Could slow zombies ever really defeat the military?

[biostem]

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?

[Eternal_Freedom]

I suppose it will depend a great deal on how difficult it is to "kill" the zombies. If it requires directly destroying the brain, then it may pose a problem, especially at first, as soldiers are trained to aim at centre-mass, and fragmentation weapons like grenades and artillery won't be as effective.

Also, it's such a different enemy to fight that modern tactics may struggle with it. For instance, there is no chain of command you can eliminate via airstrikes/artillery to sow confusion in the enemy. You can't use "shock and awe" to break their morale and force a retreat. That sorta thing.

So, yeah, depending on what exactly is needed to kill a zombie, militaries will probably ultimately win, but may suffer unexpected defeats early on until they can adapt to the new enemy.

[The Romulan Republic]

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?

Why would you even have to shoot infected people? I mean, we have this thing in the modern world called "quarantine". If worst comes to worst, wait for them to die, then shoot/decapitate/burn the corpse immediately.

I suppose you could have a zombie pandemic that spread really fast if you go with virus zombies rather than magic zombies. But then its not really the zombies that are defeating you, is it?

[biostem]

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?

Why would you even have to shoot infected people? I mean, we have this thing in the modern world called "quarantine". If worst comes to worst, wait for them to die, then shoot/decapitate/burn the corpse immediately.

I suppose you could have a zombie pandemic that spread really fast if you go with virus zombies rather than magic zombies. But then its not really the zombies that are defeating you, is it?

I should have been more clear, my apologies. By "shooting infected people" I meant you're walking around, and a couple fresh zombies are coming at you, you shoot them down, by bystanders who aren't in the know think you're killing living people, they call the authorities, and they come and arrest you...

[The Romulan Republic]

Okay, that makes sense.

Sort of.

See, I think once it became clear that their was a plague making people turn into flesh eating monsters going around, attitudes would change pretty fast.

Anyway, plenty of places will let you use lethal force in self-defence. Which it would be if zombies were attacking you.

[Simon_Jester]

Basically, the only way zombies become a credible threat to an army with modern weapons is if something else kills or neutralizes nearly all the soldiers and officers in that army.

If a zombie plague resulted in 99% of the population dying of the plague, the survivors would be so disorganized and scattered that even the surviving soldiers (all ten thousand or so in the US, and probably no more than a few hundred thousand total worldwide) could not organize effective resistance capable of killing that many zombies.

But that's basically just another way of saying that a bioweapon which kills 99% of people in a country will render its army incapable of resistance, which is fairly obvious whether zombies get involved or not.

[Grumman]

Also, it's such a different enemy to fight that modern tactics may struggle with it. For instance, there is no chain of command you can eliminate via airstrikes/artillery to sow confusion in the enemy. You can't use "shock and awe" to break their morale and force a retreat. That sorta thing.

That's a weakness, not a strength. Zombies have no chain of command, but that means they come pre-confused with no capacity for strategic thought. You cannot break their morale, but that makes them meat for the grinder because they're too stupid to retreat from an overwhelming foe.

...But that's basically just another way of saying that a bioweapon which kills 99% of people in a country will render its army incapable of resistance, which is fairly obvious whether zombies get involved or not.

Yeah, this.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Also, it's such a different enemy to fight that modern tactics may struggle with it. For instance, there is no chain of command you can eliminate via airstrikes/artillery to sow confusion in the enemy. You can't use "shock and awe" to break their morale and force a retreat. That sorta thing.

That's a weakness, not a strength. Zombies have no chain of command, but that means they come pre-confused with no capacity for strategic thought. You cannot break their morale, but that makes them meat for the grinder because they're too stupid to retreat from an overwhelming foe.

That second part relies on the human military the zombies are attacking actually being superior. If, for instance, zombies do require a headshot to eliminate, and there are five zombies for every bullet those soldiers have, the zombies are going to be the overwhelming force, and with no chain of command or capacity for strategic thought, they will simply keep coming no matter the losses.

So, yeah, lack of hierarchy and strategic thought may well hurt the zombies, but I suspect it would hurt the humans significantly. AS well as the "we have to change tactics" part I already brought up, you also have the fucking demoralising effect of knowing the enemy will just keep coming no matter the cost.

Honestly, I think a major part of how dangerous zombies are as an overall threat depends on a) how humans become zombies, b) how durable those zombies are and c) how much time the infection/curse/whatever has to work before the threat is realised on a national or international level. Whether they can move quickly or slowly is, IMO, a long way down the list of important criteria.

[biostem]

The impression I'm getting from you guys is that a big part has to do with how long it takes the soldiers to catch on to what tactics work, how quickly they can get the word out, (if at all), and whether the demoralizing effects of not having breaks in the attacks while your ammo and soldier count steadily declines, gets to the soldiers before they can clear the area.

Are their pre-fab or rapidly deployable barriers that would be effective against an approaching force of 100's if not 1000's of zombies? Perhaps if you could stack those concrete highway barriers...

[Grumman]

That second part relies on the human military the zombies are attacking actually being superior.

Fortunately, they are.

If, for instance, zombies do require a headshot to eliminate...

Then a mission kill will have to suffice. Zombies are still made out of flesh, which means that damage can render them incapable of attacking even if they are still animate. And since they are too stupid to retreat, mowing them down is easy.

...and there are five zombies for every bullet those soldiers have...

Then you are engaging in idiotic zombie wank. How are zombies supposed to reach that critical mass? You cannot simply presuppose that there are tens of millions of zombies unless there is a method for one zombie to become a hundred zombies to become a thousand zombies, and so on. And even if they did have those numbers, even if there are ten thousand zombies in one place trying to attack a single fire team, that mass of zombies is a big, fat, easy target for supporting fire.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Did you miss my previous point about the threat of zombies depending on how long the infection can spread before the military acts? That's a major factor.

As for whether or not the human forces are superior, well, certain types of units are. Aircraft are safe, provided they're airborne. Tanks and armoured vehicles are safe, until they run out of fuel or ammunition. But leg infantry? That's much less certain, and that's what's needed if you're going to clear zombies out from population centres.

And your claim that mowing them down is easy. Again, did you miss the part about it depends on how tough they are to eliminate? That's the question. Mission-killing them is a short-term fix. Mowing them down will just create a rampart of damaged zombies. It also assumes that the zombies are far enough away and/or slow-moving enough to be gunned down so easily; if they are fast zombies or they, I dunno, emerge from a building next to the soldiers or something, it's a very different situation.

The method of infection is important as well. If it's an airborne infection, all your soldiers are going to need to fight while wearing chemical-warfare gear. I'm not a soldier, but I've heard enough ex-squaddies bitch about that stuff to know it's restricting both in motion and vision/hearing, which is going to make your soldiers less effective.

Yes, you are right, that if we make the right assumptions (zombies easily killed, shambolic, rapid response to initial outbreak, infection spread through bites etc) then militaries will flatten them easily enough. However, if zombies are more resilient, faster, there isn't a rapid response (for whatever reason), infection is airborne and so on, then you've got a serious problem. It's not enough to say "yeah the military will crush them easily" in every possible scenario, it requires a bit more thought. IIRC, that's why zombie plagues are used as case studies for real-world contingency planning, because there are many criteria to chose from and a few changes to those can produce radically different threats.

[Joun_Lord]

I doubt the zombies could defeat the military unless the military acts like complete idiots or people drag their feet so long the zombie hordes reach critical mass that they can overwhelm most any military force.

Soldiers aren't idiots, they will quickly adapt to fighting zombies. If you can't take them down with body shots soldiers will adapt to shooting them in the head. Already modern soldiers in combat have been racking up headshots thanks to being trained on video games and the sheer amount of optics available and thats against enemies that fight back, move fast, and won't usually charge straight on. Against shambling zombies it becomes all that much easier. They will adapt to clearing houses. They aren't going to just rush straight in but probably stay outside and form a perimeter, beep the horn of their vehicle and mow the bastards down when they walk out.........s...l...o...w...l...y.

Soldiers are also less likely to be overwhelmed compared to soldiers of the past. Not only is the modern military force mobile but uses alot of full body armor. Zombies aren't going to be able to bite through kevlar (considering they are still humans with human teeth and jaws they shouldn't be able to bite through alot of things, a sufficiently thick jacket should stop a bite) and ain't going to do jack and shit against even an unarmored humvee.

Now their is a couple scenarios the military could lose. Maybe most of the military is deployed elsewhere. Certainly the US would have had some troubles if a zombie outbreak occurred during the height of the A-stan and Iraq occupations. Maybe the military decides not to intervene until late in the fight, instead relying on police to deal with it (though an argument could be made even police could probably deal with all but the worst outbreak). Maybe the zombies are straight up magic that still keep going no matter how much damage you deal to them. Maybe the virus is airborne. Maybe the virus causes mutations that create smarter, faster zombies who's teeth adapts to bite through shit.

Pretty much though the only way the zeds win is to make them military complete idiots from top rung all the way down, make them magic, or artificially gimp the military to make them less effective.

[Guardsman Bass]

One thing that could really upset efforts to get things under control would be if you got a massive panic early on, with misinformation and fear running rampant across social media and the news. Imagine the emotional impact of seeing the police pump a ton of bullets into zombies with no apparent effect - after all, if this is a world where zombies never existed in fiction, they won't know the "tricks".

On top of that, the government would almost certainly be trying to capture and quarantine zombies at first rather than rushing to shoot them, as the Romulan Republic pointed out. That increases the burden further.

. . . I still don't think it would be enough to cause a Zombie Apocalypse with Romero Rules Zombies, although it could cause some very nasty outbreaks before it gets around how to kill these things and people start to hunker down and prepare. At the end of the day, zombies are just really easy to deter and stop - you can lure them into traps and trenches, shoot or strike them in the head to kill them, and build simple barricades to keep them out.

One particularly nasty side-effect of the zombie plague is that even if you get it under control, you're still going to have zombies popping up in obnoxious places - particularly low-population and inaccessible parts of the countryside in rich and poor countries. It reminds me of the ending of World War Z.

[madd0ct0r]

They're coming" Crystal yelled. Squinting past the floozy with the binoculars, I cursed as the first green murky blob of fatigues swam into view through the yellow dust. Fucking first gen grunts. We didn't know what had turned them, although I had my suspicions. Valdez had no bites on him when he turned, just sitting in his trunk tent cleaning his guns. Las Vegas was always bad, but at least the blood suckers and cannibals gave reciepts. When the bases on the outskirts turned the first they knew in the strip was when grunts started staggering out of the suburbs followed by a horde of blank eyed pool owners. Each casino had its own security, oxygen supply and contingency planning. They turtles up. The rest of us schmucks down past the end of the lights? We got out of bat country.

Who the fuck knew there were so many bases? After seeing Valdez tear the throat out of Charles I wouldn't touch guns and viewed even engine oil with suspicion. A battered school bus, a couple of pickups and one Harley with the star's and stripes billowing behind it. Every night, park up, get some food down the kids and sit through the night waiting for the first groan in the dark. We were drawing them behind us, and pulling in the scatteres that stood in the sun, waiting for something to come by so they could groan themselves into following. Fucking bases everywhere. Road blocks turned buffets. Cops and security guards roaming empty malls. We headed further into the desert. Hoover dam. That'll be the place to make a stand. Water, power and a causeway for spears.

[Simon_Jester]

So, uh... zombies could defeat the military if the act of touching a firearm turns you into a zombie?



Now that's some original thinking.

[Purple]

The only real way a zombie outbreak could catch any traction at all is if animals are involved. Airborne transmission can be controlled easily enough by quarantine measures. And a modern army could very easily dispatch any number of human zombies. Automatic weapons and explosives could even if not outright kill maim and immobilize them. And than all you need is a squad of volunteers in heavy clothing to perform executions. However if for some reason animals can get infected by say eating zombie flesh than you suddenly have an outbreak that can't be contained. Like imagine if all the stray cats, dogs or rats suddenly became potential zombies. That's scary.

[madd0ct0r]

So, uh... zombies could defeat the military if the act of touching a firearm turns you into a zombie?



Now that's some original thinking.

I was thinking having a minor additive to the gun oil having unfortunate psychological effects, but the idea of being eaten by the military industrial complex itself...

[Lagmonster]

You guys really need to establish the rules of the zombie you're asking about, because there are a shitload of different options, including differences in speed and strength, proliferation and method of transmission, etc.

Consider the difference in response to Walking Dead zombies versus, say, Resident Evil zombies. I remember bosses in RE4 that had the strength and durability of construction equipment even if you account for game mechanics.

[Jub]

Mission-killing them is a short-term fix.

No, it isn't.

A zombie doesn't heal this means that broken bones, torn muscles, missing limbs, damaged sensory organs, etc. will forever hamper any zombie so damaged. This means that these zombies can not effectively keep up with the horde. Thus, you've started to thin out the horde already.

You're also underestimating the amount of damage that a combined arms for can do to a densely packed horde. Things like cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines, grenades, artillery, mortars, and concealed pits and going to be highly effective at causing massive damage to zombie hordes. Even beyond that, slow zombies, as stupid as they are, would be weak against simply being corraled and ignored. A smart military force could create a large pen within a city either by downing buildings to form walls, building walls between buildings, or luring zombies into places like stadiums. Then you simply close up the ways out with heavy barriers, set a token patrol, and wait for the zombies to run out of fuel.

This doesn't even get at the question of how hordes don't start to thin naturally after a few days in the typical zombie scenario. If your zombies are created by a disease they need energy to run, period. That energy has to be transmitted to the muscles, brain, and whatever organs break down this energy source. So zombies must feed at some rate in order to stay in motion. Given that zombies don't plan, don't give kills to starving zombies to keep the horde strong, this means that the stronger and faster zombies will get more of the kills by virtue of being better able to get to the edge of the horde the most often. As a result, those stuck in the middle of the horde will starve, and if they need anything like the energy requirements of a human body this should happen within days with weakness setting in well before that. This means that your zombie horde is already self-thinning simply due to hunting behavior not being designed for communal feeding.

Really, the best thing you can do to a zombie horde is to get it to a place where food is limited and let it starve out over a period of days to a week. While there you can also attack them ensuring that you hurt their ability to feed. Doing this should have any large zombie hordes dead in weeks and lone zombies aren't any more of a threat than wild animals.

[mr friendly guy]

I am kind of new to the zombie genre, but couldn't incendiaries like napalm just burn them to the point where they won't be coming at you?

[Borgholio]

If the zombies are slow and shambling, then napalm should be fine. If the brain needs to be destroyed, a good way to do it is by literally boiling it within the skull itself. If zombies are fast, then you're talking about a running molotov cocktail...which isn't good.

[Jub]

If the zombies are slow and shambling, then napalm should be fine. If the brain needs to be destroyed, a good way to do it is by literally boiling it within the skull itself. If zombies are fast, then you're talking about a running molotov cocktail...which isn't good.

Technically you can cook the brain with sustained temperatures of 40 C (104.0 F) so even if the zombies aren't literally burnt to death you could potentially cause brain damage by setting them on fire and letting them burn.

[jwl]

I'm not as fond of zombies that can be "killed" by headshots. In my mind, zombies are decaying corspes reanimated by magic, so headshots are going to do nothing, blowing their arms and legs off is the best bet at stopping them.

[Raw Shark]

I am reminded of the opening sequence of Zombieland, when the running humanoid torch flying tackles the fireman with the hose in slo-mo.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'm not as fond of zombies that can be "killed" by headshots. In my mind, zombies are decaying corspes reanimated by magic, so headshots are going to do nothing, blowing their arms and legs off is the best bet at stopping them.

Like the Necromorphs from Dead space? They are pretty awesome as far as "zombie-ish monsters" go.