Why a classical zombie outbreak would be rather underwhelming

[The_root_of_all_evil]

The people would naturally try to stay away from the smelly drunken looking people so the zombie infection would be greatly slowed.

It's Saturday night, that's sort of tough.

Problem is how it spreads : The original Zombie virus was based on Rabies (as was Rage); so it's saliva based; but an Anthrax or Ebola based virus would be almost impossible to stop apart from Napalm.

Or worse, the Rhinovirus known as the Common Cold, flu like symptoms before shutting down the brain; and it mutates faster than the cure.

 

[Spartan Bannana]

The thing is people who got bit by zombies would be at the hospital
they would probably be detained in quarintine and not be able to leave their rooms
by the time all this has happened the police and medical professionals have figured out they're zombies and would natraully just pop a cap into their head and it would have no chance to spread

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

The thing is people who got bit by zombies would be at the hospital
they would probably be detained in quarintine and not be able to leave their rooms
by the time all this has happened the police and medical professionals have figured out they're zombies and would natraully just pop a cap into their head and it would have no chance to spread

Naturally? I'd rather think the Hippocratic Oath and "To Protect and Serve" would sort of over-rule that, even if you could convince them that it NEEDED doing.

Seriously, killing someone you have no feelings against is FAR harder than any game or Hollywood movie. And if it's airbourne, you've just done their work for them.

 

[H0ncho]

You didn't pay attention reading the Survivalist Guide or World War Z did you?

I paid attention, and following the premises set forth in the books they did not make sense.

WWZ the zombies started out in poorer countries, the infected rich (relativly speaking) went to Europe and America hopeing for a cure. they carried it into hospitals, infecting heundreds in a short period of time.

Ah, but you seem to assume that people, when confronted by a biting maniac, will just lay down and take it, and act like as if nothing ever happened. This seems to be a fairly common assumption among the people following Brooks. In fact it was Brooks who made me write the OP, since his version of the zombie is so utterly unfrightening.

If we know that there is a strange new disease ravaging Africa, and an infected person bites you... Do you think you will just carry on with your life as normal? If those people start biting people at the hospital... Don't you think any sort of guard will pacify them? If we also I doubt they will manage to bite more than a couple of people actually before pacified by the prison guards. The basic mechanisms behind zombie infestation will be discovered extremely quickly if this scenario is true. The implications are obvious: If your beloved one after having been bitten by an infested African and subsequently gets a strange fewer and dies, send him to the hospital. I don't know of anyone who wouldn't do this even if there weren't a fear of a new exotic disease. How long do you think it will take the hospitals to find out that the dead bodies will reanimate? 24 hours? 25? Not long. After it has happened once or twice. Probably the observers in Africa and Asia has already discovered it.

So if you know that a) people infected tend to bite other people like as if they were maniacs and b) the infection spreads through biting and c) the dead people will rise again, the infection will be easy to contain. Just "kill" all the dead people.

Also the Brookian zombie infection uses 24 hours to completely infest the victim. This is so long that the zombies can't ever reach critical mass. The only way a Brookian apocalypse can happen is if people are replaced with unquestioning, unimaginative dolls.

1) Depends...if it's an airborn or swallowed infection, then it'd just get into the air faster. I think the basis of the "removing the head" refers to shattering the brain and severing the spinal cord; which is far more difficult with an AK than a Spas.
2) People not trained in firing an assault rifle are FAR more likely to hurt themselves and others rather than the target. The kick back alone will knock a unbraced man into traction.
3) Subduing zombies is a lot more difficult than humans; because Zombies don't respond to immobilization techniques or intimidation. And the Police are gonna be equally as scared.
4) Have you EVER heard of a press photographer not trying to get an exclusive personal shoot?

Again, the assumption that people will act completely irrationally. First, I don't think the armies of the world are unused to firing assault rifles. And I doubt normal people will go hunting zombies with weapons they can't use. For the subduing part, zombies does not have superhuman strength. Neither do they get the adrenaline-rush effect. As someone who knows a little of wrestling and stuff (not much but the basics) I can say that someone completely stiff would be the easiest to subdue. The police are trained to handle drug-abusers, mad people and others, so handling a zombie should be easy. They'll regard him as a very fucked up junkie.

As for the press photographer: Imagine that a known madman walks against you, and that you can see that his intent is to hurt you. Will you just stand there and wait for him to grab and bite you? No? Didn't think so. Provided the photographers are able to dodge a walking, wailing man coming against them at speeds of 3-6 km/hour, they should be pretty safe. Even a person in a wheelchair would be able to do dodge a zombie.

 

[Alotak]

the basic flaw with Viral Zombies is the idea of the virus itself, virus' destroy cells as they reproduce, and so the Zombie would breakdwon rather quickly.

Assuming this didnt happen then Zombies would be quite scary,

And about the 'Headshot' stuff, if you shoot a zombies leg they will be even slower there chest and they will begin to fall apart, it is pointless to be afriad or worried in a Zombie Infestation senario.

The main thing which would cause deaths is the 'but he/she is still my relation' and the hope for a cure. Assume the worst untill proven wrong.

 

[Senor Smoke21]

you mention heavy machine guns and explosives and also max brooks books
one of the chapters in world war z shows how ineffective explosives and machine guns are
you need a fair amount of aiming to take out a zombie, firing blindly into a horde with a machine wont do much. same with explosives.
also society wont accept the idea of zombies as quickly as you put forward
if a zombie was in LA and bit a few people, these people may not think that much of it
they just see it as some crazy homeless guy, like in Shaun of the dead when Pete is bitten (awesome film)
it would probably take the victims of the first zombie to rise that would alert the authorities and even then they would be sceptical of the living dead
this would probably lead to members of the police force becoming infected, all the while the original zombie and those others infected could be biting more oblivious people
the thing about a zombie outbreak is how no one is prepared for it
the majority of people do not believe that zombies could ever exist so would refuse to believe it if it actually happened and not take the necessary precautions
it would take a good ling while until those in charge actually accepted what was happening
and most likely it would be too late by then
if it started in LA the whole city could be overrun in days, then people fleeing via motorways would be trapped and the undead could easily take care of them, leading to other cities
you do bring up some valid points such as the speed of the zombies but i think you overlooked the general unpreparedness of this event, it would quickly spiral out of hand

 

[kyekye]

Perhaps we are thinking about this in the wrong way. Can any of you honestly say that the world would be worse off if it were temporarily ruled by zombies? Think about it. If 85% of the world's population were whiped out, only the strongest, and smartest 15% would remain. If natural selection holds true, the survivors that re-took the planet would procreate a race of genetic supermen that would elevate humanity to a level it has never achieved before.If anything we should be facilitating the zombie apocalypse.

i know im goin a long way back with a quote but im pretty sure this is how hitler felt about the mass genocide of jews..... hence the whole him screaming germans were the master race blah...blah...blah

 

[BallPtPenTheif]

i don't know Honcho, your initial idea seems to exist in a world with a collective mindset where people altruistically work together towards the best interest of man kind.

there are many people, if bitten, who would proceed to prance around in denial spreading the virus. and there are others who would kick and scream to retain every last second of their human existence attacking soldiers or even defending their zombie family.

so yes, if zombies were in location A, you could mobilize soldiers to points B and C to cut them off. but now imagine an integrated city mixed with infected, non-infected, and straight up zombies... all of these agents acting towards their own self interest in a non-collective manner. just because there is a zombie outbreak, doesn't mean that people are going to be more willing to work together.

and we haven't even discussed the potential errors for bad logistically planning by the government. remember, it's not one person with a solution, it is an entire organization filled with different ideas, agendas, and motivations. The film Syrania does a good job of exploring the social economic and political variables that effect the consequences of a nation.

 

[Alotak]

Perhaps we are thinking about this in the wrong way. Can any of you honestly say that the world would be worse off if it were temporarily ruled by zombies? Think about it. If 85% of the world's population were whiped out, only the strongest, and smartest 15% would remain. If natural selection holds true, the survivors that re-took the planet would procreate a race of genetic supermen that would elevate humanity to a level it has never achieved before.If anything we should be facilitating the zombie apocalypse.

i know im goin a long way back with a quote but im pretty sure this is how hitler felt about the mass genocide of jews..... hence the whole him screaming germans were the master race blah...blah...blah

Hitler did some great things for Germany, I'm not defending the T*** but he funded Voltswangon and built the Autobanns.

If there is a Viral Epidemic of anykind then those who are immune or find a cure will survive, not the smartest and the strongest.

Humankind has stopped evolving to the Darwinian style and we are now, 'Selectivly Breeding' which means that we will end up evolved in a way which will not be adapted to the natural environment. a bit tangental i know but true non the less.

 

[Zemalac]

Meh. Another zombie outbreak.

An outbreak in a third-world country would be over the fastest, I think, due to random groups of heavily armed people who aren't afraid to use excessive force. An outbreak in LA would be more dangerous, merely because it's so crowded. However, the perception that in an emergency American cities will basically fall apart into panic-stricken individuals has not really held true in real life (read: 9/11, specifically the reaction of the firefighters, police, and other civilians) and thus I think that the city would react better than expected to an outbreak. When you add in the fact that this is LA we're talking about, one of the US cities where everyone and their mother is armed, the threat begins to approach zero.

Despite this logic, I'm planning on relocating to Mars if there's a zombie outbreak. Just in case.

 

[Fineldar]

Wow, the OP shares the exact same thinking as I do(we should hang out), though that never stopped me from choosing my zombie survival place.

One thing that wasn't mentioned is the number of zombies. We're talking about the classical shambling horror with little brain function. But if they could detect human flesh, the problem becomes much more severe because every place you hide has zombies banging on your door. This isn't a terrible thing because of population. Think about how many people you see in a day, and think about what happens in a zombie outbreak(might be scary if you live in New York City). Now subtract a large number from this total as survivors hiding out and evacuees. I'm pretty sure this will be at least half of that number. Then take another out for dead( from violent panic, accidents, etc...) assuming the disease is transferred from bites, not airborne virus. Now the streets are relatively clear, with a few zombies stumbling around stuck in buildings.

Now if your hiding spot is tall with a big parking lot in front, you'll be fine as long as your crew takes shifts siting on the roof taking out the slow, sporratic zombies coming at you, or clubbing them in the parking lot with a 2x4. All the zombies in the city won't be going for you, they'll be going for whatever people they sense the closest. A safe location like this with plenty of supplies will help dissipate panic, and help regulate everybody to the point where living in a sheltered area and going on their zombie watch shifts will be a normal thing, making non of those things in movie where people screw everything up from panic or fear eating away at their minds. Soon I'll have a nice town built up.

i know im goin a long way back with a quote but im pretty sure this is how hitler felt about the mass genocide of jews..... hence the whole him screaming germans were the master race blah...blah...blah

Except Hitler just made up some arbitrary rules for the best people and wanted the rest to be killed or subservient. He's talking about strong smart guys who survived crazy shit.

Blond dudes, or guys who survival zombie holocaust. Who do you think is better?

 

[H0ncho]

i don't know Honcho, your initial idea seems to exist in a world with a collective mindset where people altruistically work together towards the best interest of man kind.

Naaah not really. Most of my assumptions are about how people will act on the individual level: that they will remove a biting maniac from society. In a zombie infestation scenario, the interest of the individual - not to get bitten - is beneficial to the rest of society as well.

you mention heavy machine guns and explosives and also max brooks books
one of the chapters in world war z shows how ineffective explosives and machine guns are

But it ain't logical. Machine guns can make pretty large holes in people, and zombies will eventually fall apart from them. Explosives ditto. In the worst case, just drive a tank over them.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

"you mention heavy machine guns and explosives and also max brooks books
one of the chapters in world war z shows how ineffective explosives and machine guns"

With all due respect to him, Max Brooks is clearly thick as two short planks if he thinks Machine Guns and Explosives will be inneffectual. Your firing high-powered weapons at slow-moving humans. Even if you don't decapitate them, you'll still probably either burn them to death (incendiary rounds) or immobilise them. And explosives are a ditto.

 

[minignu]

Hitler did some great things for Germany, I'm not defending the T*** but he funded Voltswangon and built the Autobanns.

Actually, much of the economic recovery was already underway before Hitler came to power, and much of the good policies can be put down to Hjalmar Schacht, who didn't buy into any of the racialist parts of the Nazis. [/tangent]

Anyway, it appears to me that the OP is making some assumptions that seem inaccurate. For one thing, depending on how the infection starts, it could be a lot more problematic than first thought. If based in the water supply for example, this could lead to a much worse situation than that put forward in the post as the zombie numbers would increase much faster, or the "space radiation" one, which may affect several cities at once. Not to mention, I don't know how fast the government would be able to react - would they really be able to lock down the city fast enough? What if a single infected boarded a plane to another city - they could either end up attacking the people on the plane (I doubt they would kill the zombie before it managed to infect a couple more of them) or turn in the middle of a densely packed city. Not to mention all the other factors, such as "fast" zombies or speedier infection.

Also interesting - what would happen if the outbreak was in somewhere far less prepared? Sure, in America, there's a large amount of guns the civilian population can defend themselves with, and the main population centres are further apart, BUT what about in the UK? We have far less available weaponry, which may speed up how fast we get infected and the population centres are a lot closer. Someone infected could easily get to other cities, turn there and cause havok. Hmmmm.

Also: http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/

 

[Zemalac]

Anyway, it appears to me that the OP is making some assumptions that seem inaccurate. For one thing, depending on how the infection starts, it could be a lot more problematic than first thought. If based in the water supply for example, this could lead to a much worse situation than that put forward in the post as the zombie numbers would increase much faster, or the "space radiation" one, which may affect several cities at once. Not to mention, I don't know how fast the government would be able to react - would they really be able to lock down the city fast enough? What if a single infected boarded a plane to another city - they could either end up attacking the people on the plane (I doubt they would kill the zombie before it managed to infect a couple more of them) or turn in the middle of a densely packed city. Not to mention all the other factors, such as "fast" zombies or speedier infection.

H0ncho actually mentioned all this. He's referring here to what I would call a "standard cliche" outbreak of what he called Brooksian zombies. That means zombiehood is an infection transmitted by bite, they move slowly, there is a 24 hour period before reanimation, and the outbreak is caused by a single Patient Zero zombie. His thesis is based upon these assumptions. It's already been acknowledged that altering those factors would alter the threat level, though for some of them not as much as you'd expect.

 

[Pifflestick]

Problem with your theory, (and before I start my rant I was to lazy to read the rest of the posts.) an outbreak more likely won't begin exactly situated in one city. If it were to start out in say Los Angeles and San Fransisco, it would be heading in two angles, a two pronged attack. And what about airlines, before the infection is realised. Also, people driving out of town before the infection is realised. Now if it were to start with one zombie in San Fran and one in LA.

Each bites ten people, two of those people have travel plans to different parts of the country which will take less than twenty-four hours. They arrive in their destinations, possibly already dead and will rise within minutes of landing. Each of the new zombies bites ten more zombies. Say it was the same thing with each new ten until the infection is realised, then you have zombie spreading all across America because of two zombies.

And what if it starts in a rural area? Slowly overtaking several farms before moving into LA, building up a good 100 zombies before hitting a major city. That would be a veritable army. LA would be destroyed within hours. And again, air travel, trains, cars, boats, there are numerous ways that it can quickly spread.

I can't really think of anything else right now but if I do expect to get more corrections.

 

[UpInSmoke]

Look at how the U.S. government and the citizens of New Orleans handled hurricane Katrina, a well known type of disaster that provided clear warning long before the shit hit the fan.

The city devolved into total chaos, and the government dropped the ball. And that's a government that has dealt with hundreds of hurricanes and should have had some idea what to expect.

How the hell is the government supposed to respond to re-animated corpses? There is no contingency plan. The problem is almost guaranteed to fester for some time before a perfect strategy can be agreed upon and implemented.

I think it takes a great deal of faith to assume that any government (and the people of any major city) will recognize and react to a zombie outbreak in a rational, well-organized way. It's just not human nature.

 

[Fineldar]

How the hell is the government supposed to respond to re-animated corpses? There is no contingency plan. The problem is almost guaranteed to fester for some time before a perfect strategy can be agreed upon and implemented.

The government has plans for everything. Any crazy ass-shit that could happen, they have a plan. Also, the U.S. has a lot, if not a majority, of their troops in the U.S.

Zombie Outbreak might be easier than Katrina. It's a lot easier to bust in there with lots of guns and shoot stuff, and people will evacuate faster when they know that if they stay, they're going to be zombies. Which scares you more, highly probably hurricane hitting that's most likely going to be cat-5 when it hits, on a city that's supposed to be protected, or possible death and zombies?

 

[UpInSmoke]

How the hell is the government supposed to respond to re-animated corpses? There is no contingency plan. The problem is almost guaranteed to fester for some time before a perfect strategy can be agreed upon and implemented.

The government has plans for everything. Any crazy ass-shit that could happen, they have a plan. Also, the U.S. has a lot, if not a majority, of their troops in the U.S.

Zombie Outbreak might be easier than Katrina. It's a lot easier to bust in there with lots of guns and shoot stuff, and people will evacuate faster when they know that if they stay, they're going to be zombies. Which scares you more, highly probably hurricane hitting that's most likely going to be cat-5 when it hits, on a city that's supposed to be protected, or possible death and zombies?

I disagree. It's not easy at all for the government to reach a consensus. The "send in the national guard to start mowing down crowds of people in the streets of Los Angeles" bill is not going to sail smoothly through Congress, regardless of the situation on the ground.

Even a George Bushian executive order wouldn't make the situation any more palatable to the commanders and troops on the ground who are still struggling to wrap their heads around the fact that they are slaughtering a horde of walking corpses, not a crowd of innocent human beings.

Basically, you're not taking the human factor into account. I seriously doubt that everybody will recognize, accept, and respond intelligently to a zombie outbreak in a timely manner. It's just not a realistic expectation.

 

[SolaceAvatar]

Biggest problem with any zombie story- food. I mean, that's why the zombies are running around eating people, right? 'cause they ran out of stuff in the fridge and can't open cans. So, what happens when there aren't any more people in the area to eat? 100% magic-invulnerable zombies could I suppose just maintain themselves indefinitely but then they're about the same as a terminator, whole different genera. Once the food runs out, probably a few hours, the zombies would start eating eachother or starve. And then starve shortly thereafter. And although you could last for about a month with no food, it's much less with no water, which zombies would be equally braindead about. So I figure any uncontrolled outbreak would fix itself in about half a week, one way or another.