Inspired by a recent thread about spider webs , but also by the latest Dean Koontz Frankenstein novel, in which a certain menace isn’t vulnerable to guns. That got me to thinking: in your standard horror/ zombie plague/ post-apocalyptic scenerio, the various menaces you face can be divided into two broad groups- those that can be stopped with guns and those that cannot. The latter pose a serious problem.
For things that do not die simply from having a hole poked in them, I would think the next best standard weapon would be fire. But faced with such a situation IRL, just how would you employ fire? Lots of things shoot flame but you probably don’t want to have to stand there for twenty minutes gradually flambé-ing something, particularly if it’s amorphous enough that it’s outer surface is expendable while the main mass continues to function. So what do you use? An actual WW2-style flamethrower would be ideal but I doubt you can get them. Molotov cocktails? The old “light the stream from a can of spray paint” trick? Homemade napalm?
I seem to remember that we used to have a mortician on the board, and one someone asked her about how she would combat an invasion of zombies she said that fire actually wouldn’t be all that great: it does lots of tissue damage, but apparently it would only start to physically incapacitate a body after several hours of sustained and very hot fire, as the tendons in the arms and legs started to warp and shrink, pulling the limbs towards the torso in the so-called “pugilist’s posture” and effectively immobilizing the animated but now non-ambulatory corpse.
Flaming arrows would be a great compromise between ease of use, availability, and effectiveness. A crossbow and bolts would have even less of a learning curve, but aren’t as easy to find.
Ideally the flammable wrap on the arrow would only be providing ignition for a trap were you’ve already dispensed flammable liquid over a large and/or confined area.
I really felt like Dwight Schrute while typing that.
This is the sort of quality information which makes this place well worth $7.49 a year.
Tragically, it also wiped out years of zombie defense planning which, like the OP’s suggestion, depended largely upon using flame-throwers and Molotov cocktails. Dammit! :mad:
Yea, for my money I would build zombie defenses that focused on inflicting catastrophic damage to the limbs: as long as they can’t walk or drag themselves, you’re safe.
Zombies can be fought with guns, in fact it’s preferred. I was thinking more along the lines of the Blob, or a shapeshifter without any internal structure to damage, or a swarm/cluster made up of tiny subunits. The main point is that although it’s not physically invulnerable it has no mechanical vulnerability; poking a hole in it does nothing, and it can’t be broken or injured. Let’s say it’s vulnerable to fire or even corrosives like acid or strong alkalis. But it isn’t going to run away shreiking just because you’ve scorched it a bit; if you incinerate half of it, it’s now half as big but still dangerous. What could you hit it with that would finish it off, at least eventually?
The bad thing about lighting zombies on fire is that until they are brought down by the fire, they’re basically walking torches, and can do even more damage. I’d rather get grabbed by a not-on-fire-zombie if it came to that.
As for a delivery system, I’m in the “flaming moat” or pit - trap & burn camp. Just something they can’t crawl out of to burn up my apocalypse-hideout. An up close & personal method like a flame thrower would probably end badly.
Nothing corporeal is invulnerable to guns. A minigun doesn’t poke holes so much as shred your target into little bitty bits. If you really have to use fire for some kind of supernatural reason, high explosives would be the way to go. Grenades and rocket launchers should do nicely.
Anything that can be killed with a sword can be killed with some kind of gun.
The post in question—and, as a matter of fact, she guessed about half an hour for a house fire, and less than twenty minutes for a car fire. She also talks a bit about the brain boiling and popping the cranium.*
And, of course, this isn’t talking about modern Napalm-B, as used in incendiary bombs or flamethrowers, which according to wiki, burns at 1,500℉ to 2,200℉, for ten minutes, and is sticky.
*And I’d personally like to note the possibility of merely leaving the zombie senseless—literally. I mean, if you burn off or boil the eyes; flame or hot gasses destroy olfactory nerves; damage the eardrums; burn away the skin or fingers…a zombie’s not even going to be able to tell that someone’s there to attack.
Well, if your goal is to destroy the brain, you could always make 'em watch Two and Half Men. Tell them it’s about two zombies and their half-eaten victim, to get their interest.
If fire isn’t working you don’t have enough.
“Of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight everything with fire.”
— Jaya Ballard, task mage, Magic The Gathering , Sizzle
But vampires are still super-flammable, right? When they ignite it’s a quick flash fire and then straight to ashes, right? Right???
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[sub]Well that doesn’t sound worryingly desperate to find out.[/sub] :eek:
I’m still trying to get my NSF grant, so’s I can get the proper testing done. You can imagine what the forms alone are like.
Back to the subject of zombies, I probably can do some undead analogue testing—such as with zombie dogfish, as the video shows—but for a full scale test, one really will need some Napalm-B. And a fresh cow.
The best fire based weapon used against bullet resistant enemies I can recall offhand were the ones used against the Chtorrans in David Gerrold’s The War Against The Chtorr. They rapid-fire incendiary jelly, basically super-napalm, in a stream of pellets at a high enough velocity that they hit as hard as bullets before they splatter and burn. They shred and burn. They were designed to stop giant superfast alien worms; against mere zombies the result would be flaming zombie bits scattered everywhere.
, but also by the latest Dean Koontz Frankenstein novel, in which a certain menace isn’t vulnerable to guns. That got me to thinking: in your standard horror/ zombie plague/ post-apocalyptic scenerio, the various menaces you face can be divided into two broad groups- those that can be stopped with guns and those that cannot. The latter pose a serious problem.
Dammit! :mad: