Zombie Outbreak - where to hide?

[Tetsubo]

I still think people are underestimating just how lethal humans can be when up against the wall.

I see any zombie plague as playing out like Shawn of the Dead. Twenty-four to thirty-six hours of panic and chaos, and then the humans win. Unless the zombies instantly out number the humans I can't see any other outcome. And if they do out number the humans where did they come from? Only so many bodies around folks. Most corpses in the ground are in sad shape and deeply buried. Not to mention that many places now require a coffin to be placed inside a vault. I'm not saying it would be the same world after a zombie plague, but it would be a world ruled by humans...

 

[Jim Hague]

I still think people are underestimating just how lethal humans can be when up against the wall.

I see any zombie plague as playing out like Shawn of the Dead. Twenty-four to thirty-six hours of panic and chaos, and then the humans win. Unless the zombies instantly out number the humans I can't see any other outcome. And if they do out number the humans where did they come from? Only so many bodies around folks. Most corpses in the ground are in sad shape and deeply buried. Not to mention that many places now require a coffin to be placed inside a vault. I'm not saying it would be the same world after a zombie plague, but it would be a world ruled by humans...

The problem, typically, in a Rise isn't the buried dead; that's not gonna happen for the reasons you cited. It's the recently dead...and worse, first responders, the folks we'd rely on to control things - police, parameds, fire departments - are going to be the first people to fall.

I was watching CNN this morning, and they had the coverage on for the fires in California. For a clearly-defined, imminently-dangerous situation, the Federal side of things is just now getting their act in gear...with a teleconference to discuss the problem. You're going to see the same thing with any large government or bureaucracy. Multiply the slow response and indecision and worrying on what the public might think a hundredfold for a new illness, and there's these crazy reports of 'dead men' coming back to life...

 

[JDJblatherings]

Romero-esque scenario with recent dead coming back to I life even if they aren't bitten would be a civilization reseting event without a doubt. We are trained by civilization to be upset, depressed and in poor shape when a loved oen dies...imagine the loved one dies and then comes back and kills three more of your loved ones, how stable do you imagine you are going to be?


The detah rate in the U.S. is 8.26. that means every year 8.26 of a thousand people die. In a country with 300,000 million or so people 6700 people die every day. Any given day there are about 20,000 corpsed laying about unburied. The first wave would be several thousand isolated zombie attacks of lone or small numbers of zombies, there would be no capability for any authority to respond to this. by the time any vaguely coordinated information coudl be gathered ( in 1 or 2 days) there would be another 6,700 to 12,000 zombies scattered all over the country not to mention those that would be passing on from zombie contagion, the additional deaths caused by disruption of services. Unless there is an amazing herculean effort and a genius with an iron will in command and a populace willing to act against their deeply ingrained moral, ethical and emotional behaviors civiliztion is going bye bye.

 

[AnonymousOne]

A fully armed and operational space station.

When the infestation overruns the planet you simply take care of the planet... I like it.

I was watching CNN this morning, and they had the coverage on for the fires in California. For a clearly-defined, imminently-dangerous situation, the Federal side of things is just now getting their act in gear...

Amendment 2 ... the founding fathers were watching out for the zombies. Also keep in mind the National Guard, those guys aren't to bad with guns and the ammo stores are usually substantial, those combined with an armed civilian force could most likely take care of a decent sized down.

Step 1: Literally cut the zombies in half with M2 fire.
Step 2: Kill (again) any surviving zombies with close shots to the head.
Step 3: Burn the bodies.

 

[Celebrim]

I was watching CNN this morning, and they had the coverage on for the fires in California. For a clearly-defined, imminently-dangerous situation, the Federal side of things is just now getting their act in gear...with a teleconference to discuss the problem. You're going to see the same thing with any large government or bureaucracy. Multiply the slow response and indecision and worrying on what the public might think a hundredfold for a new illness, and there's these crazy reports of 'dead men' coming back to life...

Fortunately, centralized control and coordination is not necessary for short term survival. In practice, humans rarely rely on centralized control for anything precisely because they know that even an efficient and non-corrupt large bureaucracy has a ponderous responce time. For example, its for this reason that direct democracy is rarely employed for anything larger than a small village. Effectively, direct democracy turns the whole populace into a large bureaucracy/decision making apparatus. System theory seems to indicate that the ideal size of a decision making structure is 5-12 individuals, ideally as closely placed to the problem as possible to prevent effectively extending the decision making structure, information loss due to lag in communication and/or poor communication/understanding of the problem.

It's difficult to project how humanity would respond to a necropocalypse, because we have no basis for knowing how such a thing would work. In the classic source material, zombies are more or less magical and not apparantly bound to anything real. Moreover, one of the core assumptions of the source material is that zombies succeed in spreading effectively. But its fairly certain that a real zombie outbreak would be constrained by actual reality, and would not have the 'power of plot' to simply spread just because it makes a compelling story.

My personal feeling is that people are vastly underestimating just how dangerous humans are and vastly overestimating how dangerous more or less mindless, shambling, corpses would actually be once the initial surprise 'round' is over. Likewise, I think that they are vastly overestimating how long the initial surprise phase would last. Probably it wouldn't be longer than a few hours. There would be a 'fog of war' phase of confusion for anyone removed from the immediate vicinity of the event, but for people in it, I think they'd adapt far faster than they would in movies. Humanity is far hardier than is generally credited, and fear is a powerful motivator which tends to be more useful than not. Screaming paniced hysterics is not the rule outside of B-movies. I don't think the zombies would stand a chance, and the only scenarios where I think humanity is in trouble are those where the contagion is more like a virulent contagion. In which case, the zombies are just a nuisance and the real problem is the contagion.

 

[Jim Hague]

Which brings up another point - I'm seeing people argue realism when they ought to be arguing versimilitude. Zombie Earth is, simply, not our Earth, no more than D&D represents Middles Ages society. Zombie Earth's people are a contentious lot, and the structures of authroity are not only unreliable, but often actively incompetent or even malevolent.

Zombie Earth is a nihilistic place, by and large, one where the thin veneer of civilization is peeled away like flesh rotting off a zombie's skull to reveal savagery, brutality and, rarely, nobility and good intent. Mostly, though, things are bad and going to worse even before the Rise. After? Well...

 

[Jim Hague]

Amendment 2 ... the founding fathers were watching out for the zombies. Also keep in mind the National Guard, those guys aren't to bad with guns and the ammo stores are usually substantial, those combined with an armed civilian force could most likely take care of a decent sized down.

Step 1: Literally cut the zombies in half with M2 fire.
Step 2: Kill (again) any surviving zombies with close shots to the head.
Step 3: Burn the bodies.

See above. Civilians are the worst people to put in charge of a coordinated operation; ask the military folks. National guardsmen, while they perform a lot of important duties, are not going to be ideal in this situation. See Dawn of the Dead on how that works out.

Simply put, the military on Zombie Earth is going to end up in trouble, badly and quickly. Psychological and logistical issues will take their toll, not the least of which may be the command decision to leave civilians in infected areas.

For the interested, WWZ has several long audio clips from the audiobook up, including a chilling account of the German military's response to the crisis, and the 'evacuation' of Calcutta:

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/worldwarz/

 

[JDJblatherings]

check this out-

N.Y. city has apopulation of 8,213,800 (or so)
any given day 185 of them are freshly dead.
just assumign 3 days of the dead are unburied (and non of the buried are clawign thier way out of graves) we have 555 zombies in NYC on day 1 of zombappocalypse.

Lets say it takes 2 days to sicken and become a zombie after being bitten.

The freshly dead reanimate in 1 to 2 hours.

Each one bites 2 people. Each one kills a person. 1 in 10 is responsible for an incidental human death. 90% of zombies are put down on day one , but not before they spread the love.

day 2 there will be 55 (surviving zombies)+185 normal death zombies + 555 (freshkill zombies) + 55 incidental death zombies for a total of 850 zombies. 90% of these zombies are still put down.

day 3 there will be 85 (survivn zombies) + 185 normal death zombies + 850 (fresh kill zombies) + 85 incidental death zombies + 1110 bite vicitm zombies for a total of
2305 zombies. 90% of these are put down.

day 4 folks are now careful with zombies only 1/2 kill someone
there will be 230 (sz) + 185 (nd) + 2305 (fk) + 230 (id) + 1610 bite vicitim zombies for a total of 4560 zombies. 90% of these are put down.

day5 foks know about the bites so only 1/2 of zombies bite someone now.
there will be 465 (sz)+ 185 (nd) + 2280(fk)+ 456 (id) + 2280 (bite vicitms) for a total of
5666 zombies.


day 6 566 surviving zombies + 185 new dead + 2833 fresh kill + 566 incdental deaths + 2325 bite victims = 6475 zombies.

day 7 - 647+185+3237+647+3237 = 7953 zombies

about 21000 deths becasue of zombies over a week. Assuming folks are capable of destroying 90% of them by the end of each day.

NYc would surive but it woudl be a darned different NYC.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

For a clearly-defined, imminently-dangerous situation, the Federal side of things is just now getting their act in gear...with a teleconference to discuss the problem.

Yes, but you'll note that the local and state authorities acted rather swiftly, and then requested Federal assistance. The way it works in the US, the Federal government doesn't just automatically step in.

To amplify what Celebrim said, while a national coordinated response would take a while, local response would likely be far faster and fairly vigorous. Once it's known that these are the walking dead, and that they can be clearly identified as such, there's going to be a lot less hesitation about shooting people in the head, even if you knew them. There will likely be some nightmares and a lot of soulsearching afterward, but you can't do that if you're dead.

Brad

 

[Tetsubo]

Romero-esque scenario with recent dead coming back to I life even if they aren't bitten would be a civilization reseting event without a doubt. We are trained by civilization to be upset, depressed and in poor shape when a loved oen dies...imagine the loved one dies and then comes back and kills three more of your loved ones, how stable do you imagine you are going to be?


The detah rate in the U.S. is 8.26. that means every year 8.26 of a thousand people die. In a country with 300,000 million or so people 6700 people die every day. Any given day there are about 20,000 corpsed laying about unburied. The first wave would be several thousand isolated zombie attacks of lone or small numbers of zombies, there would be no capability for any authority to respond to this. by the time any vaguely coordinated information coudl be gathered ( in 1 or 2 days) there would be another 6,700 to 12,000 zombies scattered all over the country not to mention those that would be passing on from zombie contagion, the additional deaths caused by disruption of services. Unless there is an amazing herculean effort and a genius with an iron will in command and a populace willing to act against their deeply ingrained moral, ethical and emotional behaviors civiliztion is going bye bye.

These numbers make a human win vs. zombie seem even more inevitable. As for the mental "break" with seeing the recently dead...? I think most people would make the "shift" to a new world view rather quickly. Seeing Gramma attacking your sibling is going to change your opinion of her MIGHTY quick... I don't care who it is, if they attack me or those I love, they are going down...

Even in a Romero type verse, they numbers just don't show a zombie win... it would be a much different I admit... the elderly would be seen as a constant threat... every emergency responder, doctor or nurse would carry a gun... heck, EVERYONE would carry a gun... the gun makers would be thrilled... I recommend a .22 caliber weapon, light, good ammo capacity and enough power for a clean head shot... the round just sort of "bounces" around inside the skull... I'd be picking up a Calico M-100 myself...