of quickly abandoned/over run vehicles any number of abandoned industrial facilities would be stock full not to mention gas stations. Your only handicap would be using it before it all goes bad in within a few years.

[Gaidin]

You could power a pretty damn good stereo system with a alternator stripped out of a car and powered by a wind mill hung above a wood fire. The power demands for audio are not that significant when all you need to do is make a regular loud noise, not mix thirty different speakers together with power hungry receiver gear. Be even more effective if you put a trumpet like cone on front of the speaker to improve range and then rotate it.

I'm not talking about the audio system. I'm talking about enough shredders as to be useful during a battle against a million zombies. And if you of all people want to convince me a windmill is good for keeping a stereo running during the same, I'm all ears. As an electrical engineer I'd personally prefer a small gas generator.

[madd0ct0r]

how about a windmill where the blades come within 5 foot of the ground?

cut out the middle man, so to speak.

[Gaidin]

how about a windmill where the blades come within 5 foot of the ground?

cut out the middle man, so to speak.

If you don't want to depend on gas and you don't have the batteries(more dependable than a generator anyway, pure chemistry, no mechanics) to slap in series to have the voltage you need to run the system as long as you need, then I assure you, a better idea is to do something as simple as a set of turnwheels(or one large one) and have a unit of men take turns generating the potential that way than to depend on something as fickle as wind in or before a battle. You have played with those storm radios that you can power by just turning the wheel on them before? Same principle' scaled up.

[madd0ct0r]

ah, no.

I meant a permanant windmill that only produces a noise when turning. Zeds walk up to noise, get head scooped off.

Not very efficient, but you could plant one or two in an area and leave them to it.

[Patroklos]

I'm not talking about the audio system. I'm talking about enough shredders as to be useful during a battle against a million zombies. And if you of all people want to convince me a windmill is good for keeping a stereo running during the same, I'm all ears. As an electrical engineer I'd personally prefer a small gas generator.

You only need one shredder. I am not sure if you noticed but any noise, as long as it is the loudest and most interesting, attracts ALL the zombies. Put a couple of sub woofers into it and your 1 million zombies will happily pack in nuts to butts around your single shredder just waiting for their turn to be pulverized. At this point the only issue would be not clogging the shredder, but then all you have to do is keep the audio going and they will remain there all pushing into that single point probably slowly trampling and crushing themselves without help from outside actors.

Multiple shredders might be faster sure, and its hard to service the shredder with a good near solid kilometer of putrid human flesh surrounding it, so just set up another site while that one is working and make sure you don't create any noise louder than the active slaughter site while you do it.

Of course you would also just put your boom box over a quarry or other confined area with a long fall and bury them after. Over any cliff a few stories tall will render them into a flopping flesh bag of broken bones to be handled at your leisure. One of these will do great for probably all of Asia.

[Gaidin]

You only need one shredder. I am not sure if you noticed but any noise, as long as it is the loudest and most interesting, attracts ALL the zombies. Put a couple of sub woofers into it and your 1 million zombies will happily pack in nuts to butts around your single shredder just waiting for their turn to be pulverized. At this point the only issue would be not clogging the shredder, but then all you have to do is keep the audio going and they will remain there all pushing into that single point probably slowly trampling and crushing themselves without help from outside actors.

So we clear out one area? You can't move the damn thing worth a shit. Easier to do exactly what they did in the book. Civil war style gunline. Sorry, but the author ironically has you beat however much he got wrong with modern military tech.

Multiple shredders might be faster sure, and its hard to service the shredder with a good near solid kilometer of putrid human flesh surrounding it, so just set up another site while that one is working and make sure you don't create any noise louder than the active slaughter site while you do it.

I said multiple smaller shredders, because you can move them. Assuming you not only have the fuel for not only the shredders, but the vehicles to move them. And the time to put them in place before the battle. And assuming you've got enough control of your environment that you don't accidentally attract the zombies while you're putting things in place. That would be...um...hilarious to have that happen. Or hilariously tragic, as it were. They'd learn pretty quick to just stick with the Civil War Era gunline and not add more than the sound system.

Your huge shredder idea is...um...hilarious for logistical reasons. It's pathetic really. You can't move it. You can't control it. You can't get it running fast enough. Well, you don't even need the sound system because it'd make the noise on its own once it DID get running. At least for zombies within miles. But miles are only miles. Good for you, limited use there. You can't maintain it. (You can't maintain the smaller ones either, but I wasn't really worried about small time maintenance, was gonna give that one to him, but holy god this idea is just out of this world for WWZ) The level of engineering required to keep this thing working and mobile to where it needs to be is just...insane.

[Patroklos]

So we clear out one area? You can't move the damn thing worth a shit. Easier to do exactly what they did in the book. Civil war style gunline. Sorry, but the author ironically has you beat however much he got wrong with modern military tech.

The good thing about this version of zombies that they are slavishly attracted to noise and thus its pretty damn easy to steer them wherever you want them to go. Switch on an air raid/tornado warning/whatever siren every few miles, concentrate all the zombies in the surrounding area, and then lead them wherever you want from and tracked vehicle with a PA system to your larger concentration area of choice. While you are leading them you will pick up stragglers along the way. Pied piper for the undead.

Lining up "civil war style" is fucking ridiculously stupid. Not only are you likely to get overrun if they are the fast type from the movies (that easily overwhelmed GAU-19s or the equivalent in Israel) but you are wasting ammunition which is far less replaceable than fuel and more importantly exposing living people for no reason whatsoever.

Your huge shredder idea is...um...hilarious for logistical reasons. It's pathetic really. You can't move it.

Who says you can't move it? Some of these things are pretty large but your average junkyard have versions that are easily movable via flat bed truck. Why the hell would you want to move it? The reason we don't move them is not because we can't but because its more efficient to bring junk to the shredders. This would be the same with zombies.

You can't control it.

Its got an on and off switch, how much fine tuning do you think dropping zombies into rotating mauls requires?

You can't get it running fast enough.

Directions: turn switch to "ON" position.

Perhaps you are thinking of some sort of set up time. Stop, because one of the best things about this is that every major metropolitan area has dozens of these things of all sizes, those metropolitan areas conveniently being where most of the zombies will be anyway.

Well, you don't even need the sound system because it'd make the noise on its own once it DID get running.

These things are not nuclear reactors or the damn space shuttle. They are used routinely in junkyards by your pretty much run of the mill wrecker type for months with little to no maintenance beyond some oil here or there and topping off the fluids. They do require periodic maintenance, especially the super large ones, but then so do the thousands of trucks and other vehicles your human wave defense option relies on to get them everywhere.

In any case I am not sure if just any noise works. In Israel they helicopters flying in and out of the city without much notice from the zombies. It was the music over the PA system playing around the city that brought them so you might need something specific. Not sure.

At least for zombies within miles. But miles are only miles. Good for you, limited use there.

Same goes with your "civil war" lines, except those require you to move thousands of people, hundreds of tons of food and ammunition, and maintain thousands of weapons and vehicles as you go to each and every place zombies might be (worldwide). So you either have a far worse logistics problem if you intend to move the solution to the threat as you seem to assume, or you have the same problem of getting the zombies to your firing line as you do with a shredder.

You can't maintain it. (You can't maintain the smaller ones either, but I wasn't really worried about small time maintenance, was gonna give that one to him, but holy god this idea is just out of this world for WWZ) The level of engineering required to keep this thing working and mobile to where it needs to be is just...insane.

Do you have some sort of junk yard experience the rest of us lack? What sort of maintenance is it you imagine these things need exactly? These things are designed to shred steel cars, do you think flesh and bone will be especially taxing on them? Do you think Joes Wrecker has a teem of white lab coat clad engineers standing by 24/7 to crawl all over it? Note we don't need the sorting and recycling part of the facility or even the conveyor apparatus for input and output, just the rotating mauls. This guy:


http://gizmodo.com/5893440/the-worlds-b ... s-an-hour/

will go through 450 steel cars an HOUR. I imagine that rate is restricted due to moving cars to the mauls, something our ambulatory zombies don't require. Your average Toyota Camry weighs 3500 pounds, your average male weighs 189 pounds. So if all zombies were adult male, and it could grind them at the same rate it can shred cars, that's roughly 8500 zombies turned into slurry an hour. Of course not all those zombies are adult males, and more importantly ARE NOT MADE OUT OF STEEL, so the rate could be far greater than that. This particular one happens to be one of the world's largest and is a power hog and really overkill, but you get the idea.

So flip the things on and sit back and watch. Even if they do break down a few days later so what? It is a near riskless exercise compared to gunhoing it as you suggest with the few living people left. You can always play your reenactment fantasies out with the leftovers.

As for portability:



http://www.wwrequip.com/equipment/a12502pics.htm

Probably more fuel efficient than the MRAPs your firing line will be driving in.

[Gaidin]

Shit, I don't care about MRAPs, what I care about is the things you're not thinking of. WWZ military stopped producing things like the things you're coming up with for a reason, hell they probably stopped producing MRAPs and used humvees, because they weren't exactly fighting your traditional enemy army. And that was for transporting supplies. The soldiers walked to combat at places like Hope. And they only produced their rifles. Insanely simple rifles too. Well, they produced their other infantry weaponry for clearing out the cities as they had to use traditional infantry tactics for those areas as well, but that's not my point here. What you're missing is production, maintenance, and (still) mid-battle power.

That damn thing has a lot of highly specialized parts on it that require their own damn plants to make just for sheer size, both large and small. It's engine. The blades. You need something to spew the guts and gore somewhere so you don't clog the system, and it's got to spew it somewhere away from the firing line. That's going to be solid steel, albeit if you're going to be throwing figures at me of 450 cars an hour not as solid steel as the blades and what's turning them, and the engine running that system. Oh, god it's engine. The parts on its engine in this world after all you have is California and your primary purpose is feeding people and producing hand held weapons. That's your first roadblock. Now you need to find a way to keep those plants running without causing a riot. Probably after you build them up from nothing, since all existing plants(plural) have already been repurposed for rifles and food production. Remember, some parts require their own plants.

Maintenance in a world without specialists. That world has lost its technicians and engineers. It had a long time ago. They'd shifted to survival from their careers, assuming they hadn't been turned or gotten eaten. You're now training people up from nothing. You're starting from at most arithmetic knowledge and trying to get them to work with this between battles, possibly during battles while zombies are charging at it if you've got the balls to ask them once the rifle line attracts them away from it. Though if something goes wrong during battle, you've lost your golden goose, and there's now a pile of zombies inside it tearing it apart instead of getting torn apart. This shit ain't magical. It's pure electromechanics plus mechanical engineering. It's all moving parts. It's pure heyday for the zombies.

Did I mention you're modifying the living shit out of this thing precisely so the zombies can climb all over it and the only way in is through the blade system? Oh, and maybe the exhaust port. Classic one there, gotta leave a way for the engine handle itself. That's why the tanks were so much fun earlier in the thread. Because the author got them so damn wrong but then you want to throw this thing out there as an industrial machine that is not designed for military use? O...K... But as I said, something might go wrong. And when something goes wrong on this scale, oh my god does something really go wrong at least in terms of lost investment. And an investment like this in WWZ where food is practically currency is one hell of an investment. There's a reason they went with just rifles and shooting them in the damn head.

Mid-battle power is your last issue. I personally don't care what it takes to get it to the line. I assume that as part of the cost of doing business as pretty much anything. It cost them what to get their soldiers there? Of course they're going to pay that. Same here. I couldn't give two shits less about your point regarding the MRAPs. They used humvees for ammo, soldiers walked to Hope. Take it. Have a field day with it. It's pointless. Dance around with it. You're modifying this to now have a massive power system attached and protected, lest the damn thing explode. Great gamble to make there. I personally don't care what kind of power system. It's there. Why? Because you don't want fuel lines going across to tanks behind your line, that's why. Even worse gamble to make. We'll go with attaching it to the system. They're now going to be attached to this thing and going to be armored so that the zombies can climb over it just like they can climb over the rest of this thing. That's dragging this thing's fuel efficiency that your bragging about down because that's a shitton of extra weight, by the way, but that's neither here nor there. And they will be fed right into the engine running the system. This thing will have to run on its own independently for however long it's predicted the first battle at Hope to last. Will it last as long as Hope does? Possibly? I'm not sure. Hope was pretty long, 1pm to 4am, but last shot fired just before dawn. They're certainly not leaving the line to turn it off before the last shot. Will they predict fifteen hours? Then they'll have to modify for new data. Change the fuel setup to last for expected battle time if they want to really make use of it.

Of course, you're forcing use of a system that requires more fairly advanced engineering than what they tried in the book for the strategy. Which the author made a point of them losing because of everyone mostly going full survival, dying, or turning zombie. Good luck.

[The Disintegrator]

My opinion is that Brooks does a great job with big picture stuff, his ideas on where the world would go on national and global scales were creative and well written. We can argue that some of it was they was implausible, but then again if you said in 1989 that the Soviet Union was going to fall sometime before the year 2000 that would've seemed implausible as well. For his detail stuff I give him credit for being one of the first to really take a detail and logical approach to zombies with the Zombie Survival Guide. Because really, before the ZSG most people were talking about zombie plans in terms of badass ways to kill them rather than practical methods and actual survival. The flaw I see in his approach is that Brooks has always needed American military equipment as is to fail in order to make his themes work. This was evident in the ZSG where he describes the M16 in a fairly biased and not entirely accurate manner.

In the Battle of Yonkers he had a conclusion he needed to reach, which was that our most effective force had to fail in a very visible way. The whole book has a theme of humanity having to adapt to survive against new kinds of threats. It's 9/11, Iraq, H1N1, and Katrina all rolled into one, and in the aftermath of each one we find that our traditional methods don't cut it. Tactics meant for killing humans don't work as well on zombies in the same way that tactics meant for a Soviet tank column doesn't work the same on a village filled with non-uniformed insurgents. Sadly the details given didn't support his conclusion particularly well, so it came off as unrealistic at times.

The movie however I see as flawed for typical Hollywood reasons.

[Cykeisme]

Why are you still going on aboud building the car-eating mauls and maintaining them?

Patroklos has already made it clear there's plenty of them sitting all over junkyards in major cities.

You don't seem to understand that, for a device that crushes 450 cars an hour into scrap, the wear on its mechanism from continuously shoving tons of zombies into it is practically indistinguishable from shoving nothing into it. It won't even notice.

[Gaidin]

Why are you still going on aboud building the car-eating mauls and maintaining them?

Patroklos has already made it clear there's plenty of them sitting all over junkyards in major cities.

You don't seem to understand that, for a device that crushes 450 cars an hour into scrap, the wear on its mechanism from continuously shoving tons of zombies into it is practically indistinguishable from shoving nothing into it. It won't even notice.

Because it's system is more than it's mechanism and you have to add to it to make it useful for what he wants to do with it, as I explained above. Thanks for not reading.

[biostem]

A few nice heavy trucks w/ plows on the front should suffice. Cordon off an area w/ a few semi trailer shipping crates, position guys w/ guns on top of them, and let them clear them out, or just pour gas and set them ablaze - use the trucks w/ plows to push the zombies into said area.

[Purple]

A few nice heavy trucks w/ plows on the front should suffice. Cordon off an area w/ a few semi trailer shipping crates, position guys w/ guns on top of them, and let them clear them out, or just pour gas and set them ablaze - use the trucks w/ plows to push the zombies into said area.

I think using fire in that way would be a bad idea. Fire has a nasty tendency to spread to stuff you don't want to burn.

[biostem]

A few nice heavy trucks w/ plows on the front should suffice. Cordon off an area w/ a few semi trailer shipping crates, position guys w/ guns on top of them, and let them clear them out, or just pour gas and set them ablaze - use the trucks w/ plows to push the zombies into said area.

I think using fire in that way would be a bad idea. Fire has a nasty tendency to spread to stuff you don't want to burn.

Even then, just setup a firing line. Alternative, you could just have the plows smush the zombies against one wall of the "canyon" you created w/ the shipping crates.