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How do!

Yes it’s a zombie thread. I know. They’re old hat. But the good news is, if zombies aren’t your jam you don’t actually need to comment. Neat, huh? Also, I’m meaning Romero style Zombies. Not the infected of the 28 movies, or super sprint being dead makes you a ninja Snyder type.

Anyways. Me? I effing love zombie movies. Bad ones, awful ones, middling ones, good ones and truly superb ones. I’ll take them all and near certainly ask, nay demand, more! There’s just something cool, awesome and inherently funny about them. Especially the dodgier Italian “Zombi” series which delves ever deeper into the ridiculous.

But one thing that’s never really been addressed in Zombie Apocaylpse films and series is exactly how it all got so out of hand.

The only one I can think of where The Powers That Be just get on and sort it out is Shaun of the Dead. But even then, before the rescue it’s still on a slightly silly scale.

See…Zombies are ultimately only dangerous in large numbers. Individually they’re slow, uncoordinated and clumsy. Whilst they’ve the not inconsiderable upside of being indefatigable, a brisk walk will see you comfortably outpace them. I’m not a fit person, but I can get a good clip of speed walking which would see me, as I can keep that up for a good couple of hours - much longer if I get the chance for the odd five minute breather.

They must also necessarily start off Very Few In Number. Even if, like in Walking Dead, everyone is already infected? The initial number of Undead is going to be pretty modest. And so, easily handled. Yes it will take some adjustment to brain the dead/dying in the bonce with whatever heavy, skull crushy object might be to hand. Heck, in a pinch you can always just stot the corpses’ head off a handy wall, or give it a right stomping. But I do accept until the pressing need has sunk in with the wider populace, things will be quite dicey.

But even so? You’ve got to really, really Not Take Things Seriously to let zombies lead to the end of civilisation as we know it.

A herd is…basically nothing to IFV and Tanks. Just give them a good old squishing, and have infantry follow up, bayonets attached to finished off any not squished in the noggin. Yes in a protracted situation fuel absolutely is an issue. But again, only a serious Brown Trouser Time issue if the military is slow off the mark.

Civilians can also easily equip themselves with protection to start hunting down any Undead. Get a glossy magazine, and gaffer tape it to your forearm. PRESTO! Rudimentary but efficient enough armour to jam in the zombie’s gob. OK you’ll need to replace it fairly frequently, but it’s still effective and plentiful enough for an initial solution. Leather jackets and trousers are also bite resistant enough for a scrap.

For braining them? Half a brick or a slightly pointy rock will do you. If you’ve the time and skill, lash it to a broom handle for greater reach. I personally wouldn’t much around with knives. Not that skilled with them outside of the kitchen, and given Zombies do like a grapple, I’d rather avoid messing myself or the living person next to me up.

Heck, even common sporting equipment should be good to go. Baseball Bat, Cricket Bat, Field Hockey Stick? All decent heft for whacking melons. A Lacrosse stick could with even a modicum of care be used to catch a zombie by its head, and so keep it relatively out of reach. That one is risky and not advise unless you’ve mates nearby, but it is an example of a non-lethal relatively household grappling device.

Civvies could also just…run a bunch of zombies over. Granted there is genuine risk here. In the earliest hours and days the shambling corpses are still fresh, and so no different to running over a living human. Not that I’ve experience of that thank *insert detiy*, but the human body can still go through a windscreen, tangle the wheels and that. So only something I’d go for in an emergency. Unless I’m going at a good speed and so they’re most likely to be hurled away from my direction of travel.

Hence…the whole Zombies Arrived And Everything Instantly Went To Pot just…feels daft.

What are your thoughts?

I essentially agree with you. Romero style zombies might pick up some momentum due to the surprise factor and initial confusion. However as soon as the military realises what it is dealing with it should be able to neutralise the threat effectively.

At worst I can imagine areas, perhaps even whole cities, being quarantined and cordoned off. Blown to pieces with artillery perhaps. I don't really see why vast areas would be overrun by zombies though.

One way The Walking Dead and Romero films try to justify it is that people who die of causes other than being bitten by a zombie will become a zombie regardless. This makes the threat pervasive and ongoing. I still don't think it's enough to cause a widespread pandemic though.

This is something that in my view is never really addressed in any zombie film that I've seen. Not a big issue as far as I'm concerned though, it's all fiction after all.

I think one relatively recent videogame / show that has addressed this effectively is The Last Of Us. Those "zombies" are more threatening than traditional Romero zombies though.

Given irl infection diseases, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people went around purposely trying to get infected, actively hurting those trying to slow the spread, claiming military is making zombies up and instigating riots that keep the military hesitant to work. Plus, doing a basic google, in Romero zombies it’s anyone who dies after the zombie stuff starts, not just the traditional bite to infection. Plus, while sure you can outwalk a zombie, zombies don’t stop to sleep, so when inevitably you need to rest, how do you make sure you don’t get attacked in your sleep? Sure, the smart thing is to have a friend keep watch, but plenty of people will slip and forget.

As for squishing, that’s fun up until the bones and blood and guts get inside your engines or gunk up the tracks. Plus, bayonets might be handy but I’m not sure how long or effective they’d be on a skull, though I’ve never tested one on my own skull so take it with a grain of salt.

Does any of this 100% explain why zombies get some big? Eh probably not but it’s just a few things I noted.

Here in the US, the military is WAY too small to secure multiple cities, so if an outbreak was nation wide the majority of our country would not have a military presence. Add in it takes time to deploy units. You need to lay on trains and other transport to move tanks and IFVs any distance within the USA.

I’m not sure it’s necessary to involve the military for containment.

Me? Despite being a big fella, I’m Soft As Mashed Potato. I’ve pretty much no fighting skills beyond a body slam or an entirely opportunistic pod shot.

But zombies here? It’s like a someone legless drunk try to start on you. Easy enough to dodge or shove away from you, because they lack coordination and sense of balance and that.

Against a zombie? Not without risk, I could more likely than not trip it, or barge it over. From there, Spesh if I’m wearing Doc Martens? It’s all over bar the kicking.

And I expect most folk could do the same. Not necessarily the stompy bit, but the “and over you go, exit stage left” bit - helping to seriously delay the spread.

For people dying general, run of the mill deaths? Any accident is probably going to leave the resulting zombie pretty messed up. Any peaceful death is going to occur with few folks around, and quite possibly in a hospital already.

Now. If it was a coordinated thing? Like some maniac intentionally infected the world’s populace, then gassed population centres? Entirely fair enough, the tipping point occurs almost instantaneously as there’s a very sudden, unexpected occurrence of the undead.

But I’ve never seen that occur in the zombie flicks and series I’ve seen.

Depends on the film, genre and type of Zombie

Yes to a certain extent if the Zombies are in fact the slow moving chompers - if there are variants, if there are fast moving ones, if there are giant monsters it changes but even if its just the dumb slow ones it may be being used by someone, something to prepare the way for a new world, for another plan and then it gets out of hand etc

Also play Project Zomboid and see how long you last

It's more to do with social decline in the face of infection.

If the dead start rising that's pushing a lot of people to doomsday cults or religious crazies who will try to overthrow government's to either progress or stop the end of days.

There's the now the shockingly large number of people who will deny it (including governments and not just for corruption reasons) and they will undoubtedly do stupid things that will make things harder for everyone.

Then throw in the personal aspect of everything. The Undead aren't combatants in the traditional sense. They're you're friends, family and neighbours, it's beyond dehumanising to have to put down what were once straight up civilians. They don't have guns or weapons, they're not wearing uniforms or shooting at you.

I don't like most zombie movies cause government forces are always incompetent imbeciles who died first 3 minutes of movie and lately we watcha how Literally incompetent people trying to survive.

In fact.. did you see how police break the crown with water cannons? They actually never use full pressure. In full power water cannon break bones and smash inners.
Or military which in that movies stupid gunheads. I don't believe they die this quick. Any army could be ready in 5 minutes. And in few hours gonna be halfway to most hot places.
And my favorite. "Civilians" if you can call so people with solid arsenal. And there is lot of guys with lot of guns. Even when I lived in city I have carbin, semiautomatic rifle and double-barrelled shotgun. Our neighborhood have 13 guns for 9 adults. And this is in country where you can have only hunting guns and with lot of restrictions.

So for me zombie apocalypse ends few days after it's started. There certainly gonna be curfew and martial law for some time. But it's have no chance in current world.

Probably much worse here in uk - extremely rare for anyone to have guns and none readily available if you went looking for them - rare even for the police - heavily populated areas abound

Plenty of brick walls and solid roads though.

Sure guns are handy (in the hands of skilled shooters, natch). But by no means essential against shambling undead.

Duh, if available internet data is correct at least in half you are doomed... Very small police force and mostly unarmed. And nonexistent army.. well, I don't want meet zombie apocalypse in UK

 kabaakaba wrote:
Duh, if available internet data is correct at least in half you are doomed... Very small police force and mostly unarmed. And nonexistent army.. well, I don't want meet zombie apocalypse in UK

We have a good army but agreed - there will be a lot of loses and conversions very quickly.

Best example I've ever seen of a "realistic" zombie outbreak was Black Tide Rising by John Ringo. But even that was "fast" "zombies".

Honestly the slow zombie thing as just general walking around dead people feels hard take as an apocalyptic event. I enjoy the outbreak movies where maybe things haven't gotten organized but the ones where society seems to have completely caved I generally need to be in the mood and turn off my cares

I think the biggest hurdle with zombies is proving that they are a thing fast enough. One thing the Pandemic showed was that even with insanely rapid communication and education systems - there was still a huge amount of confusion, missinformation, lack of education and awareness at multiple levels. That's before you get to bad actors seeding problems.

The other thing is infection speed; in some films its rapid, in others it takes time. Interestingly in many it seems ot be really fast at the start and then take ages for the "I got bit and didn't tell anyone" character. 24 Day Later was good on this; infection had what felt like a constant speed.



Rapid infection has the benefit that it can sweep through an unprepared high population area pretty fast; esp the kind in 24Days Later where a tiny organic drop spreads it to you in moments. That speed is insanely hard to overcome - one cough or sneeze and the infection spreads.

Everything about that virus was speed based.




The other option would be something with a long incubation period. Give it a 2 month incubation spread by water droplets (cough/sneeze) and you've got yourself primed for a real outbreak. At that point it doesn't matter if they are fast or slow zombies; the key part is that by the time infection is detected its already spread through a vast part of the population including military forces. Plus if the first outbreak is when its detected you'll have a rolling series of outbreaks from those infected a day later etc.... So you've got 2 months of solid infection spreading; with infected breaking out at random everywhere. Even if they are slow zombies they'll already be in people's homes and population centres. With the potential for many key people to be infected too you'd have a very rapid breakdown of effective communication. You're basically down to isolated populations and individuals along with natural immunity and such to hold things together.

You should read World War Z (not the film, dear god not the film) for a decent go at explaining how things get out of hand. In that, illegal organ harvesting artificially spreads the instigator far and wide, with initial outbreaks often occurring in hospitals with large vulnerable populations, and the bulk of society's emergency medical response. WWZ also makes the point that reliable headshots are hard. Needs a lot of training to be able to make hundreds of such precise shots for long periods required to thin out major swarms.

However, even WWZ had to handwave away overpressure effects on the human form. The magic virus strengthened muscle effectiveness and sludged up the insides to that nearby explosions didn;t do much. Otherwise say hello to Mr Thermobaric, and goodbye to large areas of unprotected meatbags.

I think it comes down to a rabbits vs foxes balance in the early stages. If its just bites that spreads it, it may be possible for home quarantines to largely isolate the population allowing capable types to keep a lid on the spread before it gets out of hand.

However, given the general unutterable stupidity of a social media-driven populace, and recent covid examples, I'm not convinced it would end well.

I agree that large machinery of any type could be used in a pinch. I'm pretty sure a bin lorry would be able to overcome a crowd in a way that a normal car would likely get bogged down in. Large dump trucks or even possibly tractors might do the trick. People are pretty splatty when it comes right down to it.

Regarding hand weapons, warhammers or halberds wojuld be best. Long shaft, big spike, relatively simple to lift and drop onto the top of the head for effectiveness. Sticking a few nails through your example sportsbat would also increase effectiveness massively.

I think it would take some time for the situation to be understood enough for the "powers that be" and everyone in the chain of command to be willing to deploy and use armor and heavy weapons against their own civilians. There would be a lot of chaos and bad advice given in the initial stages. Wash your hands, wash your groceries, etc. Many would be racing to find or create a way to profit from it. By the time a consensus is formed and everyone has embraced the horror of what is happening, it might well be too late and your military is outnumbered 2-300:1.

I think the first responders (police and ambulance crew) are among the first to get bitten. Then perhaps the police come out in force to stop the "rioting" using the same type of shield wall tactics they use today, and as a result more of them are bitten. After a day or two of that the panic shopping and the looting begins. A substantial number of the healthy LEO start calling in sick, outright desert or even join the looters. Perhaps one or two bitten people are in each of those jam packed stores and turn at the worst time, and the hospitals suddenly become battlefields. Martial law is declared and the govt attempts to contain the major cities and then clear them one by one WWII style.

The troops on the ground would likely shoot to defend themselves. Would they all be on board for firing HE rounds into each floor of each building they come across? Do they shoot anything that moves, if ordered to? If you are a pilot, do you obey your orders and drop bombs on Costco? Someone you didn't vote for said everyone in there was bad, but you've never actually seen a zombie. Do you even want to be there when your family really needs you right now? I think a large number desert and now they are outnumbered 4-500:1. And they probably don't have enough non nuclear bombs/heavy weapon ammo to clear the entire USA.

I'm a Romero fan - Dawn initially (like everyone else when they're a first year uni student), but over time I've kind of come around to liking Day more, not exactly for what's going on on screen so much as the underlying assumptions, and the feeling of macabre melancholy hanging over it all. But I feel like you have to come at it with some suspension of disbelief - especially now that most everyone knows what zombies are and are carrying around handheld video cameras connected to the entire rest of the world in real time. For me the best way to approach 'but how did an orderly society fail to deal with this?' is "They just did, okay!" and proceed with your band of survivors grappling with the collapse of civilisation as best they can (and, as a Romero fan I guess it goes without saying, I prefer that to be more along the lines of 'this ain't getting better, what do you do to keep going on in a world where you know that?' than 'there's a way to fix everything, let's do that'). Bottom line, I'm not really interested in seeing the military mow down hordes of poorly people whose only weapon is 'bite', or listen to the ruggedly handsome scientist du jour explaining why the virus does some magic things that means that wouldn't work.

Not to say that I think we could wrap up the outbreak and go back to normal without breaking a sweat; if recent events have taught us anything, it's that we're perfectly capable of making problems worse as fast as we can make them better, and it's a bit of a toss-up which comes out on top. But ultimately that's sort of the society-wide equivalent of that one guy who gets bitten but hides it from everyone so he can dramatically turn at the worst possible moment in act three, and that's also something I don't find interesting.

I watched a show on Netflix a while back, before I cancelled Netflix because screw them, called Kingdom which I found quite refreshing - set in 17th Century Korea, so your anti-zombie gear is bows and slow-firing gunpowder weapons, and news travels at the speed of guy-on-horse. It let the zombies present a credible threat, without needing to have any superpowers to compensate for modern weapons. Similar to how I feel about War of the Worlds, where it loses something when you bring it into the modern day and have to counteract nukes with deflector shields and it's basically just 'our physics magic vs their space magic'. (Second season of Kingdom kind of fell off the rails a bit as I recall though, there was a palace politics subplot the whole time, and it pushed the notion of the zombies being an actual society-destabilising event out of prominence. First season damn solid though. There was a spin-off prequel miniseries or something I remember quite enjoying as well.)

 Overread wrote:
I think the biggest hurdle with zombies is proving that they are a thing fast enough. One thing the Pandemic showed was that even with insanely rapid communication and education systems - there was still a huge amount of confusion, missinformation, lack of education and awareness at multiple levels. That's before you get to bad actors seeding problems.

The other thing is infection speed; in some films its rapid, in others it takes time. Interestingly in many it seems ot be really fast at the start and then take ages for the "I got bit and didn't tell anyone" character. 24 Day Later was good on this; infection had what felt like a constant speed.



Rapid infection has the benefit that it can sweep through an unprepared high population area pretty fast; esp the kind in 24Days Later where a tiny organic drop spreads it to you in moments. That speed is insanely hard to overcome - one cough or sneeze and the infection spreads.

Everything about that virus was speed based.


The other option would be something with a long incubation period. Give it a 2 month incubation spread by water droplets (cough/sneeze) and you've got yourself primed for a real outbreak. At that point it doesn't matter if they are fast or slow zombies; the key part is that by the time infection is detected its already spread through a vast part of the population including military forces. Plus if the first outbreak is when its detected you'll have a rolling series of outbreaks from those infected a day later etc.... So you've got 2 months of solid infection spreading; with infected breaking out at random everywhere. Even if they are slow zombies they'll already be in people's homes and population centres. With the potential for many key people to be infected too you'd have a very rapid breakdown of effective communication. You're basically down to isolated populations and individuals along with natural immunity and such to hold things together.

Yeah, I think starting from some of the scenarios where it's either rapidly transmissible or everyone is already infected/cursed to reanimate after death (in films that handwave it more) makes sense. You're not just fighting the mob of zombies on a battlefield, you're also going to have to enact extremely authoritarian monitoring of your population which won't go over well. Otherwise you'd have a random heart attack or accident leading to a new outbreak each time.

And as we've lived through things that break down global trade and local social cohesion can lead to spiraling out of control real fast.

The primary conceit for most zombie films is that they exist in a world that doesn't know of zombies. If zombies are remotely understood or known, it would definitely be contained by most civilized areas, though I think it would certainly spread and alter civilization.

If it is going to take out and break down society, as others have pointed out its going to need to be a fluid borne illness. Depending on the potency and durability of the pathogen, and assuming its undead and can't be killed, you could see cities fall to contaminated water sources regularly.

Someone takes their last restroom break after being infected, the water supply is compromised, as regular filtration and such can't kill this zomvirus, and you have people falling ill just from water. It would still need some reason to hit multiple countries at once, because if this happened and it swept through Africa or Asia the rest of the world would put protocols in place to prevent it.

But honestly, that's not really a zombie movie at that point, it's just a super virus that kills humanity movie, that happens to turn the dead into zombies. They aren't the threat, just the vector.

Slow zombies just aren't doing the job unless for some mysterious reason they're able to overwhelm enough of the population that they can't organize a response. More likely it creates a rough few months or years, and then becomes a daily part of life. Zombie detecting dogs, elevated houses, MUCH more sturdy doors, clearly marked pit traps that have a simple code to drop a ladder to get out. I can definitely see people taking to wearing zombie safety headbands, that destroy your brain if the virus is detected, or your heart stops for 5 minutes.

Don't let yourself kill your loved ones- Safety bands are here for you.

All these things are explored really well in WWZ I’ll stop fanboying about it now

I'm saddened the thread is this deep and no one has mentioned Sean of the Dead yet. Which had a competent military appear at the end and not only neutralize the zombie threat, made it trivial following on.

im with ya flinty... WWZ was good.
i think fear the walking dead showed a decent representation of an outbreak.

love me some zombies but yeah... not gonna happen haha

it would have to be transmitted like a sickness, flu etc... hello covid

The core problem with zombies is that the movies all pretend people are surprised by zombies, when in fact people talk about them and plan about it constantly.

As soon as the first hint of shambling starts, everyone's going to be dialed in on what kind they are and how it spreads, so the notion of people being confused by it is pretty ludicrous at this point.

Heck, the military has actually run anti-zombie exercises (a less politically charged topic than say, riot suppression), and in the US, just about every state has National Guard troops specifically trained and equipped for this mission who are supposed to be ready to equip and deploy in a 96 hour window.

So once an outbreak is detected, a battalion of mechanized infantry will be in motion, and other states will mobilize as well and provide follow-on forces.

And of course all the troops will be equipped for CBRNE to prevent the spread.

The real "horror" element of zombies is that they represent the enemy within. You never know who is infected, so your buddy, spouse, even kids can turn on you.

Tactically, however, vampires or werewolves are much more interesting.

I am disappointed in this thread.

How you all missed the best "Terry Pratchett approved," UK zombie story, written by a Scot (Michael Logan), is beyond me.

Apocalypse Cow


Zombie Cows. 'Nuff Said.

Had a sequel: World War Moo.

Yeah, you're not getting a Zombie Apocalypse unless you have loads of simultaneous outbreaks that stretch resources too thin and everything gets overwhelmed, or the zombies are just basically indestructible.

Although, I do think Mad Doc is vastly overestimating the general public's ability to stay calm, collected and get stuck in with the noggin bashing, instead of running about, limbs flailing wildly, like a panicky idiot.

To be slightly fair to people, depending on when such an event happens, a lot of front of brain activity will be going it “how do I get my family together and to safety” rather than “how do I kit up to take the fight to the monsters”.

If I’m at work when some kind of balloon goes up, I will absolutely heading straight to steal some kind of water craft as all other transport links to my home from my work will clog instantly.

One of the things they explore in WWZ (book) is that zombies aren’t afraid. So a lot of military tactics like covering fire, suppressive artillery fire, etc. just don’t work. Also a lot of modern military equipment is designed to very efficiently break the military equipment on the other side, not inflict mass casualties on large formations of humans.

I think The Walking Dead probably got the viral transmission about right, in that the initial infection is an airborne transmission, that takes several days for you to get ill and succumb. That gives time for infected people to move around and spread the infection. As cool as the Rage virus is in the 28- series, it’s way, way, too fast. No one’s taking that unnoticed on a transatlantic flight! Although I did like the zombie “ecosystem” in the recent film, representing different levels of natural immunity/adaptation to the virus.

I used to think it was improbable too.

Then COVID happened and I realized that it was all too easy to disrupt and destroy a society.

 Flinty wrote:
To be slightly fair to people, depending on when such an event happens, a lot of front of brain activity will be going it “how do I get my family together and to safety” rather than “how do I kit up to take the fight to the monsters”.

Yeah plus the human mind is wired up to narrow its thinking focus during panic.

I think we forget so easily that society isn't a single unit, its loads and loads of tiny ones that link together. Extreme stress on the whole can cause those smaller segments to start to self-isolate into smaller and tighter groupings.

Something like a slow incubation leading to mass sudden zombie outbreak would very rapidly cause loads of fragmentation.



Also lets consider whilst zombies are something we 100% know and talk about its a huge difference between debating them as a fantasy and dealing with the concept as a reality. First hurdle is "is that really a zombie or just someone loaded up on drugs/drink/mental imbalance etc...." Identifying them as dangerous is one thing, but its a huge leap to actually get to real life zombies. It's just not something any of us encounter in reality to have any kind of mental preparation.
That's even more the case if said zombies that you encounter first are friends, family, coworkers and the like.

Almost every zombie film has at least one person trying to look after a zombie family member thinking they can recover or just save them etc.... Reality it might be far more the case that it would happen way more often.








Also there's another kind of zombie outbreak; or rather two that you can see in Resident Evil
1) Directly promoted outbreak. Ergo a weaponised use of the infection which could easily make it a LOT harder to combat if a specialist interest group are trying to use it for their own gain. If one country were trying to use it on another and thus seeding infections via food/plane/etc... Much harder to fully remove the infection and risk if there's a group promoting its use.

2) Additional threats. Not just zombies but other mutations and monsters at the same time. If you look at fantasy, zombies are most often used as an additional threat. The zombie is slow and lurching; but also backed up with other monsters and threats. Similar to part 1, but this suggests active side by side combat and more monstrous allies of the zombie.

I will add to the pile of recommendations on World War Z for a logistics component. One of the best elements of it is how it defines the threat differently to conventional warfare and is eventually solved by developing equipment and tactics address those challenges.

Basically it leans on zombies being impossibly durable which is my personal favorite variant. The only real problem with it is it doesn't really jive with the desire to have your survivors get by with a baseball bat with a couple nails sticking out. That's ultimately the real logic failing in these stories; not that things can get that bad but that somehow the ones who survive do so with pointy sticks.