View Full Version : Creative Assembly World War Z
So... Apparently I am not the only one who is worried about a Zombie Holocaust!
Interesting! I was talking to a "normal" girl the other day and she told me about how worried she was about a Zombie attack and that she has re-occurring dreams about it and that it effects her day-to-day life. She said that she always thinks about how to defend herself, and she even intentionally passed over a really nice apartment because it was on the ground floor and instead took a crappy apartment on the 3rd floor because it was more easily defendable against a Zombie attack.
I too am pretty "normal" otherwise, but I often think in the same terms as her. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm like "...is it going down?"
Anyone else?
Captain Fishpants
11-17-2006, 10:13
Had a flick through this the other day and it reminded me of Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka - the whole idea of interviewing the survivors of a catastrophic war/epidemic thing. Talking head documentaries like this are fun, if they are done well.
WWZ might make an interesting TV drama-documentary thing.
Bitten by a zombie or run over by a truck. It will happen or not. When it happens you better make sure your and others life was good. Worrying about what might happen is not part of that.
KukriKhan
11-17-2006, 14:15
... the whole idea of interviewing the survivors of a catastrophic war/epidemic thing. Talking head documentaries like this are fun, if they are done well.
WWZ might make an interesting TV drama-documentary thing.
If we get Borat and Geraldo Rivera to do the interviews, I think we have a winning product.
There's already a book on this subject, with the title World War Z (http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Oral-History-Zombie/dp/0307346609/sr=8-1/qid=1163772150/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-8569443-5059102?ie=UTF8&s=books) no less. (Lemur read it, have to confess, and I can only give it an "eh" rating.)
If the bacon-lovin' robots don't get us, the zombies definitely will. Shotguns and canned goods!
Crazed Rabbit
11-17-2006, 18:28
Now, I will occasionally ponder how my environment would affect a zombie attack, and the supply of anti-zombie weapons in the garage (shovel, axe, etc.), but buying a bad aparment because of fear of zombies seems a bit over the top.
Crazed Rabbit
PS Huh, a thread with a real old member, a CA guy, and two admins posting first.
Major Robert Dump
11-17-2006, 18:33
Theres also a book called "The Zombie Survival Guide" that was, as far as I know, the first of its kind. Had it for a few years now, very fun read
Sasaki Kojiro
11-17-2006, 18:39
Crazed Rabbit
PS Huh, a thread with a real old member, a CA guy, and two admins posting first.
+mod
What are you doing in this thread Crazed? You're only a member.
Theres also a book called "The Zombie Survival Guide" that was, as far as I know, the first of its kind. Had it for a few years now, very fun read
Sam author as World War Z, as I just noticed. This guy, Max Brooks, definitely has his finger to the undead pulse of America.
Rodion Romanovich
11-17-2006, 19:18
The Hollywood interpretation of the "zombie" cultism/religion always make me think of the masses deprived of own thought when exposed to propaganda. That they happen to eat brains makes the methaphor even more ironic. I don't know if it's intentional or not that the Hollywood zombies are depicted in such a way. As for the origins of zombies, wiki says: "A zombie is an undead person in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system [...] zombies are humans who have had their 'Ti Bon Ange' or soul stolen by supernatural means and shamanic medicine, and are forced to work for their 'zombie master' as uncomplaining slaves on isolated plantations", which makes for an interesting parallell with the European slave-driven plantages established by early colonists in America, and how the victims of these would have been thinking about their situation, and how they in folklore and tales would escape reality into a fantasy inspired by the real-life horrors they escaped from. Folkloric tales of various forms similar to the zombie myth, i.e. undead rising to fight the living in various ways, seem to exist in many other cultures too, but with other directions. Medieval France apparently being the rise of the classical European ghosts who would usually be victims of crimes and would return to haunt the uncaught criminal and sinner who slayed them - perhaps a methaphor of conscience, a tool of instilling God-fearing, or just a myth risen from the dogmatic desire that no crimes would go past unpunished and the myths see those perpetrators that in real life escape punished. And wiki also mentions the existence of the "undead" in the old Sumeric "Epic of Gilgamesh".
I don't fear any mythological folklore zombies, but some of the real-world concepts that have influenced various forms of literary zombie myths are IMO scary, and the metaphors close enough to real-life concepts that are worth fearing:
- the oppressive plantage owners, and the concept of slavery
- the Hollywood type of zombie which is in my interpretation a metaphor of brainwashed masses who have fallen for propaganda and act without own thought
Perhaps it's this real-life connection that makes zombies such successful horror movie characters... As it subconsciously makes you relate to real-life things that you fear, even when you don't believe in supernatural ghosts. The concepts of the zombies do exist, but they are seldom presented by hideous-looking living dead, but rather by charismatic persuasive human beings. As for hideous-looking people who look like walking dead, perhaps our strange mutations and most twisted forms of genetical research, as well as the ways in which we breed ourselves humans and expose ourselves to different forms of poisonous substances and cause an unnatural selection which selects the most psycopathic and cold-hearted of us from each generation, perhaps something both looking and acting like a zombie, like a machine, will be reality when thousands of more years of "civilization" have passed.
yesdachi
11-17-2006, 19:28
- the Hollywood type of zombie which is in my interpretation a metaphor of brainwashed masses who have fallen for propaganda and act without own thought
And is it any surprise that they all went to the mall (Dawn of the dead?)!
The effects of marketing last past death! (or would it be un-death?)
PS Huh, a thread with a real old member, a CA guy, and two admins posting first.
I noticed that as well.:2thumbsup:
Concerning zombies, no I never worried and getting a new appartement because of them sounds to me like someone needs psychiatric help.
And I really mean that, it sounds like a case of superficial phobia or so.
As kids we sometimes played on an old graveyard and noone was worried, never heard about zombies back then, for me they are a movie product and nice experience points in the Gothic series...:juggle2:
Mithrandir
11-17-2006, 20:38
Kurando
:bow:
Welcome back ~D.
For anyone with some time to kill, here's a video Zombie survival guide (https://youtube.com/watch?v=2ynXBMgLEbM).
Is there also a thread about this, I believe there was. Tips enough to defend yourselves.
Tough I must say, no attack meant, that fearing a zombie invasion is rather bizarre to me. No?
yesdachi
11-17-2006, 22:18
Tough I must say, no attack meant, that fearing a zombie invasion is rather bizarre to me. No?
I am more afraid of zombies than I am of global warming. ~D
Where does that leave ManBearPig?
It almost seems lame to admit, but I have pondered how this part of town would fare in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
Watchman
11-17-2006, 23:38
I read the Zombie Survival Guide once. Thought it was kinda contrived at a fair few points.
Then I thought how much the "shambling zombie horde" gig resembled the worse examples of lack of tactics, say the uglier examples of "human wave" attacks à la WW1, the Soviets in WW2 and the Chinese at times in Korea. Well, minus any and all firepower, support, or use of cover or stratagem.
Then I thought of just how cracked amounts of firepower even small, modest modern armies have at their disposal with no particular shortages of ammunition.
Around that point my train of thought began aproaching gory enough splatter scenes I figured it best to get off the subject, and concluded the poor zombies are going to need some really absurd starting conditions to not get blown into red paste in a very short order.
Well, watchman, that's assuming that people are actually going to be organized quickly enough to a) contain the menace and b) deal with it accordingly by preparing things like barricades, keeping supplies and maintaining a certain degree of fire control (head shots only, right). Seriously, if you called your police department and told them that there was a zombie attack, they'd either hang up on you or drive to your house to give you an earful for abusing the emergency phone line. It'd take far too long to set up a proper, organized defence against a zombie attack for survival tips to be useless.
Zombie attacks are pretty much my greatest worry. I keep a child-sized baseball bat in my room in case of zombie attack in my sleep, and I discuss and modify plans with my more aware friends regularly, not because it's scheduled, but because we all understand. When I visit a new friend's place or enter a new work environment, I keep my eyes open for potential zombie weapons and escape routes. I've weirded some people out by asking them directly, "Where do you keep your zombie weapons?"
The Survival Guide is a good read. I remember in particular the diagram explaining why, in a zombie attack, you should not have a mullet, since it makes you easier to grab from behind. This worries me, since my hair is incredibly long and I'd keep it in ponytail pretty much the whole time. Besides that, I'd survive at least a little while.
Watchman
11-18-2006, 00:15
Well, watchman, that's assuming that people are actually going to be organized quickly enough to a) contain the menace and b) deal with it accordingly by preparing things like barricades, keeping supplies and maintaining a certain degree of fire control (head shots only, right). Seriously, if you called your police department and told them that there was a zombie attack, they'd either hang up on you or drive to your house to give you an earful for abusing the emergency phone line. It'd take far too long to set up a proper, organized defence against a zombie attack for survival tips to be useless....and when folks finally figure out what's going on, they'll call in the army to cordon the afflicted area. Then they roll in the tanks and mechanized infantry with artillery and air support.
You tell me how much chance a horde of zombies has against even one APC with an autocannon, nevermind entire damn divisions of full-fledged MBTs... "Hey Joe, there's a few climbing on your tank." "Oh, MG them off for me willya? I'm kinda busy running over this bunch."
Besides, given that zombies want to eat either people or their brains (ever the weak spot of the critters), you'd think there usually was very little left of their victims to "reanimate" into something even remotely dangerous. Kind of a logic flaw in the whole scheme, that one.
Well, as far as I know about the 'brains' thing, that came into play in Return of the Living Dead, which was a spoof. No problem there. Yeah, there are pieces of zombies missing. I'm not sure I see your point there.
How would 'folks' call in the army, anyway? Do you know how to summon APC's? Conjure an infantry platoon? I don't. The 'military rescue' is one of the more popular scenarios as an end to a zombie attack, but I don't see much sense in planning if it's not for a worst-case scenario, and that, to me, means a full-blown, four-alarm zombie holocaust where I need to worry about myself, a handful of friends who can do more than keep me company, and a few breeding partners for when the whole thing boils over and the deaders have all rotten away too much to be threatening.
Watchman
11-18-2006, 00:48
Well, people with bits gnawed off them are going to lacking be a fair few muscles and tendons they'd need intact to move around effectively (or at all), you see. And as lone zombies aren't terribly dangerous in just about all the variations of the theme (their main merit tending to really be persistence), if someone gets taken down by them there's almost certainly a handful of the critters involved.
Which means the victim is going to get eaten pretty thoroughly.
Which means what'll be left to "reanimate" into a new zombie will be pretty much lacking in the ability to move, or do anything else for that matter. Expect perhaps groan, but that'll just help the eventual extermination squads find it.
As for the army, they'll get called in eventually. Cops have a tendency to look into cases of assault and murder, although if they've seen a few zombie movies themselves they may actually be able to figure out the headshot trick and be able to deal with small numbers by themselves. In any case if they can't contain the situation their upper brass will go to their superiors. And that, in practise, means the army (or something like the US National Guard in some cases, depending on the country); I don't think it gets advertised all that much these days, but one job of the military *is* still to stomp on internal unrest if necessary. Monopoly on legitimate violence, remember ?
And the equivalent of large numbers of people going berserk and trying to kill the rest of the population mainly with their teeth certainly qualifies for the politicos giving the marching order. At which point the totally outgunned zombies are history.
Worse for the folks in the afflicted area before the troops roll in of course, but then quite a few of them ought to take a hike pretty soon after they realize something bad is going on anyway. Which is going to get assorted atuhorities involved on the crisis management side of things too, quite possibly including soldiers called in to lend a hand (one of the more productive uses for armies is internal disaster relief anyway). And the curious reports from the field filtering up the chain of command just might speed up the military mobilization, when you think about it...
Crazed Rabbit
11-18-2006, 01:03
What are you doing in this thread Crazed? You're only a member.
Hey, I've been here as long as you, and longer than Lemur!
Watchman: what if zombie outbreaks simultaneously occur at military bases, meaning they have to fight for their own survival before rolling into town for the rescue, which could give the zombie infestation time to spread very wide.
Crazed Rabbit
Watchman
11-18-2006, 01:22
...and this happens exactly how ? Martians drop zombie bombs on them from their flying saucers ? The Cult of Cthuluhu does some weird ritual perhaps ?
Anyway, military bases are the locales just about best equipped to promptly stamp out local zombie infestations. They've got it all; weapons, trained and fit people conditioned for teamwork, supplies, communications, vehicles, chains of command... And once they've dealt with whatever few zombies pop up before being exterminated they'll be under no illusions something is seriously wrong, especially when they get reports of similar incidents in other bases. Now I may not be familiar with military SOP, but I'm kinda hazarding a guess they're going to go on fairly high alert at all ths weird crap. And once the civil authorities start calling them - and for that matter, off-duty soldiers on home leave - they'll be already pretty much mobilized...
So, basically, unless whatever causes the zombification is something extremely contagious and virulent that somehow manages massive outbreaks all around the place all at once - in which case human civilization as we know it can probably kiss its ass goodbye anyway - so the troops can't contain possible cases inside their bases, which if you ask me would require a straight act of divine powers or something similarly ridiculous, outbreaks in military bases are only going to get the soldiers involved earlier.
True, Watchman, not everyone who falls to a zombie becomes a zombie; sometimes, there's just not enough left. But zombies tend to leave their fallen prey after a short lunch if there is some other distraction around, keeping the 'fresh is best' axiom in their...uh...minds.
Crazed has a point there, too...that there might be simultaneous outbreaks. Some people fear the military and their crazy experiments most, thinking that they'd be the ones to instigate such an outbreak. In any case, it'll still be days before the military comes charging in to the rescue, days during which it is important to keep your head. But like I said..worst case scenario is what concerns me. If I can plan for that effectively, then a few days before the cavalry arrive won't be so bad at all.
Watchman
11-18-2006, 01:30
True, Watchman, not everyone who falls to a zombie becomes a zombie; sometimes, there's just not enough left. But zombies tend to leave their fallen prey after a short lunch if there is some other distraction around, keeping the 'fresh is best' axiom in their...uh...minds.
A staple of the "zombie horror" genre (and a major building block in the visceralness of the horror sought to generate) is that the things pretty much eat you alive - it's not like they're actually terribly good or skilled at killing people anyway, and their primary interest is eating after all.
Meat doesn't come much fresher than kicking and screaming when you munch on it, now does it ? And aren't the about biggest concentrations of what might be termed "flesh", and thus what are going to get the most attention from the zombies, things like thighs and haunches and similar concentrations of muscle mass - which it just so happens are also pretty central to animals' ability to move around...?
And there's quite a few key muscles and tendons whose mangling will pretty much cripple entire limbs or parts thereof too...
See what I mean with logic flaw ? If zombies want to eat the flesh of the living, there's no reason why they'd just gnaw around the edges a bit. And that'll result in the new recruits to their shambling horde being, well, kind of ambulatorily challenged, and thus little threat to anything which can move.
The fact that the critters can't coordinate their actions worth a jack (being functionally brainless tends to do that) also means they're not going to wait for their more mobility-challenged comrades. Which means that if they've chased you around for any lenght of time they're no longer a shambling horde but a long line of stragglers all over the place, and anyone who has found a defensible position and has something decent to kill them with thus can deal with them piecemeal as they arrive...
Betcha the army search-and-destroy squads, no doubt mechanized, will make use of that little detail too.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you holding to the idea that the zombies will have extrmely limited locomotion because their limbs will have been partially eaten? THEY'RE DEAD AND THEY CAME BACK TO LIFE. The logistics that apply to human motion are obviously out the damn window.
Watchman
11-18-2006, 01:53
And are you telling me they'll be able to act as if any broken bones they had, weren't, and major muscle clusters they might've had gnawed off, weren't ? The way they invariably stumble and drag for example damaged legs rather speaks against that.
I'm not going to go into the variously stupid explanations for the zombification process itself and the source of their motive power (although an obsession with eating would suggest the presence of metabolism and hence need for nutrition, all in all a measure of what can be termed "life"), but if it's anything short of outright demonic possession or something similarly grossly supernatural (in which case the buggers might as well grow ten foot tall and fart fire, all the bets being off) physical damage will slow them down even if they do not as such pay it any heed.
A missing leg is a missing leg, and you're not going to be able to stand on it period.
Which brings us back to the major logical problem with the critters using their potential new recruits as their main source of sustenance, whatever benefit they now may derive from that. Not the most brilliant way to procreate/replenish casualties, I'd say.
Sir Moody
11-18-2006, 03:17
Actually watchman in World war Z the zombies start as an infection in china - like sars but worse - china covers it up until its too late and theres an explosion of zombies i think the book mentions the number of zombies at over 1 billion - add the fact they are only killable with head shots and you start to see why the army couldnt handle it - its a good book but have i ever seriously wondered what i would do in a zombie attack? not really
Alexanderofmacedon
11-18-2006, 03:18
I thought Z said 2....
You tease...
Samurai Waki
11-18-2006, 04:05
this is a very unusual thread. But my fiancee has a strange fascination with Zombies, and has often gone through the steps of explaining how and/or why Zombies might come to being. I believe it's total nonsense of course, but every so often she forces me to watch a Zombie flick with her.
And are you telling me they'll be able to act as if any broken bones they had, weren't, and major muscle clusters they might've had gnawed off, weren't ? The way they invariably stumble and drag for example damaged legs rather speaks against that.
I'm not going to go into the variously stupid explanations for the zombification process itself and the source of their motive power (although an obsession with eating would suggest the presence of metabolism and hence need for nutrition, all in all a measure of what can be termed "life"), but if it's anything short of outright demonic possession or something similarly grossly supernatural (in which case the buggers might as well grow ten foot tall and fart fire, all the bets being off) physical damage will slow them down even if they do not as such pay it any heed.
A missing leg is a missing leg, and you're not going to be able to stand on it period.
Which brings us back to the major logical problem with the critters using their potential new recruits as their main source of sustenance, whatever benefit they now may derive from that. Not the most brilliant way to procreate/replenish casualties, I'd say.
I didn't say a broken bone wouldn't matter. I'm saying that muscle matter and tendons won't. Zombies get +1 verses Kinesiology.
It's not that crazy an idea that zombies will multiply through attacking a human. You think there won't be that many, so even then, if a single man on the street bites you, you're not going to lie down and die right there. You're going to get the hell out of there, far away from the zombie, perceived crazy hobo or whatever you think it is. It won't take long for you to bleed out and die or 'become infected', depending on the severity of the wound, and then bam - you're a walking corpse, so unless someone gets mobbed, which is unlikely unless they're trapped somewhere, early-stage multiplication is not far-fetched. Then there's the freshness conundrum I've mentioned. Really not so difficult.
Anyone who attempts to explain the zombification process is fooling themself. The process is never explained; there is only what can be seen and understood: they eat flesh, they shamble around, they'll hear you if you make noise, they'll grab your mullet, and so on and so forth.
Watchman
11-18-2006, 12:43
Actually watchman in World war Z the zombies start as an infection in china - like sars but worse - china covers it up until its too late and theres an explosion of zombies i think the book mentions the number of zombies at over 1 billion - add the fact they are only killable with head shots and you start to see why the army couldnt handle it - its a good book but have i ever seriously wondered what i would do in a zombie attack? not reallyI'm pretty sure that given the zombies' ubiquitous inability to even conceive the idea of using cover and for the most part relatively slow moving speeds teaching the grunts enough marksmanship to manage headshots at sufficient ranges with reasonable degree of reliability wouldn't exactly be all that difficult. Heck, by what firsthand accounts I've heard of basic army training, most ought to be able to manage it almost as is - no return fire to worry about after all so you can take a pretty good aim.
And when you add heavy weapons and armoured vehicles to the equation, the zombies are mincemeat. It is difficult to imagine a more rewarding target for an artillery barrage or tank gun fragmentation shells than the classic shambling horde of living dead, and rest assured the ones still "alive" afterwards will not be in any condition to do much beyond snarling at the infantry who saunter by and finish them off with headshots. It's not like armies tended to have shortages of their standard-issue small arms ammunition anyway, usually quite the contrary.
Nevermind now what fun stuff can be done with the air force.
And if things really get out of hand, nuclear sterilization is always an option. A ruthless dictatorship like China would actually be particularly prone to employing that as a solution if for some unfathomable reason its million-man conventional forces were insufficient, as it has less cause to worry about public opinion than more democratic regimes.
One of the bigger flaws in most "apocalyptic zombie horror" scenarios is that they entirely ignore the mind-boggling amounts of firepower modern armies can muster with contemptuous ease. They are, after all, equipped and designed to destroy each other despite both sides having tanks, artillery, combat aircraft, serious planning ability and gazillion grunts with guns to throw into the grinder; all the zombies have is a bunch of shambling idiots incapable of anything other than "pursue-eat" level of reacting to their environment, and even insects are much more sophisticated than that.
Not much of a contest there, I'd say.
I didn't say a broken bone wouldn't matter. I'm saying that muscle matter and tendons won't. Zombies get +1 verses Kinesiology.Says who ? Certainly not most popular fiction, where the amount of bits missing has a noticeable tendency to coincide with the degree of mobility reduced (not that it is usually great to begin with). Besides, by that logic the buggers would still be ambulatory as skeletons which is pretty much taking the whole discussion to the fields of sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and rarely if ever supported by source material.
It's not that crazy an idea that zombies will multiply through attacking a human. You think there won't be that many, so even then, if a single man on the street bites you, you're not going to lie down and die right there. You're going to get the hell out of there, far away from the zombie, perceived crazy hobo or whatever you think it is. It won't take long for you to bleed out and die or 'become infected', depending on the severity of the wound, and then bam - you're a walking corpse, so unless someone gets mobbed, which is unlikely unless they're trapped somewhere, early-stage multiplication is not far-fetched. Then there's the freshness conundrum I've mentioned. Really not so difficult.Given the very limited and monomanical parameters zombies invariably operate by such a "crazy hobo" is going to attract police attention right fast, and given the behavioral patterns of the critters considerable police attention right soon after. Or at least around here the cops are prone to intervening if they get reports of some crazy attacking people at random or, God forbid, eating them. If the conditon is contagious enough to infect the living through, say, bites à la rabies (not an universal trait of the "zombification" process, it might be added - many variations of the theme only affect already dead bodies) it's not going to take all that long before this is going to get noticed, although this depends on the gestation period.
Serious wounds inflicted by the "crazy hobo" would be taken to medical professionals anyway. Heck, if there's reason to believe the source of even minor injuries carried some kind of weird disease (in this case likely initially mistaken for some sort of rabies) I'm under the impression the normal procedure is to see a doctor anyway. So much for "bleed out and die", and human teeth are really poor weapons for killing or even seriously wounding animals - nevermind now human-sized ones that actively struggle - to begin with; the zombies' ubiquitous serious lack of any and all technique, sophistication and tactic in their use doesn't help at all.
And it's not like it'd actually take the authorities that long to play connect-the-dots with the victims of previous assaults turning into new slavering cannibal idiots either, in the case the condition is of the fluid-transmissable variant. Doubly so as it'll sooner or later happen under direct medical supervision, and after that the least they're going to do is quarantining all the victims under armed guard and likely issuing a public statement of the phenomenom so people have an idea of what to avoid and what they should immediately report to the authorities.
If, however, the critters become numerous enough to become an actual threat - which in practice really requires fairly dense concentrations; the capabilities of lone ones being pretty limited - it becomes reasonable to assume anyone they manage to pull down gets very earnestly munched on by the whole pack, or at least the ones close enough to figure out there's fresh food available and able to get at it past their fellows. Given that the creatures rarely display any particular interest in killing people per ce - that just happens as the side effect of getting eaten - and are really rather incompetent at and ill equipped for it in any case the unfortunate victim is going to remain alive, although hopefully not conscious, for a while into the meal before perishing and thus most certainly "fresh meat" as far as the zombies are concerned. They sure as Hell aren't going to be chasing after new prey while the previous one's still unfinished, that's for sure.
I also severely doubt at their ability to perceive when a living body they're chomping actually kicks the bucket and turns into a slowly cooling corpse, for that matter, or particular interest in the distinction while in their "feeding frenzy". One suspects that level of diagnostics to be a little beyond the capabilities of monomanical eating machines equipped with the mental aquity of a mold, unless the packade deal includes some sort of mystic "life sense".
All of which adds up to the victims of zombie hordes nigh certainly having a tendency to end up as so much bloody shreds and gnawed bones ill suited to standing up and shambling off in search of living humans to snack on.
Anyone who attempts to explain the zombification process is fooling themself. The process is never explained; there is only what can be seen and understood: they eat flesh, they shamble around, they'll hear you if you make noise, they'll grab your mullet, and so on and so forth.The Zombie Survival Guide tries, you know. But then that was one of the parts I found particularly contrived.
This doesn't mean there wasn't some underlying internal logic in all the variations of the theme. What gets "zombified", how the condition spreads, and what exactly the resultant monsters are capable of vary a fair bit between different versions, but so far as I know they tend to nonetheless be internally consistent.
Rodion Romanovich
11-18-2006, 12:50
Don't kill the zombies - let's all join them and become one big happy family! :2thumbsup:
Mikeus Caesar
11-18-2006, 13:50
I personally think that if a zombie apocalypse was to happen, it would be like the situation from the film 28 Days Later - accident at a research lab somewhere unleashes a disease which causes madness in anyone infected, the madness would cause a condition not unlike zombification, where the victims behaviour would be animalistic and primitive, with their only thoughts being the need to kill.
I personally will be building my own bunker to protect against any sort of apocalypse, be it nuclear, biological or zombie. I will dig a small room under my garden, which shouldn't cost much apart from the wood used to keep it from collapsing. I would then wire it up with a generator and it's own water supply, and then case the insides with a thick concrete wall. Then buy plenty of supplies, and i'd like to see the zombies/nukes/biological weapons get me in there.
Don't kill the zombies - let's all join them and become one big happy family! :2thumbsup:
Depends on how their girls look...:juggle2:
Justiciar
11-18-2006, 14:49
Don't kill the zombies - let's all join them and become one big happy family! :2thumbsup:
Hear hear!
Sir Moody
11-18-2006, 18:18
I'm pretty sure that given the zombies' ubiquitous inability to even conceive the idea of using cover and for the most part relatively slow moving speeds teaching the grunts enough marksmanship to manage headshots at sufficient ranges with reasonable degree of reliability wouldn't exactly be all that difficult. Heck, by what firsthand accounts I've heard of basic army training, most ought to be able to manage it almost as is - no return fire to worry about after all so you can take a pretty good aim.
And when you add heavy weapons and armoured vehicles to the equation, the zombies are mincemeat. It is difficult to imagine a more rewarding target for an artillery barrage or tank gun fragmentation shells than the classic shambling horde of living dead, and rest assured the ones still "alive" afterwards will not be in any condition to do much beyond snarling at the infantry who saunter by and finish them off with headshots. It's not like armies tended to have shortages of their standard-issue small arms ammunition anyway, usually quite the contrary.
Nevermind now what fun stuff can be done with the air force.
And if things really get out of hand, nuclear sterilization is always an option. A ruthless dictatorship like China would actually be particularly prone to employing that as a solution if for some unfathomable reason its million-man conventional forces were insufficient, as it has less cause to worry about public opinion than more democratic regimes.
One of the bigger flaws in most "apocalyptic zombie horror" scenarios is that they entirely ignore the mind-boggling amounts of firepower modern armies can muster with contemptuous ease. They are, after all, equipped and designed to destroy each other despite both sides having tanks, artillery, combat aircraft, serious planning ability and gazillion grunts with guns to throw into the grinder; all the zombies have is a bunch of shambling idiots incapable of anything other than "pursue-eat" level of reacting to their environment, and even insects are much more sophisticated than that.
Not much of a contest there, I'd say.
actually the book doesnt ignore the millitarys strengths it actually is quite good - as i said it started out as a disease and it didnt make people zombies straight out the infected people spread the disease as they fled infected areas so by the time zombies started appearing infected people were everywhere - how many soldiers are there in the US? 10% of the population? less? imagine every single city came under attack by a force that doesnt sleep and doesnt need to eat (in the book they do eat human flesh but they dont NEED to) - the army cant be everywhere at once and they didnt relise what they were up against until they had allready lost significant parts of the country cutting supply lines and production capability - couple this with zombies that arnt stupid (the ones in the book dont just wander aimlessly around) and you can see why it caused so much trouble
:inquisitive:
Ironside
11-18-2006, 18:46
actually the book doesnt ignore the millitarys strengths it actually is quite good - as i said it started out as a disease and it didnt make people zombies straight out the infected people spread the disease as they fled infected areas so by the time zombies started appearing infected people were everywhere
Wiki gives that the infected dies within 20 hours (and is paralyzed after 11 hours, that's according to The Zombie Survival Guide), hardly enough time to the victims to flee very far and easily countered by information.
To put it simple, World War Z is about the only plague scenario that gets less effective with time (long timescale). The Egyptians stopped it 5000 years ago for example, how?
Compare this virus with a purely theoretical desease that got an incubation time on about 37 days (speculated for the black death) and infects about a week before any symtoms shows up, is airborne and about as infective as a common cold. 100% mortality rate.
Abokasee
11-18-2006, 20:17
I've capped a few Zombies in my time, having 4+ plus mates with ya and all having snooker/poll table ques (I got over 120) then going in a phanlanx formation can easily get the -Cencord- if you live in bristol find my house, I and the people in my house will be the only ones not un-dead, I also got a crossbow and a couple of ordance weoponry (including a iron police night night stick)
Watchman
11-18-2006, 22:20
All Finns carry knives about their person 24/7. Just ask the Swedes. Any zombies that turn up here are likely to get knifed to (second) death, or brained with an empty beer bottle in a late-night sausage kiosk queue brawl.
The other participants of the tussle may wonder a bit why these guys don't get their own ironmongery out, though, but hey - their problem.
:viking:
Says who ? Certainly not most popular fiction, where the amount of bits missing has a noticeable tendency to coincide with the degree of mobility reduced (not that it is usually great to begin with). Besides, by that logic the buggers would still be ambulatory as skeletons which is pretty much taking the whole discussion to the fields of sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and rarely if ever supported by source material.
What do you mean, 'not most popular fiction'? What facets of popular fiction, then, depict zombies whose limbs fail and leave them crippled and pathetic?
Given the very limited and monomanical parameters zombies invariably operate by such a "crazy hobo" is going to attract police attention right fast, and given the behavioral patterns of the critters considerable police attention right soon after. Or at least around here the cops are prone to intervening if they get reports of some crazy attacking people at random or, God forbid, eating them. If the conditon is contagious enough to infect the living through, say, bites à la rabies (not an universal trait of the "zombification" process, it might be added - many variations of the theme only affect already dead bodies) it's not going to take all that long before this is going to get noticed, although this depends on the gestation period.
Serious wounds inflicted by the "crazy hobo" would be taken to medical professionals anyway. Heck, if there's reason to believe the source of even minor injuries carried some kind of weird disease (in this case likely initially mistaken for some sort of rabies) I'm under the impression the normal procedure is to see a doctor anyway. So much for "bleed out and die", and human teeth are really poor weapons for killing or even seriously wounding animals - nevermind now human-sized ones that actively struggle - to begin with; the zombies' ubiquitous serious lack of any and all technique, sophistication and tactic in their use doesn't help at all.
And it's not like it'd actually take the authorities that long to play connect-the-dots with the victims of previous assaults turning into new slavering cannibal idiots either, in the case the condition is of the fluid-transmissable variant. Doubly so as it'll sooner or later happen under direct medical supervision, and after that the least they're going to do is quarantining all the victims under armed guard and likely issuing a public statement of the phenomenom so people have an idea of what to avoid and what they should immediately report to the authorities.
Right, so a wounded man heads to a hospital or clinic, has his wound treated and then heads home to become a zombie and bite his roommates, family or neighbours. Solid. Once the 'authorities' figure out that victims become new zombies, which will take quite some time (maybe not in Finland..), what can they do then? The new zombies will have migrated to other parts of the city and won't be traced easily, even if they know the the former identity of the flesheaters. How will they quaratine victims who aren't zombies yet? Issuing a public statement would only induce hysteria and lead to things like looting as people take their safety in their own hands or aim to benefit from the breakdown in social order. Even calling the military in would be a long and difficult process as kill teams wander the city to hunt zombies, and I seriously doubt that any government would consider having their air force bomb the tar out of one of their own cities, especially the larger ones where zombie attacks will be more dangerous.
I also severely doubt at their ability to perceive when a living body they're chomping actually kicks the bucket and turns into a slowly cooling corpse, for that matter, or particular interest in the distinction while in their "feeding frenzy". One suspects that level of diagnostics to be a little beyond the capabilities of monomanical eating machines equipped with the mental aquity of a mold, unless the packade deal includes some sort of mystic "life sense".
How about when the victim stops screaming and thrashing? Mystic life sense indeed. Even after a victim goes into shock, it won't be long until they really do snuff it, considering blood loss and organ failure.
All of which adds up to the victims of zombie hordes nigh certainly having a tendency to end up as so much bloody shreds and gnawed bones ill suited to standing up and shambling off in search of living humans to snack on.
The condition of the zombies is always irrelevant, except the condition of the frontal lobe, which will probably rot away eventually.
Humans are weak. Go behind a locked door. Problem solved.
Kagemusha
11-20-2006, 15:38
It depends on a door.If its a stupid Anglo-Saxon door that opens inside its easy to brake, not much body weight needed.But if its a smart Finnish door that opens to outside.Its a whole another ball game.:clown:
It depends on a door.If its a stupid Anglo-Saxon door that opens inside its easy to brake, not much body weight needed.But if its a smart Finnish door that opens to outside.Its a whole another ball game.:clown:
You'd be fine anyway. Any zombies would freeze from exposure.
I actually worry more about the super heroes of the world turning into flesh eating zombies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Zombies
:help:
macsen rufus
11-20-2006, 18:29
Quote:
Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix
Don't kill the zombies - let's all join them and become one big happy family!
Depends on how their girls look...
They're to die for.... :laugh4:
I actually worry more about the super heroes of the world turning into flesh eating zombies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Zombies
:help:
Marvel Zombies was the dumbest thing I'd ever read.
yesdachi
11-20-2006, 21:10
Marvel Zombies was the dumbest thing I'd ever read.
Interesting concept but they weren’t able to pull it off IMO. Tripped the trigger of all the horror fanatics out there though. :shrug:
Marvel Zombies was the dumbest thing I'd ever read.
Never read it. So is it one of those Marvel things that was better in concept than execution? Like say "Heroes reborn"?
I never read Heroes Reborn, but Marvel Zombies was just a big bundle of stupidity. Hulk bites the Silver Surfer's head off, as well. That would totally never happen.
The ultimate line borrowed a lot in concept (like how Ultimate FF suits and HR FF suits are nearly indentical) from Heroes reborn. Just no Spider-man or X-men in the HR universe. But it was poorly ececuted by Rob Liefeild (who was given Avengers and Captain America) and Jim Lee (who got FF and Ironman). Like the Manderin was a modified Doom-bot so Dr. Doom could control Hydra without Hydra ever knowing who they really worked for. Or Cap spent the last 50 years (this was 10 years ago) on ice. But Truman had him frozen because he wouldn't publicly back Hiroshima. But they thawed him out for Korea and Vietnam (but out of costume). They're ended up being 2 Thors. And then the ending where Jim Lee combined his Wildstorm universe with the HR universe. Where the Daemonites and Skrulls had, with Dr. Doom's help, nearly conquered the earth.
That doesn't sound so bad, actually. I never liked Thor, though, so two of him is a big minus.
The problem was they ended up trying to cram 30 years of stories and characters into 12 issues. The net result was waves of villians/threats coming at them. Like the Avengers had wave after wave after wave of their old rogues gallery thrown at them. All off whom Loki manufatured out of thin air. Hulk had a really bad Emo hair cut. The FF jumped right from Namor to the Inhumans. Ironman started tracking Hulk but went to Whirlwind. Then Living laser shows and dies. Then the first Ironman (a new character called Rebel O'reilly) was resurected by Dr. Doom, for no appearant reason.
There was one good concept in HR though. Victor Von Doom, Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and Rebel O'Reilly were all uni buddies. They called themselfs "Atomic knights of the round table!" Well Doom was mostly there because Reed was his roomate and he dragged him to parties, poker nights, and booty calls.
yesdachi
11-21-2006, 14:39
The best thing about Heroes Reborn was getting to see some fan fav artists (except for Liefeild, who I dislike and was happy that he got kicked off his book) on titles they would not normally have been on. IMO the stories were weak and were held together by buzz more than substance.
Marvel Zombies was a pretty far fetched story but had some neat twists and offered some interesting “what if” scenarios. The most difficult thing about the books for me was getting past the visuals of zombies, I hate them so much.
Well they were supposed to be ravenous undead things. Also Marvel asked what Zombie type special woul the fans want next. Guess what the majority said? Apes.
Don't kill the zombies - let's all join them and become one big happy family!
Depends on how their girls look..
Kick out their teeth, infinite blowjob
yesdachi
11-22-2006, 15:06
Kick out their teeth, infinite blowjob
Way to find a silver lining Fragony!
Zombies hunger for brains and I have been told that’s the area where I do my thinking, it may be a more appealing region for a zombie than I thought!
That comment begs a follow-up, but I'm going to refrain on behalf of my warning record.
Way to find a silver lining Fragony!
Zombies hunger for brains and I have been told that’s the area where I do my thinking, it may be a more appealing region for a zombie than I thought!
There is a scene in the lastest reanimator movie that follows that sort of logic. Then of course a rat gets into a fight with the severed appendage and loses.
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