# Zombies VS the US Army **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 21, 2009, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470 "2009-06-21T13:38:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/81 "2009-06-25T12:10:05Z")
> [@ivn1188](#): > > I think people always assume that there would be incalculable hordes of zombies wandering around. But one of the first things any military force would do would be to establish a firebase and keep the perimeter clear. A crew that was alert would never even let zombies get close - thermal sights and accurate coax fire out to a thousand yards means some shambly dead guys means target practice for the gunner. We’re talking 10000 to 1 casualty rates, if that, and there just aren’t that many people + corpses in a small area to give the kind of density it would take to overrun a decent position, even assuming that all these zombies would gather in one place at one time to attack – a level of cooperation that seems beyond non-supernatural zombies. How much ammunition does a main battle tank carry? The machine guns will have no more than a few thousand rounds total, and there are only a few dozen for the main gun, most of which won’t be useful against zombies. That’s not enough to kill 10,000 zombies, even if every single round killed a zombie. Factor in that sometimes the gunners miss, and it takes several hits to either incapacitate the zombie or be likely to damage the head, and I’d think the MBT would have a hard time killing 1000. You could start running them over at that point, but I bet zombie guts would bog down a tank in short order… All of this assumes HUGE APOCALYPTIC ZOMBIE HORDES. But what would be the fun of zombie stories that’re about that one time that someone’s uncle picked up a mysterious disease, bit a few family members, and they all got sick and had to be contained for a while? ---
**Author:** ![Lanzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/74df32/32.png) [@Lanzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lanzy)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/82 "2009-06-25T13:49:34Z")
Came in late but I will speak with as much authority as 3+ years in J5 and 13+ years in the Pentagon will allow me to. The are NO plans to handle Zombies. The closest would be how to handle a billion Chinese coming at us. ---
**Author:** ![ivn1188](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e480ec/32.png) [@ivn1188](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivn1188)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/83 "2009-06-25T20:56:43Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > You could start running them over at that point, but I bet zombie guts would bog down a tank in short order… Already addressed. Mere meat is no match for 1500 HP of gas powered turbine. Hell, trees up to a foot thick are no match for a tank. Besides, there’s nothing stopping a tank that has run out of ammo on all three machine guns and depending upon procurement developments maybe even dial-a-kill smart shells from simply returning to a safe location and rearming. Plus there would always be multiple tanks. Also, a .50 cal bullet, assuming masses of zombies, will penetrate and wreck multiple zombies. I think we also have HEAP rounds that tankers can load. Those would be good for the old “red mist” effect. I think standard loadout is about 2500 rounds for both 7.62s (or all three if it’s a TUSK), and 1000 for the .50 cal. bear in mind that the coax and the commander’s .50 have stabilization and thermal sights, etc, so are pretty darn accurate. Remember, it’s not about each troop killing 10k zombies by him or herself. It’s all about combined arms, with logistics people providing reloading and refuelling, and rotating units off the front line for rest, calling in artillery, etc etc. That is what a modern military does. And ours does it _very_ well. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/84 "2009-06-25T23:04:28Z")
IIRC, it’s also possible, with some preperation, to provide the tanks with canister shells, basically 120mm shotgun shells. These would, I imagine, be rather effective against the zombies once they got a bit closer (“a bit closer” I think still being a few hundred yards away, given the sheer volume of buck shot being fired with each shell) ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/85 "2009-06-26T04:34:49Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > All of this assumes HUGE APOCALYPTIC ZOMBIE HORDES. From where? The non-decomposed dead are the ones hugely outnumbered by the living. The Army, or tanks, or tanks needing to kill 10,000 zombies each is way more than would be needed. If you go back to the classic [Night of the Living Dead](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/) from which the whole zombie genre of movies originated, it was quite literally\* the night \*of the living dead. They had one night; the zombies were taken care of the next morning by joe everyman 6 pack with thier hunting rifle or shotgun and poor old Ben who survived the night is mistaken for a zombie and killed. > [@Raguleader](#): > > IIRC, it’s also possible, with some preperation, to provide the tanks with canister shells, basically 120mm shotgun shells. Guess I’m getting out of touch, a constant complaint was the lack of any kind of cannister/flechette round of 120mm when it replaced 105mm as tank main armament in the mid 80’s. Googled to check, they finally did make a 120mm cannister round in 2005. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/86 "2009-06-26T16:56:58Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Not a serious problem most places. You can simply dispose of the into the same body of water where you dispose of your sewage. A modern city dumps something like 5% of its human biomass into the sewage system every day anyway, so you’d have a short, down stream problem at worst. Maybe not environmentally sound but not an insurmountable medical problem. Unless all zombie fluids are as contagious as their saliva, in which case you just dumped Instant Zombie Slurry into your water supply. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/87 "2009-06-26T17:58:53Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I’d suggest the answers are “no” and “hell, no,” respectively. The Pentagon may very well plan for invading every other country on the face of the Earth, because you can just never know which way the geopolitical winds might blow, but for something so absurd and incredibly unlikely as a zombie invasion, I suspect the general or admiral who considered authorizing such a plan would be concerned about what would happen to his career if word of it leaked (as it surely would). Eh, ya never know… [5 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen](http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen.html) 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/88 "2009-06-26T18:02:47Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > From where? The non-decomposed dead are the ones hugely outnumbered by the living. The Army, or tanks, or tanks needing to kill 10,000 zombies each is way more than would be needed. If you go back to the classic [Night of the Living Dead](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/) from which the whole zombie genre of movies originated, it was quite literally\* the night \*of the living dead. They had one night; the zombies were taken care of the next morning by joe everyman 6 pack with thier hunting rifle or shotgun and poor old Ben who survived the night is mistaken for a zombie and killed. > > Guess I’m getting out of touch, a constant complaint was the lack of any kind of cannister/flechette round of 120mm when it replaced 105mm as tank main armament in the mid 80’s. Googled to check, they finally did make a 120mm cannister round in 2005. Well…there were the really fast zombies in 28 Days. Hard to know which you’ll get. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/89 "2009-06-26T23:24:54Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Well…there were the really fast zombies in 28 Days. > > Hard to know which you’ll get. They can be as fast as they want. They’re still not dodging a 120mm shell full of canister, let alone three or more fired by a squad of mutually-supporting tanks.😃 ---
**Author:** ![GoodOmens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@GoodOmens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GoodOmens)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/90 "2009-06-26T23:37:03Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > I saw a documentary on this once. Apparently, the zombies can mesmerize you with their coordinated dance maneuvers. Once you are immobilized in this way, your brain is theirs for the eating. > > Some years after the documentary was filmed, however, an unfortunate discovery was made. A person who comes into close contact with the dancing zombies and is actually allowed to live will start to suffer strange and troubling medical conditions that will grow more severe over the next few decades. The chief documentarian fell victim to this syndrome. He has experienced a baffling complex of symptoms, both physical and psychiatric. His skin turned pasty pale. His nose fell off. And by all accounts, he’s gone entirely batshit crazy. No offense, but WOW amazingly bad timing. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/91 "2009-06-27T01:00:08Z")
> [@ivn1188](#): > > I also question the utility of a pack to horde of zombies vs a machine that has at least 3 machine guns, a 120mm cannon, thermal sights, over a foot of armor, and 65-70 tons of squish powered by 1500 horsepower. The problem is not the Superior firepower. It’s time and numbers…both of which work for the zombies if not contained quickly. Usually in the movies, the government doesn’t begin fighting the infection with military firepower until after an outbreak has occured and the cities are crawling with zombies. Which means MILLIONS of zombies and more being created all the time. There’s also the fact that the loss of the cities is going to work against the military as time goes on due to the militaries rather large logistical footprint and tenuous supply lines…AKA once the ammo is fired and the fuel is burned, just where are you getting more? I don’t think the zombies are going to be working at the munitions factories and refineries. ---
**Author:** ![Devilsig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Devilsig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Devilsig)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/92 "2009-06-27T02:01:05Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > During the Second World War, the Soviets were so hard-pressed by the Germans that they were often forced to face tanks bare-handed. One in three adult Russians were killed by the Germans during the fighting, so there was fanatical hatred by the Soviets. There’s at least one documented case which has a bearing on the zombies VS tanks issue. In this particular battle the Red Army was reduced to rushing the tanks with Molotov cocktails. One of the soldiers had his cocktail shot in his hands while he was holding it, causing him to be instantly engulfed in flames. In his crazed hatred, he rushed the German tank – a human bonfire – and flung his burning body over the air intake, holding on even as he burned, until the inside of the tank ignited and it was destroyed. > > I’m sure a large swarm of zombies would have no difficulty plugging up the air intake or even gumming up the treads. > > I should note that there is also at least one documented case of an Italian tank being penetrated by a spear in Ethiopia, killing the driver. Zombies may be able to simply peel the armour back with their bare hands. The “Ethiopian Spear Though The Italian Tank” story is a myth. While at the time the Italians had notoriously lightly armored tanks, they weren’t THAT lightly armored. If fact, the Ethiopians were able to inflict casualities on Italian tank crews by throwing their spears THROUGH the opened vision ports that existed on the Tanks of that era, which is pretty damn amazing. The only kind of spear thats going to penetrate even a crappy tank is one that is rocket propelled and has explosives at the tip. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/93 "2009-06-27T02:44:09Z")
> [@GoodOmens](#): > > No offense, but WOW amazingly bad timing. Or amazingly good timing. 🙂 Actually, I was kind of hoping nobody would notice that… ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/94 "2009-06-27T03:03:06Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > Or amazingly good timing. 🙂 Actually, I was kind of hoping nobody would notice that… On a tangentially related note, if you haven’t played Plants Vs. Zombies yet, one of the zombies featured is the “Dancing Zombie”, who dances in some weird red leather outfit and has 80’s hair. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/95 "2009-06-27T04:30:38Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > Or amazingly good timing. 🙂 Actually, I was kind of hoping nobody would notice that… I was thinking somebody’d read this thread and decided to do a preemptive strike. I am so going to hell. ---
**Author:** ![ivn1188](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e480ec/32.png) [@ivn1188](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivn1188)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/96 "2009-06-27T05:42:36Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > The problem is not the Superior firepower. It’s time and numbers…both of which work for the zombies if not contained quickly. Usually in the movies, the government doesn’t begin fighting the infection with military firepower until after an outbreak has occured and the cities are crawling with zombies. Which means MILLIONS of zombies and more being created all the time. This has been addressed by several posters, but let’s do it again. The maximum possible number of zombies you can have is living people + undecomposed corpses. For Chicago, that means, assuming complete conversion, you would have about 3,000,000 zombies, plus a few thousand corpses laying around. Call it 10 million if you include the entire metro area. Now assume non-magical zombies – they aren’t immortal, and they will either starve to death eventually or they will keep decomposing. Call it a few months of animation. Zombies, generally, won’t be reproducing, so your maximum number will be very early in an infection cycle. Now, if you had a city that was 100% converted to zombies, you wouldn’t be in that city with a military presence – there’s no point to it. You retreat to a secured area and keep a perimeter. Oddly, most military bases seem to be located away from major metropolitan areas. Now, even assuming that every (mindless) zombie will began moving out of the evacuated/converted city, directly towards your firebase, a properly conducted campaign will have scouts out to observe the slowly shambling zombie horde as it stumbles at a walking pace toward your base. Of course, mobility being a key component of modern warfare, any military units are going to be much faster than a zombie. So in the meanwhile, you drive up, shoot some zombies, run a few over, whatever, and then drive back to the base to rearm and refuel. You can also pretty easily scavenge the millions gallons of gasoline and diesel, conveniently located in big underground tanks all over the country. A big grouped horde would also provide hours of entertainment for artillery and air forces. But as you mow down a million or so of the horde, you might find they are getting too close to your base. Fortunately, a good commander would have planned for this contingency and set up a series of fallback positions. There is plenty of rather sparsely populated space in our country – such as in the southwest, in the plains, in the northwest, etc. Wyoming has about 5.4 people per square mile. It would be trivial to clear large portions of real estate and set up refugee camps/bases. It has just under 100k square miles of space – the entire Chicago Metro Population would be a mere 1000 per square mile, which would not be the standing room only all the way to the horizon mass that people seem to be envisioning. All you need to do is survive until the zombies die off. The entire zombie population of New York is not going to stagger all the way across the US to, say, Fort Riley and attack _en masse_. The only scenario where the military would be ineffective is if a substantial portion of the military itself became infected – for example by a contagious virus with a really long dormancy period or by an incredibly rapid 28 days later-style scenario. However, the OP assumes that the military has time to react. Fighting against a zombie force would be merely a tradeoff of space for time, and outside of the major population centers of the US, there is plenty of room to maneuver around a horde (or if the zombies aren’t moving as a single mass, there is not going to be enough zombie density in most of the nation to overrun a prepared military outpost). > [@HPL](#): > > There’s also the fact that the loss of the cities is going to work against the military as time goes on due to the militaries rather large logistical footprint and tenuous supply lines…AKA once the ammo is fired and the fuel is burned, just where are you getting more? I don’t think the zombies are going to be working at the munitions factories and refineries. Fuel is easy. We have a virtually unlimited supply, especially if large portions of the population are going to be converted (I assume zombies don’t drive). Ammo is a little more difficult, but the military has substantial amounts of munitions in various stockpiles all over the nation, and you can get a lot of 5.56 and 7.62 from gun stores, as well as other scavenged weapons should the need arise. Against very tightly packed hordes, napalm is easy to make and would be pretty easy to deliver. Now, you might have a point that a small military unit stuck in Times Square might be kinda fucked, but in any scenario where the military has preparation, they aren’t going to roll up into a heavily infested area and let the zombies sneak up on them and then die so that the plucky misfit group can fight their way out of the mall. The military is going to go where there are few zombies (80%+ of the land west of the Mississippi), and establish fortified positions, and then send out groups to clear other areas and establish new bases, etc, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/97 "2009-06-27T07:40:38Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > The problem is not the Superior firepower. It’s time and numbers…both of which work for the zombies if not contained quickly. Usually in the movies, the government doesn’t begin fighting the infection with military firepower until after an outbreak has occured and the cities are crawling with zombies. Which means MILLIONS of zombies and more being created all the time. Again, this is where a lot of zombie movies fall down if you seriously look at them. The corporeal dead are the ones who are extremely outnumbered, and time works against them. Night of the Living Dead got it right as far as ‘realism’ goes - utter terror when the dead rise from the grave and start trying to kill the living, but pretty easily disposed of the following morning - and not by the military or needing all of its firepower. Don’t get me wrong, I love zombie movies; but most of them just leap to the undead outnumbering the living by thousands to one well -just because the plot works far better that way. Cities would probably be among the safest places to be, living near the graveyard in a small rural town about the worst. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/98 "2009-06-27T13:27:59Z")
I’ll just add my two pennorth. Before the Z threat would become properly recognised for what it was the people who would come into the most contact with them (Apart from friends,family,colleagues and fellow commuters)would be health proffessionals,LEOs and probably fire officers. This means that they would have a higher percentage of people Zombiefied then the normal population causing at first societal breakdown(as in no official body in charge of the crisis until it reached military enforcement status) plus later on any members of the emergency services who did actually survive; being treated with fear and distrust by ordinary members of the public survivors making their job virtually impossible to carry out effectively. I’ve no doubt at all that there would be a hell of a lot of collateral damage caused by frightened civilians and poorly trained militias firing weapons at genuine or perceived Zombies. I think also that many people related to the recently made Zs would think twice about taking them out and would themselves fall victim,in short a sort of domino effect. ---
**Author:** ![tiescore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@tiescore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tiescore)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/99 "2009-06-27T20:29:07Z")
Of course, all this assumes that destroying the head is the key. According to one of my all time favorite RPGs CHILL - To kill a zombie, you had to fill its mouth with Salt, sew it closed & face it out towards the ocean. Try that hiding inside your nice safe Abrams… ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/100 "2009-06-27T21:53:53Z")
> [@](#): > > Of course, all this assumes that destroying the head is the key. According to one of my all time favorite RPGs CHILL - To kill a zombie, you had to fill its mouth with Salt, sew it closed & face it out towards the ocean. Try that hiding inside your nice safe Abrams… And what happens if you just cremate one of those zombies, instead? Do the ashes just smolder at you malignantly? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470.md?page=6)