Share your protect-civilization-from-zombies plan

In My Humble Opinion
1

Suggested by a discussion in the current Walking Dead thread, which only laziness prevents me from linking to.

By means too contrived to go into here, you have gained the friendship and confidence of the President. Thus you’re not surprised when a couple of Secret Service agents show up at your door and ask you to come with them immediately, though you’re a little disturbed when they say that your family and housemates should come along too. Clearly something is up.

Soon, along with several other of Barry’s closest advisors, you’re sitting in the Oval Office. B.H.O. enters and says that he’s got some bad news. A certain notorious, borderline competent, and ethically challenged techno-mage (no need to name names, is there?) has merged science & necromancy to create a virus that, if released, will cause the dead to reanimate and seek out human flesh for noshing purposes; the zombies created will operate by the rules seen on WD: any dead person rises, and any person who dies after the virus spread will reanimate. The NBCECTM intended to use said zombie virus for global blackmail, but it has somehow escaped its containment in his headquarters; and being a dirty coward he has naturally bugged out the alternate Earth next quantum level over.

B.H.O. has already dispatched his best agents to contain the virus. He has NOT called you here to discuss how to do that. Rather, the group is gathered to brainstorm ways for society to survive if his agents fail. That’s why you, the other advisors, and your families were called here, and why the conversation will have to happen on the run, while everyone’s moved to a secure location.

Share you ideas.

2

  1. We’ve got to sort out secure disposal of our dead. We need to manufacture a crapload of captive bolt pistol type devices.

  2. We’ve got to set up secure holding stations for the unwell. Hospitals are going to be no fun. Also, something like an EKG or EEG to tell if people are dead that doesn’t require intimate contact. I’m not getting in stethoscope range of Grandma.

  3. Prepare Sniper roosts at major intersections in the cities.

3

I haven’t seen the tv show in question, but I do a lot of thinking about apocalypses. Therefore, advance forgiveness asked for any violations of the hypothetical.
So, if I’m understanding right, anyone who is currently dead and still in body format is going to be popping back up for noms, and anyone who dies from now on will be eligible for popping back up?

First off, we need to get in touch with all the major coffin manufacturers. What are their most secure and least secure coffin types, and to whom have they been sold?

Second, massive crematoria. Once we have the list of unsecure coffin recipients we need to start exhuming and ashing in order of least-to-most secure, and in order from most-recent to oldest reanimating dead. I think that modern trash pickup vehicles can be modded to be relatively secure from the outside - use modded backhoes to put the coffins into the trash truck, drive to the crematoria, dump in from a height, and have shotgunners on the periphery to tag any daring escapees.

Third, hospitals need to be set up to be entirely distance-manned. Robots, panopticon layout, and trapped/shotgunner-manned entrances and exits. Rooms are set up with trapdoor floors (beds and toilets bolted to the walls) that fall directly into the crematorium on the bottom floor. The trapfloor is linked to the heart monitor, and drops immediately when the heart stops.

Fourth, we need to get psychologists onto training the general public that the person is super-dead and gone the exact instant they die, and are immediately replaced with hateful evil demons. Most zombie problems come from people being sentimental about their own dead. We need to get past that, and make sure people are as hardened as possible about the facts of unlife. Maybe we’ll all end up with death-related PTSD, but on the plus side, still kicking! Bonus points if we can get people to voluntarily join a “deathwatch” group that monitors sickness or injury, and notifies a zombie-trash-truck for pickup.

Fifth, since we’re burning the shit out of a lot of dead people now, we need to find some way to make the process a bit cathartic and helpful - smush them into diamonds for their loved ones, a memorial “zombie proof” canister, something like that. Then people have a “safe” outlet for their loved one to stick around, which also makes the “untransformed” dead more abhorrent over time as simply the thought of being a corpse becomes a massive taboo.

4

You want me to protect civilization? In a zombie apocalypse, I don’t think that is really possible. We need to think more in terms of remaking civilization into something that can endure in a world where the dead rise to feast on the flesh of the living. That will mean changes not only in the way we do things, but in the way we think and feel. Human civilization 2.0 is going to have to be a lot different.

5

I don’t mean protect the current model of civilization; I mean make it possible for a human civilization to endure.

I’m not sure that can happen in the WD verse; it depends on whether newborns are infected, and on whether the first wave of zombiefication was so bad because the released virus raised many dead,or because it killed & reanimated most of the populace and the survivors were immune to the instant-die part but not the reanimate after death part.

6

Find out what the zombies consider bait. Is it CO2, the sight of humans, smell, sound, etc. Then create thousands of fireteams of soldiers in armed vehicles using bait to draw out the zombies. Draw the zombies out and kill them. Wash/rinse/repeat to eliminate as many as possible.

Make cremation after death mandatory (obviously) and mandate that all people sleep in a locked room (which can be opened by turning a lock from either the inside or outside) in case they die in their sleep the zombie will be contained. Zombies can’t operate locks.

Snipers in walled off high rises so the zombies cannot get to them.

Zombies are disorganized, rely on instinct, cannot use/make tools, cannot plan. They are just animals. Humans are the opposite generally and can work together, make/use tools and plan. So a zombie horde would not end civilization.

7

Well for starters, all gun control laws are nullified. We want everyone packing heat.

Ambulances? Death traps now! “You’re dying and you want us to take you to the hospital? Oh Hell NO!” <BLAM!>

Oh, and there’s no such thing as a ‘secure location’ in this event.

8

Let’s begin with setting out what kind of zombies we are dealing with. Are these a variation on Romero zombies where we are dealing only those who have died since “the event” began and those who they infect? Or, is it a situation where the dead in general are re-animating?

9

The biggest challenge right off the bat would be food distribution. Farming and transportation would be severely disrupted by the zombie scourge. I don’t know what kind of food reserves are in government hands, but the first directive has to be to protect the food supply (walling off farms, for instance) and distribution system. If people can be supplied with food and water, they can shelter in place against TWD zombies. If you hole up in a high school gym with some other families, TWD zombies will never be able to get to you.

Secondly, TWD zombies have a huge weakness: they are attracted to sound, and form giant herds when groups of them head in the same direction after a noise. To exploit this, something like this can be set up on Humvees in open areas. Once the sound is blasting, you just need some armored personnel carriers. Soldiers can fire their rifles through the ports, or be given lances to use. Based on TWD, there is no point at which the zombies will stop shambling to their doom.

Thirdly, existing channels of communication must be used to educate the public on key matters: The dead must be stabbed in the brain, people who are bitten by a zombie must be restrained or killed, bodies should be burned, and so forth.

As I noted in the TWD thread, I think you’re looking at a few months of unpleasantness at worst. TWD zombies just aren’t dangerous enough: you only turn if you die or are bitten, they are slow, easily killed, and can be lured with sound.

I had assumed the latter, but have been told that that’s not the case, everyone is turned only by a bite, or natural death, no deaths are from the fever agent.

10

I have a soft heart but I know I could harden it for the Reddeker plan. It’s a plan from the book World War Z, and it’s a harsh plan, but the only one that will work.

People were horrified in the book when he brought it up, but it is the only reasonable plan and to win, you are going to have to cut some losses. It is not a pleasant or pretty plan, but when you are talking about possible worldwide destruction of the human race, it must be done.

11

Human Action, someone – possibly you, but I’m too lazy to check – suggested in a TWD thread that the reason society collapsed so quickly was that the initial virus outbreak killed most people – 95% or more-- who then rose as zombies. The survivors were those who were immune to the immediate effects of the plague.

12

I did make that suggestion, but subsequent posts claimed that it was canon in the comics and series that this was not the case. I located the script from the pilot episode, which I recalled having a few lines from Morgan about the plague. Here’s what I found:

So, it seems they were right, the virus doesn’t kill anyone outside of zombie bites. That information radically changes the scenario of TWD, from plague-and-zombies, to just zombies. Without a massive die-off of the population, the zombies presented just aren’t threatening or numerous enough to bring down our society.

For this thread, if you want to go with the lethal-virus angle, that suits me fine.