Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[RogueIce]

Okay so maybe I'm not familiar enough with Yonkers, NY but I got the impression they were fighting on more or less open ground, or at least as open as possible? And they were luring the zombies to them rather than rolling in to retake a city. If it was urban I could see them not going all high explosives all the time. But if they were trying to lure out the zombies I'd imagine they'd try to pick someplace where collateral damage would be less of a concern so they could go all out.

[RogueIce]

Y'know, in retrospect fuck it. I haven't read the book so I don't know the details and it's pointless trying to go on purely second hand information. So let's move on.

How 'bout that N&P huh?

[Djinnkitty83]

aren't modern weapons more focused on penetration rather than fire-bukkake, though?

Depends on what they are intended for. Is it a bunker buster, a runway cratering bomb, an anti-tank bomb/missile, an anti personnel bomb/missile, etc... ?

I think one of the most important difference between modern bombs and WW2 ones are that modern ones are guided, which in theory and in the context of modern warfare, allow to produce as much effective damage to enemy war-fighting capabilities while requiring to fly far less airplanes and carry far less bombs / missiles to do the same job.

Basically, quality over quantity.

That's actually a really good point, I'm rethinking my position on the killing-efficiency of modern-day weapons against zombies. Today's weapons may be more powerful, pound for pound, but WW1 and WW2 were generally far more focused on destroying flesh, rather than punching through reinforced steel bunkers. Depleted uranium rounds aren't much more useful against zombies than flamethrowers and WW2 machine-gun nests unless the zombies are driving tanks and draping themselves in kevlar.

Okay so maybe I'm not familiar enough with Yonkers, NY but I got the impression they were fighting on more or less open ground, or at least as open as possible? And they were luring the zombies to them rather than rolling in to retake a city. If it was urban I could see them not going all high explosives all the time. But if they were trying to lure out the zombies I'd imagine they'd try to pick someplace where collateral damage would be less of a concern so they could go all out.

In the book, Yonkers was supposed to be the ideal 'stand up' battle. It was a mostly evacuated suburb and the zombies were lured out along an open interstate. Of course it was only made possible because most of NY had already fallen and the zombies were following the refugees along that nice open stretch.

[Losonti Tokash]

is modern weaponry really so effective that 10,000 guys can stop a continuous stream of 18 million marching up a highway

[Oxymoron]

If I remember right, the thing that happened at Yonkers is that they had just admitted to have lost control of Manhattan, and that it was basically the National Guard and maybe also the US Army who decided to draw the line at Yonkers.

The zombie horde that came out was coming through a bridge, and I think the higher-ups were pretty intent on not blowing it up, which ruled out most explosive solutions. So they waited for the zombies to come out on their end of the bridge to start killing them on the open ground there, even using 155mm artillery fire.

The real problem of Yonkers and the thing that is one of the cornerstone of the book's explanation on the failure of the military at the time, is that : yes, they did manage to destroy an impressive number of zombies even if their methods weren't 100% effective ; but in something like 20-30 minutes, no one had any ammunition left, having expended everything they had on the zombies.

The communication and commandment problem are only incidental, the real lesson here is that there literally was more zombies to fight than they had ammunitions.


Later on in the book, we learn that one of the must important lesson that the military learned from Yonkers was to be EFFICIENT : kill the most zombies with the least resource expenditure possible. That's why, for example, the soldiers of the "World War Z" are generally equipped more like tuned down WW2 G.I. than the "tacticool" of modern soldiers.

[Oxymoron]

(note I'm going from memory and haven't read the book since two years ago)

[Straha]

Look at the most adorable Racist!


http://youtube.com/watch?v=5drONi6XHM8


And a pair of adorable racists:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1IPm2iEOvPI


For a group so self-aware about physical appearance you'd think they'd come up with a better production values...

[zhaktronz]

is modern weaponry really so effective that 10,000 guys can stop a continuous stream of 18 million marching up a highway

If they have barbed wire and other fortifications yes

See ww1

[magic princess]

There were multiple cases of a single machine gun crew (or in the case of the "soldier worth millions" of the Portuguese expeditionary force, one single man when the whole rest of his division retreated in disorder) stopping an entire regiment or division because they were in a good, prepared location with broad fields of fire. That means halting -- for on the order of a day or two -- 20,000 - 30,000 in the outside armed, thinking humans with their own machine-guns and artillery support.

That said, a very disciplined and motivated unit of that same period could over course overrun its equal or even conduct a successful offensive against trenches and wire with the bayonet. There are many instances of this, so you see it comes down pretty hard to how well motivated each side is. On the other hand, you see really well motivated units that "attacked six times with the bayonet" at Woerth and were driven back and defeated despite taking more than 90% casualties. So even with a totally fanatical enemy, the defence could still succeed.

[Oxymoron]

B- but numbers !

[Djinnkitty83]

Keep in mind that tactics against zombies will differ from tactics against humans due to the fear factor alone. The lone sniper/machine gunner in a good position gets assaulted by people, after the first five or six people fall over with holes in various portions of their bodies, the rest are going to slow down and rethink the assault, giving the sniper a break. With zombies... they don't care. The fight comes down to whether or not there are more zombies moving fast enough than the sniper can take out before one or more reaches him, and that equation will constantly shift more and more in the zombies' favour as exhaustion, ammo supply, and simple human error take their toll.

Barbed wire is a similar deal. It's great against people because people go out of their way to avoid it, being safely funneled into ideal kill-zones for the defense. Zombies... one gets caught on the wire, the next walks over him. Two feet the left or right, the same thing is happening. Each row of barbed wire will only stop one row of zombies.

[magic princess]

Eh, it'll still create chaos and bunching for the zombies simply by distribution theory and the likelihood of zombies tripping and getting trampled is high... Which will literally tear them to pieces in giant mob rushes as they try to go over the wire, so that will actually permanently put down a lot of zombies. Also targeting theory for groups insures a very high probability in such a tightly packed group of your hitting with a majority of your bullets so expect to see an M2 with a thousand rounds take out 700 zombies, and the fire rate is such that it can do so before its position is reached by the zombies if it opens fire at maximum range. So I'd expect a single machine gun crew to still be worth a thousand zombies.

But that's just small arms. Need I say quite simply that the artillery is a much bigger factor? The Russians should do best their as their operational artillery to people ratio is very high and katyushas are perfect for this kind of thing. I'd also expect flesh eating bacteria to be very rapidly weaponized as if the zombies' immune systems are no longer functional they'll tear through them and disable them with incredible rapidity. Any organic material is vulnerable to biological warfare.

That would actually make a pretty good zombie movie -- one where the government releases a flesh eating bacteria bioweapon that stops the zombies but turns out to be basically as bad as the zombie plague itself. It would allow the investigation of some of the downsides of the RAR HUMAN TECHNOLOGY approach advocated on TEO.

[Djinnkitty83]

I'd also expect flesh eating bacteria to be very rapidly weaponized as if the zombies' immune systems are no longer functional they'll tear through them and disable them with incredible rapidity. Any organic material is vulnerable to biological warfare.

That would actually make a pretty good zombie movie -- one where the government releases a flesh eating bacteria bioweapon that stops the zombies but turns out to be basically as bad as the zombie plague itself. It would allow the investigation of some of the downsides of the RAR HUMAN TECHNOLOGY approach advocated on TEO.

If we're talking WWZ book zombies, it's explicitly stated that almost all bacteria, flesh-eating and otherwise, ignore them. Considering that the only thing keeping foreign micro-organisms from devouring people is a living immune system, and the only thing stopping your muscles turning to shredded goo from simple movement is an active metabolism, you have to give zombies a 'get out of decay free' card or they'll be completely useless after a couple hours of movement.

[Losonti Tokash]

i literally cannot believe how boring and irrelevant any of this is

[Djinnkitty83]

Literally?

[evilsoup]

figuratively literally

[Losonti Tokash]

Literally?

i meant what i said buddy

[magic princess]

i literally cannot believe how boring and irrelevant any of this is

EXCELLENT. Our plot to kill Los of boredom is working!

[Losonti Tokash]

nooooooo

[zhaktronz]

Barbed wire is a similar deal. It's great against people because people go out of their way to avoid it, being safely funneled into ideal kill-zones for the defense. Zombies... one gets caught on the wire, the next walks over him. Two feet the left or right, the same thing is happening. Each row of barbed wire will only stop one row of zombies.

Every time the horde has to climb over a concertina of wire it's speed is slowed down by x km/h. Barbed wire can be layed at the rate of a hundred metres per minute for vehicle mounted systems. 30min of prep time and you can casually slow the zombies rate of advance down an avenue to a stand still

[Djinnkitty83]

Looks like we've found the zombies' weak point:

[Questor]

How long are we going to talk about a book that is at best a strong example of a weak genre?

[evilsoup]

until someone starts talking about something else I guess

[Flagg]

Jews: Scourge on the world or simple ashtray fillers? Discuss!

[Djinnkitty83]

"Guys, I'd really like like the topic of conversation to change. ...What? Come up with my own topic? No, no I don't feel like doing that, I just want it to change, so, uh, could you guys do that for me?"