What got me was they were digging the postholes for the fence by hand. Then they show the tractor dearership with at least one each of a tractor with a loader and one with a posthole digger.
I like the woodchipper idea, but life has taught me the thing WOULD find a way to jam.
If only they could find one working bulldozer left in the world
Or a steam roller. Either way, what fun it would be. Just make sure you weld some protection on the … wait. Go get a goddamn tank.
Once upon a time in the dim and distant past I owned a fleet of vehicles and a service shop for them. We also did outside work, and one of our clients was a landscape company. We had one of their chippers in our shop for service. Coincidentally, I took my foreman and a couple of other guys out fishing. Talk included chippers and disposal of bodies. And so it was that we brought a 7 foot 200 pound lemon shark back to the shop with us that night. We thought it a fair stand-in for a human, and we wanted to settle the question once and for all.
We wheeled the chipper out into the street, then across the street where the “out” chute hung over a neighboring business’s open dumpster. Then we fired it up and tossed in the shark. There was a momentary change in the sound as the fish hit the grinder (RRRRRRRRRRRRrrruuuuuuRRRRRRRRRR!!!) but nothing else remarkable. Well, except that chunks of shark didn’t fall into the dumpster as we expected. Instead a kind of shark paste blasted out, spraying the dumpster, the wall, and everything else for 20 feet around with a red, fishy goo. We hosed the chipper out and wheeled it back into the shop and went home. That was Friday of a weekend with a Monday holiday.
When we returned on Tuesday morning there was a distinct stench of rotting fish up and down the block, and the neighbors were almost hysterical. Seems somebody had vandalized their place with nasty garbage that smelled so bad they couldn’t even work inside, let alone have customers. They suspected some competing businessman, but it was a mystery! And so we left it. No point in disabusing them of their fantasy, was there?
The point being that industrial chippers and grinders are quite capable of dealing with zombie meat.
Or human bodies.
What if a drone could carry 100 standard darts, dropped from 700 feet? Would that be enough to puncture a bunch of zombie skulls?
Our heroes look like actors. People who actually dig ditches and chop trees all day, every day, would actually look the part and be better prepared for close combat with walkers and Wolves.
It’s possible there is a diesel fuel shortage, or someone realized that moving, and using, heavy equipment creates walker-attracting noise???
…that’s a great story! 
But I must respectfully submit that your story involves one shark, whereas Alexandria would be dealing with several hundred to several THOUSAND walkers, many of which no doubt died while carrying metal objects in their zombie pockets… car keys, pocketknives, multitools, and ghod knows what.
I’ve used a woodchipper before, and I certainly gave into the urge to throw a few things in there that weren’t really meant to be chipped… but I wonder how many sets of car keys and multitools you’d have to pitch into a woodchipper to ruin it?
Unless you can get someone to go out there and go through their pockets first.
With my luck, the first zombie I tossed into the woodchipper would be a survivalist who had a grenade in his pocket.
you might be right - if it were live human bodies -
but considering these zobies heads were being crushed by bumping into the wall - I think we’d be ok - and we get enough of them lined up , shouldnt be an issue.
My shark story involved a small to medium commercial wood chipper. As I recall, it was rated for hard wood branches up to 5 or so inches diameter. No amount of Leatherman tools, key rings, spare change, and suchlike pocket detritus would have the slightest effect on it. Trees often have nails, spikes, pieces of chain, and all kinds of other junk attached or captured. These chippers, like the honey badger, just don’t give a shit. A live grenade might – might – be a different story. But it would only explode if a blade happened to hit the detonator before the blades tore the actual grenade apart. Without confinement inside a solid metal vessel, there wouldn’t be an explosion, just a fizzle. And that’s just one of the smaller units.
ETA – about the size of the one in simster’s cite.
After Hurricane Andrew they brought in chipper/shredders that could eat half a dozen telephone poles at once, complete with steel climbing spikes, giant eyebolts, steel cable, and all the other crap you would expect to be attached to downed utility poles. Similar units “ate” washers, dryers, refrigerators, roofing, walls, cars, and such. If you created a walkway into the hopper, you could handle zombies 6 or 8 abreast and blow the liquefied remains over a handy cliff edge as fast as the zombie horde could shuffle into it.
But I do like Bryan’s idea. It could be ball bearings, marbles, golf balls, egg rocks, even 16 penny nails. And a trebuchet, hot air balloon, potato gun (there must be a store with the hair spray isle un-looted, right?) or just stand on the highest part of the cliff and throw them. Zombie heads that break when bumped into a wall aren’t gonna resist any of those.
Well, he’d definitely be hungry to see you.
Once we start down the bombardment path, you could easily explore any number of ideas. If it’s possible to get to the highest part of the surrounding walls, that’s a major plus. Heck, get a good slingshot and launch a half-dozen ball-bearings on a steep angle so they arc over and fall nearly-vertical into the quarry. Even if they don’t instantly kill any zombies, the floor of the quarry will gradually be covered with ball bearings and zombies that are constantly slipping and falling are damn funny.
Someone would laugh themselves to death.
Oh, wait…
simster, I have no doubt that you are correct. I am quite sure that if I tossed a zombie or even a live human I dragged screaming off the street into a wood chipper, he’d be gory paste in a matter of seconds.
But I am thinking that a ring of keys… house keys, car keys, and so forth… would be mighty hard on the chipper. So how many zombies do you think have a set in their pockets? And how many of them could we stuff in a woodchipper before these little bits of metal began to take their toll on the machinery? Admittedly, this is not an experiment I’ve ever tried, but assuming a steady stream of random zombies, I’m thinking no more than hours before the poor chipper just jammed or broke.
(And this is one of the things that keeps me coming back to the Straight Dope: this is one of the few places I can have a serious thought experiment about how many random zombies you can feed into a wood chipper before the keys in their pockets break the damn thing. Has anyone thought to ask Cecil about this?)
I also find myself pondering zombie burnability. Human bodies do not burn well; they are largely made of water. However, once you get them going pretty good and hot, their natural oils do tend to light up. It’s the initial stage that’s the hard part; you need to know what you’re doing. Dumping gasoline on them and just lighting them up is ineffective IRL. I’m just kind of curious as to whether this holds true with zombies; are they dessicated enough to burn better, or does their slimy decaying nature make the opposite more true?
(post shortened)
You’re not thinking LARGE enough. 1050 hp, hardened steel teeth, and high rpm. These monsters might have a problem with titanium hip joints, but keys would be no problem.
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Duratech 4012 Tub Grinder
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See post 171. And thanks to doorhinge for researching the “big guns” of chipperworld.
So.
Ah.
Ahem.
How large are the…body parts that come out the other end?
I stand corrected; I managed to miss that one somehow. Although I’d like to know where one would find one of these bad boys after the zombie apocalypse. My experience comes from when I had to chip all the trees in my yard, with a chipper considerably smaller and less powerful.
I would be inclined to think that with a chipper that powerful, you throw a human in one end, you essentially get gory pudding out the other, perhaps with bone splinters.
Tiny ones.
Fargo
Small wood chippers are terrible for grinding up a body