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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3852345" data-attributes="member: 4937">Verisimilitude is not the quality of resembling artifice or fictional tropes.  It is the quality of resembling truth.  Out in the real world the civilized authority isn't perfect, but IMO it also doesn't generally conform to the central tropes of anti-authoritarian satire.  I simply don't accept that 'Dawn of the Dead' is a accurate judge of peoples behavior.Once again, it occurs like this because it is a convention of the story.  The zombies push humanity into small pockets of survivors (against all odds IMO) with the power of plot, and then again with the power of plot and against all odds the beleagured survivors take back thier world.  It happens like that because that is how stories work.  It's the freakin' plot of Star Wars.  It's the classic epic narrative.  It may make a good story, but that's it.A 155mm shell dropping on an enemy position is not going to be woefully ineffective even if that enemy is mass of zombies.  The typical 'shambler' zombie is of no real threat to a modern military unit, which is mechanized, armored, and specifically trained to deal both with 'human wave' attacks.  While some things that they are used to using won't work that well (claymores, frag grenades) because they typically rely on soft tissue damage, the modern military is trained to deal with an enemy that is presenting small targets by taking cover and possibly wearing armor while that enemy is shooting back.  Personally, I'd rather face the shambling zombie horde than a equal number of enemies with grenades and assault rifles.About the only thing that I think the modern military would be poorly equipped to handle is melee combat.  Current tactics are so effective against human wave attacks that melee combat is virtually obselete in modern warfare.  So no one carries serious melee weapons anymore.  With some of the more effective defences against a human wave attack being less effective, and shoot and scoot not always being an option (though its alot easier than if you are being shot at), you could initially have problems with overruns.  But that is pretty easily dealt with compared to fighting clever humans with rifles, RPGs, machine guns, etc. and devising tactics for that.If we want to talk about real versimilitude, lets talk about the fact that everyone 'knows' how to kill a zombie, not to get bit, etc. even though no one has any real experience with actual zombies.  Our metagaming might get us in trouble for a while, but people learn fast.</blockquote>

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