Greetings
Ok Honcho, time for me to turn your arguement in swiss cheese. For this i apologise.
Lets say for starters the virus is spread by bites. And since there is NO proof of how long it takes to "raise" up after being bit i am going to say that if your bitten and get away the infection takes 2 to 3 days to kill you. Now by 2 or 3 days i mean that from being a bite on the arm or torso. Not talking about a huge chunk taken out of you spouting 6 pints of blood every 2 minutes. But a bite to a vital area say any arteiry neck, thigh...you get the point. Soon as that last breath leaves your body and for all intensive purposes you are dead it take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour.
Also the whole one lone zombie thing seems a bit thin on the ground for me, but i shall go along with it.
Since i live in England i will use my home town for example. You said your lone zombie was wandering through L.A. Wandering were? in a park late at night or wandering onto the pitch at a major sporting event? .
Well i'm going to put my lone zombie into my town centre Saturday night, in the town's night club area. This lone creature wanders along, bumps into a group of people and attacks them. During the attack one person recives a nasty bite to the arm and another cuts his knuckles punching such said creature defending his friends. There drunk and rowdy beliver a firm beating to this lone zombie. The guy with a bite on his hand wanders up to the local hospital. In my town case 5 min walk from town centre. Other guy with cut knuckles enter one of the many random night clubs, with the infection in his body.
The poor lone zombie is still out there, bites another person. This person screams out, Door Men from the nearest night club intervine. One door man bit before zombie is restrained. At this point no person in there right mind would be thinking "HHmmm this guy is undead, he's a zombie!!" . No the more realistic view would be "OH christ another druggie or some prick who cant handle his beer" Police arrive and cuff such said zombie. He's hurled into the back of the police van and taken to the police station. We shall leave that "one" zombie alone for now.
So now we have 3 people en route to hospital with varying degrees of bites. And one person infected in a very, very public place. Now i do release i am kicking the arse out of this, but i just want to show how in a short space of time a few individuals can be bitten.
Okay, the first guy with bite on his hand is in hospital, after a few hours wait in the A&E waiting room he's seen to then shipped off to x-ray and then back to A&E to recive treatment. Also since it would almost definitley involve the police, requiring waiting for them, statement etc etc. From bite to release home 6 hours.
(I've spent 5 hours in A&E for a blow to the head and that was during the quite period during the week, not a hectic Saturday night.)
So first victim arrives home say early hours of the morning and goes straight to bed not feeling to well.
Second bite victim, recives a nasty neck wound rushed to A&E straight through seen to straight away. Person stablised and put on ward for observation.
Third bite victim the doorman refuses hospital treatment and recives first aid from paramedics. Yes you can refuse treatment before you start! Goes back to work.
From there on in you could have anything from;
1st bite victim sleeps for a few hours succumbs to the infection reanimates in his own home. Its his mum and dads house, so he say bites the 2 of them. (NO PARENT!!!! is going to use exterme force of there own children). Neighbours hear screaming phone police. Police arrive. Break down front or back boor enter building you have 3 zombies in there by now. Two officers would reply to a call out. Not expecting to be attacked by the undead they them selves are bitten.
(Police batons, pepper spray and restrainment techniques work fine against the living but would relativly do nothing agaist an undead assilant. Since police baton were design to cause pain but not stove some ones skull in) (Most modern police forces use batons made from hardened plastics and metals like aluminium even the metals ones are coated with a soft covering)
So from bite victim number one you now have 5 zombies. Anytime police are called out crowds of people gather, neighbours or just noisy people. Whilst the police where fighting some people would have tried to help the police or to check on there neighbours. Its human nature some people will run and hide other want to know whats going on and help. And not everyone is going to scream"UNDEAD ZOMBIE AIM FOR THE HEAD!!!!!". They either run at the first sign of trouble or get involved either by accident or on purpose. So from that simple fracus you could have anywhere from 5 to 10 zombies lumbering around and 3 or 4 injured people going to hospital.
Second Bite victim passes away in the night. Buzzer and bells go off. Now in the films soon as one buzzer goes off 50 doctors and nurses come rushing in shouting "Stat!!" and "Clear" where as in in real life those who have spent time in hospital know some bells and alarms go unaswered. But we'll say this time some on does come. 2 nurse arrive to see all machine readouts saying no hearbeat pulse etc etc. But as they approach the person sits up and looks at them. Most nurses will think the machines were faulty and go to assist the paitent. 2 more people are bitten maybe more if the body lumbers around and bites any other people on the ward.
Guy with cut knuckles, get plastering drunk goes into the toliets slips smack his head, remember a smack to the head that could kill a human might not even make a zombie blink....if they did blink that was
or chokes on his own vomit take your pick. He re-animates a short while later. Either attacks people in the toilets or manages to make it out onto the dance floor. If he did make it out onto the dance floor in the disco lighting and loud music the zombie would just look like a piss head til it started to attack people. The entire dance floor would erupt into panic and fighting people banging into each other trying to get away. The entire nightclub would descend into chaos.
(Nightclubs in my town are packed to the rafters on Saturday night and there big nightclubs talking a 1000 plus people in the larger ones 2 to 300 hundred in the smaller ones)(And the police tatic for a full nightclub brawl is lock the doors, let them beat the shit out of each other for an hour so and go in when they've tired themselves out beating each other)
So in an hour how many people would be bitten and re-animate, be killed in the panic or hole up some where in the night-club. After that hour the door would be opened and the riot squad would head in. Thats what 40 trained police officers going into a building with a few hundred zombies. They would spill out onto the streets. And wander off in search of fresh meat. lol
Thats all from one zombie, now my timelines from bites go backwards and forward more than a Guy Richie film but all that chaos from one zombie.
Honcho you said a 1000 zombies in 72 hours, i've painted a picture where you could get 3 times that many in 16 hours. Your calculations are way off.
You say that people would be alerted. If this happened on a Saturday night 60% of people would be in there homes asleep.
(My town gets a huge number of people entering it on the weekends between 5 and 10 thousand on saturday nights, for a smallish town its has on of the biggest nightclubs scenes in the northwest)
So how would people be alerted? A friendly door to door service "Excuse me sir but there seems to be a bit of a problem with the recently deceased returning to life and attacking the living, if it isnt to much trouble could you and your family please evacuate!!". Being alerted its a joke, sirens blazing throughout the night would only mean at best "Oh christ another fights broken out at kicking out time" i hear sirens all over the weekend from 7pm onwards so a few more wouldn't make me jump out my seat throw on my rambo kit and pick up my RPG. As for news, there going to report a riot. Not the walking dead attacking the living plus each new network would put a different spin on things, so no real concrete evidence would be being broadcast.
Then you say evacuation? As you said;
"After 72 hours, we now have 1000 zombies. But now people are alerted to the threat, and Los Angeles is evacuated"
LMAO.....no really that made me chuckle.
So after three days, suddenly everyone knows the why's whats were's and how's and is instantly transported to safe havens. Los Angeles has what a population of a few million.........thats a logistical nightmare. It could never be done. Roads would be packed for days. Your either naive at best or stupid to the bone.
Trying to evacuate even my town population 81,203. Since you said they would BE evacuated, thats means that there own cars wouldn't be allowed, no one with there own transport is going to say say "yes i'll follow you and be couped up with tens of thousands of strangers". Especially when rumors and half truths start to fly. Imagine being in one of your safe areas full of thousands of panicky people and some one has a coughing fit or a nose bleed or even maybe an open wound, there be frigging riots straight away.
So 81,203, well lets say 5,000 are now they living dead so thats 76,203 people to be evacuated buses and coaches hold what 50 people? So god what was i thinking it would be easy Honcho to evacuate...you'd only need 1524 coaches. So not only would have to find 1524 coaches but man them and fuel them and have a location that 76,203 peoplecould be stored safely and you said monitered so you'd need a few thousand trained doctors and nurses plus food and water for these people and protection......so yeah your right this all could be sorted out in a few days.........you moron!!! .It would take months of careful planning...not hour or day or even weeks it would take months to organise.
So with the evacuation not really ever happening or the fact that how many people who were bitten would avoid the hospitals and head home or juts away from the town by car or rail the infection would spread. i'm not saying England would fall in a week ffs but it would spread.
The Army would be mobilised after a few days, not hours. It ain't the movies, there isnt a crack squad of zombie killing bad asses with mini-guns sat near a frigging telephone waiting for it to go off. Also the British Army would not jump in feet first. They would want to know what they were facing. And since most goverment agencies couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery i fail to see the zombie epidemic being stomped out effiecently, maybe eventually if would be stopped. After months. But not as quickly as you think. You've either never watch any zombie films or even know how the real world works.
Yes if it did happen, it could be stamped out if everyone worked together and was all paly chummy but people arent like that, were cold selfish people. Hopefully it will never happen, but if it does.... Honcho...while yours sitting in you home....as the hordes of undea surround your building and you start to hear the doors creaking and cracking....juts keep saying "It's ok i'll be evactuated......i'll be ok.....there coming to rescue me"
