Nuke NY city and get paid to do it? No brainer.
I doubt if NY city is the pinnacle of American civilization, & if it is, we are in deep doo doo!
Although, I would lament the loss of some of the museums.
I drop, and return to base.
The OP didn’t specify if New York was my only target, or merely my first—a B-2 is capable of carrying more than one bomb, even a nuclear one—if the former, refusing to attack is likely going to have no effect on stopping the operation at large, assuming other bombers are going to the other cities at the same time, but might actually make the sacrifice of the other cities moot if the (likely tens of millions of densely packed) zombies from NY are left unharmed to wander away once the noisemakers stop.
Plus, well, it’s a good plan. Luring as many zombies as possible to one area, and then destroying them en masse. The resulting nuclear firestorm would probably serve as a decent lure/trap itself, considering the noise and light.
And I have to consider that those cities, and any survivors that may still be hiding therein, are as good as lost already. It’s never going to be realistically possible to save them—destroying them is just a formality. Well, a “formality” that makes the enemy finally pay for their loss.
Afterwards, I return to base. Why? Well, for no other reason than the B-2 doesn’t have the range to make it to Tahiti. Oh, and I don’t have my family onboard. That, too. 
But, really, my country—what’s left of it, or whatever’s left of the human resistance to the zombie plague may still have need of the aircraft, and a pilot, and may still be able to use us to make a difference against the zombies, perhaps even a critical one. Plus, the base obviously has enough supplies, personnel, and infrastructure to support air combat operations, and at least some refugees. That’s known—but who knows what the situation in Tahiti is? It might be under half an inch of glowing slag and ash already, or be desperately overcrowded with refugees surviving on 200 calories a day of sawdust and rat meat, if they’re lucky. I don’t feel like trying my luck.
Waitaminute, what zombie “plague”? What if the “zombies” are the next phase of human existence, and we so-called “uninfected” are the throwbacks?
And what does “solanum” mean?
Because zombies suck. Even if the entire population of New York City somehow got zombified despite having the zombies beat in speed, intelligence, dexterity, tool use, communication and numbers, a single car shredder could puree all eight million of them in a week.
NYC is your only target, in the book every flight mission is assigned a city each (I think Houston gets nuked, but the pilot assigned to San Antonio balks - might have it the wrong way round). Other pilots are assigned to other cities and may or may not carry out their orders.
Should have said in the OP; your loved ones and assorted hangers on are on board the plane with you, your gorgeous genius supermodel partner is the navigator for instance who will get you a shortcut to Tahiti if you wish. 
Sounds like quisling talk to me! Sorry, I forget not everyone is a zombie scholar. Solanum is covered in the Zombie Survival Guide, basically just to clarify what type of zombies we’re nuking - these aren’t voodoo zombies or supernatural ones that crawl out of the grave, but ‘virus’ type zombies that kill then reanimate via a bite.
Well if it was vampires, I definitely wouldn’t flinch.
I’ve had this argument elsewhere and had to agree to disagree with the other party. In limited numbers I agree entirely but when you get to the apocalyptic levels depicted in the book World War Z, zombies are a lot harder to deal with, I don’t think your car shredder would last long.
Of course the authorities would have to be pretty incompetent to let it get to that point, but still…
I’m actually currently reading ‘The Zombie Survival Guide’ by Max Brooks, the author of World War Z, fun stuff.
Interesting that you question my sincerity because it’s counter to the majority.
An interesting development, as…[spoiler]by my numbers, and a couple of converters—a rough bit of work, admittedly, converting from grays to rems—the dosage of radiation required to delay the spoilage of meat would only be absorbed by a target within the fireball of a 340 kt blast, and that only with a ground burst—unless you were trying to kill zombies hiding in a bunker, an airburst would have a greater destructive radius, and minimize both ionizing radiation exposure to the surface and fallout.
And even with the fallout from a ground burst, it looks like the worst-effected areas downwind would only receive a third of enough radiation per hour to delay the sprouting of “bulbs and tubers.” 'Hard to say what the health effects would be on “organisms” that are still animated despite being, by all medical knowledge, completely incapable of being alive, though. Further testing might be required…[/spoiler]
We really need to increase public education about of the nuclear sciences in this country. Starting in Kindergarten, I’m thinking.
Friend, expressing an extreme minority position hardly makes you immune to Poe’s Law. Quite the opposite, really.
Besides, if NYC is the microcosm of human civilization…and in it’s current state, it’s a devastated ruin bloated with endless tons of the putrefying, pestilence-riddled wreckage of stolen human life—reduced to howling, mindless abomination dragging itself through a nightmare twilight in the shadow of grinning, elusive death—well, I’d say there’s not going to be much of an existential loss from a few heavy taps of good ol’ mister reset button.
If you really believe what you wrote I question your sanity. If New York was destroyed the rest of humanity might feel sad about it for a few months but the world, and human civilisation, would keep turning.
Not just in America, in the UK as well people completely lose their frigging minds when the word ‘nuclear’ is mentioned.
Really? Really? I’m the only one that voted to nuke the base?
Dear lord, we need some good old fashioned chaos up in here.
Of course I’d drop the nuke. But I think you’d need something much more powerful than 340 KT. Put me in a Bear with a Tsar Bomba.
I know there’s no kill like overkill, but yikes.
A surface burst would probably be more effective against a city full of zombies, unless vapourised or mechanically damaged beyond the ability to move all those other nasty effects so effective on humans probably wouldn’t bother them that much.
And yeah, a series of interlocking fireballs from a number of smaller yield nukes is much more efficient than one huge blast, 340KT definitely wouldn’t be enough.
Isn’t 340 Kt like, twenty Hiroshimas?
That’s not enough to take care of a zombie problem in New York City?
It doesn’t add up as simply as that, for every doubling of destructive radius you need a seven-fold increase in yield, put it this way at one point the entire British nuclear deterrent was ear-marked for Moscow alone, some thirty-two multi-megaton warheads.
They wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t necessary, and New York is also a large metropolis, look I’m not saying they wouldn’t get their hair mussed but 340Kt just wouldn’t cut it.
This may not be taking the undead population density into account, however. The zombies aren’t going to be evenly dispersed throughout the metropolitan area, going about their daily lives. They’re going to be moving mindlessly towards the noisemakers—not caring how many other ghouls are in their way, or underfoot.
I can only imagine that it would be far worse than the accounts of rushes and tramplings I’ve seen clubs or stadiums when people stampeded. Especially when it would be by creatures that don’t breathe, feel pain, or have any actual survival instinct, and would be deliberately climbing onto a large pile of bodies, not even merely funneled into a tragic chokepoint.
One wonders how many zombies would simply be crushed under the weight of their fellows, or if estimates could be made on how many zombies had been destroyed already by measuring the amount of pulverized zombie effluent draining off from the heap into the rivers and harbor. :eek:
No. As Disposable Hero notes, the explosion does not scale linearly. Plus a lot of energy will be absorbed by buildings.
And then there’s the simple fact that if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.