# 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:** 6
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2009, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/101 "2009-06-27T22:36:20Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > I’m surprised the thread has come this far without a mention of Max Brooks, author of “World War Z” and “The Zombie Survival Guide”. The first of those books is particularly relevant, telling (in faux-documentary style) how useless the modern military is against zombies and how eventually some useful tactics evolved. Basically, zombies could survive anything that didn’t destroy the head, so all those explosives in our current arsenal were pretty useless, since shrapnel and concussion just slowed down the zombies a bit. The re-tooled army won with 18th-century firing line tactics, and lots of cheap rifles instead of high tech precision gadgetry. > > Any chance Max Brooks was really hired as a Pentagon consultant? > > World War Z is a damn good book, by the way. I’ve only read a few excerps and summaries, but it sounds like Max Brooks highly underestimates the power of modern weaponry. Assuming that a zombie has the same physical properties of a living human and that in Romerovian fashion they are killed by trauma to the head, modern weapons would be HIGHLY effective. Claymores mines, artillery and mortar shells, high caliber machineguns autocannons and miniguns, armored vehicles, MRLS missles and so on don’t just leave neat little bullet holes. They blow apart limbs. They spray shrapnel everywhere. They vaporize or crush. And they would be highly effective against an enemy that just mindlessly lurges about in dense herds. A typical tracked armored vehicle like an APC or tank weighing in excess of 20 and as much as 60 tons could just drive over thousands of zombies grinding them into mulch for hours with no ill effect on the vehicle. In fact the most effective weapons would probably a bunch of industrial front-end loaders and bulldozers. The major problem in all zombie movies is the general collapse of government services. If it isn’t some “Racoon City” scenario where the outbreak is isolated to a single metropolitan area, it seems to be happening everywhere at once. So it tends to become increasingly difficult to coordinate a military and police response. ---
**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 30, 2009, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/102 "2009-06-30T15:41:02Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Claymores mines, artillery and mortar shells, high caliber machineguns autocannons and miniguns, armored vehicles, MRLS missles and so on don’t just leave neat little bullet holes. They blow apart limbs. They spray shrapnel everywhere. They vaporize or crush. [snip] A typical tracked armored vehicle like an APC or tank weighing in excess of 20 and as much as 60 tons could just drive over thousands of zombies grinding them into mulch for hours with no ill effect on the vehicle. 1.) What if the zombie can keep going as long as the brain is intact? Blowing limbs off or riddling the body with shrapnel isn’t going to do a lick of good if you don’t destroy the brain. It’s just wasted effort when what you need is a headshot. 2.) Is zombie blood and tissue infectious? If so, congratulations–you’ve just created an incredibly dangerous slurry of zombie bits and fluids that you’re going to have no easy way to dispose of, and which may even seep into your ground water. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/103 "2009-06-30T16:30:04Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > 1.) What if the zombie can keep going as long as the brain is intact? Blowing limbs off or riddling the body with shrapnel isn’t going to do a lick of good if you don’t destroy the brain. It’s just wasted effort when what you need is a headshot. A zombie with no legs doesn’t move very fast. Neither does half a zombie. You don’t need a headshot if the head pops clean off. > [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > 2.) Is zombie blood and tissue infectious? If so, congratulations–you’ve just created an incredibly dangerous slurry of zombie bits and fluids that you’re going to have no easy way to dispose of, and which may even seep into your ground water. So go with bulldozers. While toxic zombie tissue certainly could be a problem, it is a less immediate threat than active zombies tearing shit up. ---
**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 30, 2009, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/104 "2009-06-30T16:42:58Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > So go with bulldozers. > > While toxic zombie tissue certainly could be a problem, it is a less immediate threat than active zombies tearing shit up. Yes and no. Certainly a zombie tearing shit up is an immediate threat but zombie slurry may infect a whole other town, spreading the infection. One dead zombie in that case can mean 10,000 new zombies somewhere else. Presumably, for the zombie thing to be a real issue at all, there needs to be an efficient mechanism for making new zombies. It is all premised on while killing them is easy more and more spawn so fast they eventually overwhelm you. If you can just contain them in one area no biggie (and surrounding a city the size of Chicago is no small task) but containment is presumably too difficult to achieve. Remember quantity has a quality all its own. IIRC when the Chinese came into Korea the US engaged a massive and extended artillery barrage (I want to say one for the record books in its scope but not sure…either way it was massive). The Chinese pretty much went in for human wave tactics and it worked (worked for the Soviets in WWII as well). Sure their casualties were appalling but they had lots more bodies to fill the gaps. As good as we were at mowing them down sheer numbers overwhelmed the US forces. Presumably zombies work on this premise. Kill ten and a hundred more are right behind them. ---
**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 30, 2009, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/105 "2009-06-30T17:05:17Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > A zombie with no legs doesn’t move very fast. Neither does half a zombie. You don’t need a headshot if the head pops clean off. 1.) What if the head can keep functioning independent of the body? 2.) You’re still stuck with a bunch of zombie parts to pick up instead of a nice, intact body you can haul around. > [@](#): > > While toxic zombie tissue certainly could be a problem, it is a less immediate threat than active zombies tearing shit up. One intact zombie: Only a threat to anyone who gets close enough to touch it (or be touched) before they can get off a headshot. Once dead, can be handled on any intact part of the body for disposal. One slurried zombie: Can only be disposed of by using full biohazard gear. Liquid may be aeresolized and inhaled. Liquid may contaminate ground, requiring carpet bombing. Liquid may seep into ground water, contaminating local supply and rendering area unusable for unknown length of time. If it hits moving underground water, or drains into a river or lake, it may move the contanimation even farther away. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/106 "2009-07-01T00:44:23Z")
What if they can shoot fireballs out of their arses? I know this is a silly subject to begin with, but when we start inventing effects with no parallel in the real word it becomes pointless to discuss. I can’t think of a single real world disease that is capable of infecting living humans and that is _more_ transmissable from day old corpses. Corpses are a minor problem with diseases like cholera, but much less of a risk than was posed when the victim was alive. IOW if the zombies are infectious they will be far more so when mobile than when they are dismembered. So you are only ever reducing the spread of the disease by dismemberment. Of course you may wish to posit a disease that is magically more infectious when the victim is immobilised, but you might just as well posit that the dismembered corpses can shoot fireballs out of their arses for all the sense that makes. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/107 "2009-07-01T10:11:04Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Remember quantity has a quality all its own. IIRC when the Chinese came into Korea the US engaged a massive and extended artillery barrage (I want to say one for the record books in its scope but not sure…either way it was massive). The Chinese pretty much went in for human wave tactics and it worked (worked for the Soviets in WWII as well). Sure their casualties were appalling but they had lots more bodies to fill the gaps Really? From what I’ve gleaned from documentaries, the UN forces were simply unprepared for the Chinese invasion/reinforcements and the Chinese came over the Yalu river at night unmolested. Their early successes were due to superior infiltration tactics and not human waves, the latter a story made up by MacArthur for the newspapers. ---
**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:** [July 1, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/108 "2009-07-01T18:33:26Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > I know this is a silly subject to begin with, but when we start inventing effects with no parallel in the real word it becomes pointless to discuss. [blah blah blah snip] I’m sorry, you seem to be confused about the function that is served by skin. Let me put it this way: would you rather hug someone who is HIV positive and has no open wounds, or someone who is HIV positive, naked, and has just been flayed? So, tell me again why zombie slurry is preferable to a neat pile of head-shot corpses. ---
**Author:** ![ivn1188](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e480ec/32.png) [@ivn1188](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivn1188)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/109 "2009-07-01T21:56:41Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > I’m sorry, you seem to be confused about the function that is served by skin. Let me put it this way: would you rather hug someone who is HIV positive and has no open wounds, or someone who is HIV positive, naked, and has just been flayed? > > So, tell me again why zombie slurry is preferable to a neat pile of head-shot corpses. Because unless you posit some supernatural force animating the dead, you’re left with either some sort of chemical or a biological method of making zombies. A chemical would not really work, because it would eventually dilute out of the zombie pool, and it couldn’t be replenished. A biological organism, ala 28 days later, will generally have a short lifespan. To correct for this, it tends to break down the host’s body to make more viruses or whatever. This means that the environment has to be conducive for the zombification organism to survive. When things die, these organisms lose their environment and die off due to competition with the kinds of bugs that make bodies decay, etc. This is why we don’t have water tables contaminated with rabies or things like that, and why you can catch AIDS from a toilet seat. So yes, I would rather have a large field of chopped up zombie bits that I can burn or chemically sterilize or just wait for it to clear, than transmission vectors who walk around aggressively biting people. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/110 "2009-07-01T22:32:52Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > Bit of a hijack, but this is nonsense. The whole reason we have space travel in the first place is because of warfare. Powerful rockets were developed as weapons of war - and so, too, was most of our knowledge of ballistics. (If you want to lob a cannon-ball or artillery shell at the other guy, it helps to know where it will land). The space race was spurred by the cold war, both as a national prestige thing and a deadly serious effort to develop better strategic weapons platforms. For that matter, it’s hard to point to much of our technology at all that hasn’t been given a huge boost by warfare - aviation, computers, etc. > > War drives technological innovation. Without it, we probably wouldn’t develop much technology beyond what’s needed to protect us from the elements and keep ourselves fed - and that doesn’t get you to space. You don’t believe that cooperation, at least in the last 50 years, would have gotten us farther than spending money developing things, spending money producing weapons, killing people and destroying things, and rebuilding things again? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/111 "2009-07-02T00:36:49Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > I’m sorry, you seem to be confused about the function that is served by skin. Let me put it this way: would you rather hug someone who is HIV positive and has no open wounds, or someone who is HIV positive, naked, and has just been flayed? > > So, tell me again why zombie slurry is preferable to a neat pile of head-shot corpses. A complete red herring. We are not comparing "head shot corpses’ with “zombie slurry”. We are comparing “someone with ebola who is naked, and has just been flayed, walking around the countryside biting people and leaving a trail of infectious bodily fluids” with “zombie slurry”. If your zombie disease is comparable to ebola or even HIV you are far, far better off with an inanimate slurry than with active, oozing zombies tearing shit up. Your walking dead not only infect people deliberately, but as you point out they are oozing infectious material from open wounds constantly for a prolonged period and over a wide area. Your slurry is infectious over a small area for a few days at most. I’ll repeat since you didn’t seem to understand: When we start inventing effects with no parallel in the real word it becomes pointless to discuss. I can’t think of a single real world disease that is capable of infecting living humans and that is more transmissable from day old corpses. Corpses are a minor problem with diseases like cholera, but much less of a risk than was posed when the victim was alive. IOW if the zombies are infectious they will be far more so when mobile than when they are dismembered. So you are only ever reducing the spread of the disease by dismemberment. Of course you may wish to posit a disease that is magically more infectious when the victim is immobilised, but you might just as well posit that the dismembered corpses can shoot fireballs out of their arses for all the sense that makes. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/112 "2009-07-02T19:05:36Z")
If we are looking at how much zombies match a half-way plausible real-world scenario - which the army obviously would be prepared for in general terms, with minor adjustments to the actual situations - then I can think of a mutation of an existing disease that spreads rapidly (like Ebola), that renders the victims mindless like a zombie (Alzheimers or BSE). Cecil even told us about those flesh-eating bacteria in kitty litter, that would produce walking dead, esp. if they mutate or recombine. Now, in zombie movies, the assumption (since they are horror movies) seems to be (I haven’t seen them myself) that zombies can’t be healed, so the mission is simply to dispatch them in order to survive and not get bitten/eaten. In a real-world scenario with an Ebola-type outbreak, would the CDC or similar assume command of the situation, with the priority of isolating the infected people, protecting the uninfected and working on finding a cure, and thus give orders to the army; or would the army assume command with the priority of surviving, even if it means killing all infected first? Could the President as Chief of the army hand things over to the CDC because he prefers to try and save the infected first, or would that be against the law? Or would the law stipulate (as in the X-Files movie the HEMA) that in a pandemic emergency, the CDC would get control automatically? Are there protocols to determine how bad the situation is and then change into pandemic mode, or has some individual/commitee gather enough cases from across the country and make a decision of their own? Because that’s going to be the difficult part - not being alarmist, and not waiting too long. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2009, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/113 "2009-07-02T19:46:54Z")
> [@ivn1188](#): > > …This is why we don’t have water tables contaminated with rabies or things like that, and why you can catch AIDS from a toilet seat… (Underlining added). I presume you meant to write “can’t.” I doubt anyone not in the White House, FEMA or the CDC, and having a “need to know,” understands the full extent of Federal planning for a pandemic, but I’m sure that such planning has been done. Awareness of that kind of danger is much higher now than it once was, particularly since 9-11 and the recent swine flu outbreak. Whether or not decision-makers will have the guts, good judgment or insights to make the tough calls when Things Get Really, Really Bad is unknowable. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/114 "2009-07-03T00:06:39Z")
On the subject of zombies and headshots: > **[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Jiffy](https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1564)** > > Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Jiffy ---
**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:** [July 8, 2009, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/115 "2009-07-08T16:23:28Z")
> [@ivn1188](#): > > Because unless you posit some supernatural force animating the dead, you’re left with either some sort of chemical or a biological method of making zombies. Headshot-only zombies \*\*are \*\*magical, for all intents and purposes, even when their purported infectious agent is a chemical or a virus. They’re physically impossible–a human body cannot be made to function in such a way that the only way to kill it is to destroy the brain. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/116 "2009-07-09T09:56:25Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > IIRC when the Chinese came into Korea the US engaged a massive and extended artillery barrage (I want to say one for the record books in its scope but not sure…either way it was massive). The Chinese pretty much went in for human wave tactics and it worked (worked for the Soviets in WWII as well). Sure their casualties were appalling but they had lots more bodies to fill the gaps. You don’t remember correctly. For an army with a decent amount of artillery and ammunition, human wave attacks by the enemy fall into the category of semi-erotic fantasy, as in “how awesome would it be if they all just came charging straight at us and we could shoot all of this stuff off for hours and hours until the whole landscape was dripping with liquid enemy”. It doesn’t matter how many people you have in your army, you’re not going to simply march through any artillery barrage worthy of the name. Maybe write off a few tens of thousands as sacrificial victims until the shells run out and then make your move, but until that meatgrinder switches off, you’re not going to get anywhere. Any mass zombie-army encounter is basically going to look like the [Battle of Omdurman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Omdurman) with the zombies playing the part of the Ansaar/Dervishes (except with absolutely no offensive equipment or coordination) and the army playing the part of the Brits (although probably fewer in number but certainly with at least an order of magnitude more firepower). ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2009, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/117 "2009-07-16T14:33:43Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > So go with bulldozers. > > While toxic zombie tissue certainly could be a problem, it is a less immediate threat than active zombies tearing shit up. The problem with bulldozers is that they need someone to drive them. If only the Penatgon would develop some sort of autonomous zombie eating tractor. But that’s just fanatsy, [right](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532492,00.html)? :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2009, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/118 "2009-07-16T15:06:31Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#): > > The problem with bulldozers is that they need someone to drive them. If only the Penatgon would develop some sort of autonomous zombie eating tractor. But that’s just fanatsy, [right](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532492,00.html)? :eek: Ewwwwww! Where’s the pukey smilie when I really need one? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2009, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/119 "2009-07-16T15:23:15Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#): > > The problem with bulldozers is that they need someone to drive them. If only the Penatgon would develop some sort of autonomous zombie eating tractor. But that’s just fanatsy, [right](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532492,00.html)? :eek: That story is such nonsense. It is like Fox News up and decided to take on the alternative fuels-supporting hippies by saying, “You know what else is ‘biomass?’ GOD FEARING AMERICAN SOLDIERS! And Obama is designing robots to EAT them!” Now, if the robot were powered by soylent green, I doubt anyone would have a problem with that. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2009, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470/120 "2009-07-16T21:27:25Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#): > > The problem with bulldozers is that they need someone to drive them. If only the Penatgon would develop some sort of autonomous zombie eating tractor. But that’s just fanatsy, [right](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532492,00.html)? :eek: Countdown to Autonomous Mobile Swords (a.k.a. [Screamers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film))) started. Thanks for playing, humanity ! 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zombies-vs-the-us-army/500470.md?page=7)