The Walking Dead: TV Series (Comic spoilers in tags with warning)

[Azog 150]

What are the chances of a zombie apocalypse ever getting out of hand anyway? Especially walking/shambling zombies. As soon as the government got wind of a zombie outbreak surely they would just quarantine the effected area and bomb the living out of it before sending in gues to finish off anyone/thing left alive? The zombie outbreak would end then and there.

That is unless the zombie virus spread in a way other then direct contact. An airborne or waterborne virus would be absolutely devastating

[Gelgoog]

What are the chances of a zombie apocalypse ever getting out of hand anyway? Especially walking/shambling zombies. As soon as the government got wind of a zombie outbreak surely they would just quarantine the effected area and bomb the living out of it before sending in gues to finish off anyone/thing left alive? The zombie outbreak would end then and there.

That is unless the zombie virus spread in a way other then direct contact. An airborne or waterborne virus would be absolutely devastating

that is of course assuming that it only starts in one place, and not all over the world simultaneously. In these modern day of age, assuming that a bite wound take 24-48 hours to turn its victim. Well one zombie could bite a dozen people in an international city like london before being contained and send to a hospital. No one would know what it is yet, and those dozen people go about their day some maybe going on planes. those dozen people get sick, bite their families or bite a bunch of people when they go to the hospital. Bam that turns into 200 people infected.

Now the first thing that would happen when you have a dozen hospitals suddenly jammed up with people who have nasty bites and apparently some sort of crazy rabbies like disease is that the CDC would be called. They will take at least 24-48 hours before the even know how to setup a quarantine. News reports of strange rabbies outbreak hits the airwaves and people are told to call the CDC/emergency services if anybody they know or run into is displaying these aggressive tendencies. At this point you have probably hundreds of thousands of people who have been infected with a few hundred zombies. The few zombies that are running around have been shot by emergency workers or by civilians. Police reports are being filled ( because homicides take alot of time). Pretty much emergency workers are starting to get overwhelmed with reported attack. The govt is starting to examine people who have reanimated and are trying to figure out what the heck is going on, and of course do not want to panic the population by saying things like "reanimated corpses".

All of this red tape slows down any reaction by the government, and at best you have local govt calling up reserve fire fighters and policemen to deal with the riots( or undead mobs)...of course by this time your hospitals are overflowing and most of your emergency workers are probably infected by trying to control these people with what they think is an outbreak of rabbies. Parents are tending to their sick infected children...children sit and watch as their infected parents turn on them.

Then bam you have the magic hour, when the government finally realizes something is really really wrong, and they declare martial law and call up the armed forces...that is when you have millions of bite victims succumbing to the virus and turning all at one time. Grocery stores and mall, hospitals and police stations are suddenly overflowing with the undead. Sure the army is beginning to mobilize, but alot of those soldiers who should be reporting to their bases so they can be armed are either infected or zombies by now ( because like most armies, reservists and national guardsmen have jobs outside the armed forces). Alot of those who were on duty already likely got tasked with helping the police do riot control or put out fires that have sparked all across the city.

So maybe if we are lucky we will have 10-20% of our armed forces showing up to post to be armed. The first thing these guys have to do is secure their own bases, which are likely being swarmed with people trying to get on who are fleeing the choas. These bases often times act as relief centers during disasters, so there is the chance that these bases are already over run with the undead. However even if they are not all the people fleeing to the military bases for protection are likely to have alot of infected individuals in their midst, which means the military is likely to lose alot of bases trying to protect these civilians. Then there are all those military personnel who do not even report to duty and instead go home to protect their families, or just desert seeing how screwed up everything is.


so to answer you question....the govt is slow to react to anything, and when it finally does it will likely be to late. So I would never count on our armed services being able to simply quarantine a city, by the time the army is called up it would likely have been a week since the first zombie started biting people. In a realistic situation, people are not going to jump to the zombie conclusion right away, they will call the CDC/FEMA first who will attempt to isolate and understand the outbreak....and that all takes time...time we don't have. There may not be enough military personnel left when the order is given to assemble. Even during pandemics, when the military is called up, they do not roll out in tanks, they technically go out in riot gear at best.

[danzig]

nukes when used on large cities will have a large amount of their blast blocked by buildings. Normally the radiation would take care of people in said buildings, but zombies need their brains destroyed so really your only effecting the few inside the blast radius who disintegrate. The rest just have severe burns and worse yet are walking radiation sponges who survives would not want to be within a 100 ft of. Worse yet, you have quarantined an entire city due to radiation which could pick up on the winds and effect survivors down wind. No nukes are about the worst thing you can use on zombies....against the living they work great.

Now conventional bombs work pretty well. For instance a fuel air bomb when dropped creates a huge explosion that would pretty much liquefy anyone person within reach. Napalm will cook a zombie alive, its organs will boil and flame will pretty much crawl into their eyeballs up into the brain....dead zombie.
We have bombs in our inventory that mimic the destructive capabilities of a nuke without releasing deadly radiation, and any smart military commander would realize this.

American cities could be saved(nuking LA wouldn't hurt ) ) via citizens militia in conjunction with the armed forces. So there is no real need for nukes.

Yah I know thats why I was questioning him, nukes would be completely wrong way to go with a zombie outbreak since only blast radius zombies would be vaporized. Take that tank scene ep 1, a nice little air strike would have taken care of that problem.

What are the chances of a zombie apocalypse ever getting out of hand anyway? Especially walking/shambling zombies. As soon as the government got wind of a zombie outbreak surely they would just quarantine the effected area and bomb the living out of it before sending in gues to finish off anyone/thing left alive? The zombie outbreak would end then and there.

Well problem is almost all zombie fiction (and I dont think its wrong) is that by the time people accept that it is the dead coming back and not some strange virus or illness its too late to contain it. Plus how the outbreak occurs matters alot, is it just all people who die initially coming back etc.

[Swagger]

hey

when's this going to broadcast on the states?

[Påsan]

Being ex military i cannot see the scenario where unarmed mob of people with teeth as their main weapon can overcome any decent group of military infantry or armored columns. Much less take an military base not directly in the vicinity of a major city. We have 4000 years of experience making things that kills and mutilate just this . I mean, a simple jeep with a mounted 50cal and four marines could have wiped that entire zombie crowd at the tank with relative ease. Not to mention any substantial joint force of tanks and APC’s with infantry.
Besides, Zombies would never survive a single below zero degrees winter anyway (blah blah blah zombie fandom, see how well a zombie lives when his blood and brain juice freezes to ice and cracks, which WILL happen at bellow zero) so the northern regions of the world would be okay anyway. (Canada to the rescue!)

[danzig]

Well that is probably why all zombie outbreaks happen as a surprise and it spreads so fast that the military doesnt even get a chance to mobilize to do it. Hell most mobilization you see in novels etc is for the military to aid what they think is a disease outbreak rather then reign of the undead. Plus how the outbreak happens/spreads matters alot too, you'd have CDC involved which would probably slow military response since no one is just going to send soldiers blindly into an area that has a possible infectious disease going around.

[Pontifex Maximus]

Being ex military i cannot see the scenario where unarmed mob of people with teeth as their main weapon can overcome any decent group of military infantry or armored columns. Much less take an military base not directly in the vicinity of a major city. We have 4000 years of experience making things that kills and mutilate just this . I mean, a simple jeep with a mounted 50cal and four marines could have wiped that entire zombie crowd at the tank with relative ease. Not to mention any substantial joint force of tanks and APC’s with infantry.
Besides, Zombies would never survive a single below zero degrees winter anyway (blah blah blah zombie fandom, see how well a zombie lives when his blood and brain juice freezes to ice and cracks, which WILL happen at bellow zero) so the northern regions of the world would be okay anyway. (Canada to the rescue!)

But all the military personnel were presumably stricken with the same disease. Perhaps if the outbreak occurred and a fresh military force, unaffected by the disease, arrived at the scene it would be easy to overcome the horde, but maybe not so much when the military apparently had to defend hospitals which were spawning more walkers over time.

[Dave Strider]

This series gave the military a relative break, imagine if they were faced with the zombies from Max Brooks' books.....

[Swagger]

is it airing at the moment there?

[Del Valle]

This series gave the military a relative break, imagine if they were faced with the zombies from Max Brooks' books.....

Yeah those are a nightmare. Surviving freezing temperatures, able to walk across oceans, , they are overkill.

[Del Valle]

that is of course assuming that it only starts in one place, and not all over the world simultaneously. In these modern day of age, assuming that a bite wound take 24-48 hours to turn its victim. Well one zombie could bite a dozen people in an international city like london before being contained and send to a hospital. No one would know what it is yet, and those dozen people go about their day some maybe going on planes. those dozen people get sick, bite their families or bite a bunch of people when they go to the hospital. Bam that turns into 200 people infected.

Now the first thing that would happen when you have a dozen hospitals suddenly jammed up with people who have nasty bites and apparently some sort of crazy rabbies like disease is that the CDC would be called. They will take at least 24-48 hours before the even know how to setup a quarantine. News reports of strange rabbies outbreak hits the airwaves and people are told to call the CDC/emergency services if anybody they know or run into is displaying these aggressive tendencies. At this point you have probably hundreds of thousands of people who have been infected with a few hundred zombies. The few zombies that are running around have been shot by emergency workers or by civilians. Police reports are being filled ( because homicides take alot of time). Pretty much emergency workers are starting to get overwhelmed with reported attack. The govt is starting to examine people who have reanimated and are trying to figure out what the heck is going on, and of course do not want to panic the population by saying things like "reanimated corpses".

All of this red tape slows down any reaction by the government, and at best you have local govt calling up reserve fire fighters and policemen to deal with the riots( or undead mobs)...of course by this time your hospitals are overflowing and most of your emergency workers are probably infected by trying to control these people with what they think is an outbreak of rabbies. Parents are tending to their sick infected children...children sit and watch as their infected parents turn on them.

Then bam you have the magic hour, when the government finally realizes something is really really wrong, and they declare martial law and call up the armed forces...that is when you have millions of bite victims succumbing to the virus and turning all at one time. Grocery stores and mall, hospitals and police stations are suddenly overflowing with the undead. Sure the army is beginning to mobilize, but alot of those soldiers who should be reporting to their bases so they can be armed are either infected or zombies by now ( because like most armies, reservists and national guardsmen have jobs outside the armed forces). Alot of those who were on duty already likely got tasked with helping the police do riot control or put out fires that have sparked all across the city.

So maybe if we are lucky we will have 10-20% of our armed forces showing up to post to be armed. The first thing these guys have to do is secure their own bases, which are likely being swarmed with people trying to get on who are fleeing the choas. These bases often times act as relief centers during disasters, so there is the chance that these bases are already over run with the undead. However even if they are not all the people fleeing to the military bases for protection are likely to have alot of infected individuals in their midst, which means the military is likely to lose alot of bases trying to protect these civilians. Then there are all those military personnel who do not even report to duty and instead go home to protect their families, or just desert seeing how screwed up everything is.


so to answer you question....the govt is slow to react to anything, and when it finally does it will likely be to late. So I would never count on our armed services being able to simply quarantine a city, by the time the army is called up it would likely have been a week since the first zombie started biting people. In a realistic situation, people are not going to jump to the zombie conclusion right away, they will call the CDC/FEMA first who will attempt to isolate and understand the outbreak....and that all takes time...time we don't have. There may not be enough military personnel left when the order is given to assemble. Even during pandemics, when the military is called up, they do not roll out in tanks, they technically go out in riot gear at best.

The thing your forgetting about is how many people there are like us who actually dream up these scenarios and then make countermeasures.

[therussian]

is it airing at the moment there?

Yes. Today will be the second episode

[danzig]

is it airing at the moment there?

Second episode is on in 2 hours for east coast.

The thing your forgetting about is how many people there are like us who actually dream up these scenarios and then make countermeasures.

And this is why zombies>vampires...only aliens come a distant 2nd in the game of making up fun what if scenarios

[Swagger]

bah.. i'll only be able to see it tomorrow then..

[Gelgoog]

The thing your forgetting about is how many people there are like us who actually dream up these scenarios and then make countermeasures.

true, but there are a heck of alot more sheeple out there only concerned with their cell phones and the next episode of American Idol. There are way more dependents who would be waiting for the government to save them (or running to walmart because they only have 2 days worth of supplies in their homes like all those people who died in katrina), then there are individuals with survival skills and an independent mindset.

In the US for example, you can bet that red states would fare much better then blue states

[IronBrig4]

In the comic book they explain many of the difficulties that Scheuch has mentioned. The National Guard was called up but by that time the situation was too far gone. Most of the Guardsmen didn't even show because they were protecting their families at home or on the road.

Also, would you kill a friend or loved one if you didn't know what you were dealing with? If you thought there was even a slim chance of them eventually being cured, would you put a bullet into their head? Probably not. You would shelter them for as long as possible or, if you had the space, lock them in a tool shed or closet.

PS - And Scheuch, I wouldn't count on "red" states faring any better than their "blue" counterparts. When the panic sets in, people with lots of guns will be much more dangerous than a horde of zombies. I can see those so-called "militias" quickly turning into gangs of bandits. There are many historical examples of armed groups taking advantage of a power vacuum and becoming the local despots.

[danzig]

Well blue states would suffer more and faster for one simple fact, population density.

[IronBrig4]

Maybe so, but if we want to play this arbitrary blue vs. red game, then many of the red states have some of the biggest, sprawling metropolitan areas. Dallas and Fort Worth are pretty much one big city now. I also can't picture anything surviving in the Texas Triangle. When Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and San Antonio get overrun, every small town inside that triangle would get wiped out as well. If I may, here is a map of the fastest-developing urban areas.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see, the Texas Triangle is just one example. Arizona, from Flagstaff on down to Tucson, is becoming more urbanized as those cities link up. From up in Fort Collins, CO down to Albuquerque, NM, one highway is pretty much a belt of cities that also includes Denver, Colorado Springs, and Santa Fe. In the panic that is guaranteed to accompany the first zombie outbreaks, that highway will be clogged with cars and refugees... and the zombies will eat their way along the entire length of it. It looks like every region except for Alaska, Hawaii, and some of the mountain states would be royally screwed.

[Gelgoog]

Maybe so, but if we want to play this arbitrary blue vs. red game, then many of the red states have some of the biggest, sprawling metropolitan areas. Dallas and Fort Worth are pretty much one big city now. I also can't picture anything surviving in the Texas Triangle. When Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and San Antonio get overrun, every small town inside that triangle would get wiped out as well. If I may, here is a map of the fastest-developing urban areas.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see, the Texas Triangle is just one example. Arizona, from Flagstaff on down to Tucson, is becoming more urbanized as those cities link up. From up in Fort Collins, CO down to Albuquerque, NM, one highway is pretty much a belt of cities that also includes Denver, Colorado Springs, and Santa Fe. In the panic that is guaranteed to accompany the first zombie outbreaks, that highway will be clogged with cars and refugees... and the zombies will eat their way along the entire length of it. It looks like every region except for Alaska, Hawaii, and some of the mountain states would be royally screwed.

Red states may have many of our nations large metropolitian cities, but you would be surprised the by the percentage of gun ownership in red cities vs blue cities Texas especially has a very high percentage.

[IronBrig4]

I'm not surprised because I actually live in College Station, TX (Aggie here). Guns would be essential in fighting off zombies, but fighting zombies in a city would be an incredibly bad situation. Let's say you have an M1911 pistol. That's seven rounds with a standard magazine. You can easily handle a small number of zombies if you see them coming from a distance. if there are more than seven you can reload and pick them off. But what if you're searching an apartment block or grocery store for supplies? We're talking close combat here. Could you stay calm enough to fire off head shots if a bunch of zombies spill out of a locked closet or bathroom? If there are more than seven, could you reload in time? Unless you and your friends have trained together in the military or law enforcement, there is a very real possibility of friendly fire as well. And also remember that while you're blowing zombies' heads off, every other ghoul within earshot will make a beeline straight for you. You might kill a dozen zombies in one building, grab some loot, and walk out only to find that several hundred have gathered around.

I will agree, however, that a city like Boston (high population density, severely restricted gun access) would probably fall pretty quickly if the authorities couldn't handle it in time.