Zombie Plan

[JohnB]

Um, because nobody knows what tune they might follow?

 

Into the street the Piper stept,

Smiling first a little smile,

As if he knew what magic slept

In his quiet pipe the while;

Then, like a musical adept,

To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,

And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled,

Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled;

And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,

You heard as if an army muttered;

And the muttering grew to a grumbling;

And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;

And out of the houses the zombies came tumbling.

Great zombies, small zombies, lean zombies, brawny zombies,

Brown zombies, black zombies, grey zombies, tawny zombies,

Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,

Cocking heads and preening whiskers,

Families by tens and dozens,

Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives --

Followed the Piper for their lives.

From street to street he piped advancing,

And step for step they followed dancing,

Until they came to the Ocean Pacific

Wherein all plunged and perished!

 

With apologies to Mr. Browning.

 

As for choice of wepons while we wait. Triffid guns would come in handy, take the head clean off.

 

Edit, silly me. Of course there is one tune that will work.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=u_W0H1V7e7g (Macon, Georgia)

 

Or you could save them!

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gZAYBZMWrl8&feature=related

Edited January 9, 2009 by JohnB

[Moontanman]

No, there is a limit to how deep they could go underwater, as the deeper you go the higher the pressure. They would certainly be crushed if they wander into deep enough waters. Most islands that are right off the coast (< 20 or so miles) would be quite safe.

 

They could only be crushed if they had hollow spaces inside their bodies. Solid things do not crush, one of the main clean up problems after World War Z was using small deep water submersibles to kill the zombie hoards hiding in deep ocean waters. Any ship at anchor was vulnerable to zombies climbing the anchor chain at night and gaining access to the ship. fishing trawlers had to be prepared to kill zombies they netted off the bottom of the oceans. Only freezing temps stopped them and then when they thawed out they would start walking around again!

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I think a castle, some sniper rifles, and a huge stockpile of ammo would be great in that situation.

[Sayonara]

Not just ammo but also flammables and lots of dry wood.

 

When the horde builds up outside the stone walls it is cheaper to burn them off rather than waste bullets.

[JohnB]

You're just waiting for any excuse to pour boiling oil off a roof, aren't you?

[Klaynos]

I think a castle, some sniper rifles, and a huge stockpile of ammo would be great in that situation.

 

Castle or defencible island.

 

Currently we've several options and routes to them all.

 

If going for castle's you need to be mindful that anything post 1500's is pretty much just a house with some pointy bits and not a great defencive position.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I mean castles in the sense of big tall stone walls with towers and stuff.

 

One concern would be the dead bodies of killed zombies piling up until the undead ones can just walk over bodies over the castle walls. That would be a problem.

[CharonY]

Still depends on how transmissible the zombie-agent is. Zombiefying the ocean might be a bad idea. Also a question might be, how long they have to burn to become "inactivated". Normally you die from suffocation rather than burns, I guess. But how about zombies? Also, if it is human specific, can't we train all meat eaters in our local zoo to hunt them down? Of course it may cause other problems later on, but one thing at a time. I shall start by training colibris.

[Klaynos]

I mean castles in the sense of big tall stone walls with towers and stuff.

 

As do I....

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/klaynos/ZooAndDrogo#5243330286881971986

 

Castle Drogo... not as bad as some, but the last castle to be built in England (very recently it was finished last century!), as defencible as your common garden shed...

 

You want a 14th or 15th century one that's not been altered much, which means probably little to no roof...

 

Or possibly a modern (ish, like 18th - 20th) fort, but they tend to rely too heavily on their guns...

 

One concern would be the dead bodies of killed zombies piling up until the undead ones can just walk over bodies over the castle walls. That would be a problem.

 

Burning them becomes a good option...

[Sisyphus]

Medieval-type castles would obviously be effective, but you could probably make do with a lot less than that. Zombies shouldn't be nearly as hard to keep out as your average medieval army. Armies have battering rams, trebuchets, ladders, tunnels, bows and arrows, etc. Zombies are stupid and have only their hands as weapons. An ordinary brick wall should be able to hold off a zombie horde indefinitely, or at least a very long time. The only issue would be if they could somehow climb sheer walls, but if that were the case, you'd be in big trouble in a castle, too. So really, you could take any large building, brick up/barricade the windows on the bottom one or two floors, and keep watch from the roof.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

If you could keep the roof sealed off as well (except for a strongly built air vent, of course) you'd be pretty much invulnerable. If their bodies piled up and let them climb up to the roof, no worries. Just as long as you make sure to have a well-armed response team inside in case of a breach... and perhaps several internal barriers to split the building into independent pieces.

[Moontanman]

Still depends on how transmissible the zombie-agent is. Zombiefying the ocean might be a bad idea. Also a question might be, how long they have to burn to become "inactivated". Normally you die from suffocation rather than burns, I guess. But how about zombies? Also, if it is human specific, can't we train all meat eaters in our local zoo to hunt them down? Of course it may cause other problems later on, but one thing at a time. I shall start by training colibris.

 

Any animal that tries to eat a zombie dies, the flesh is very poisonous.

[insane_alien]

Any animal that tries to eat a zombie dies, the flesh is very poisonous.

 

that will pose a problem for food stocks, we will need to have an internal area of our fortress devoted to livestock.

 

how about plantlife? do zombies function as a herbicide or a fertilizer?

[Pangloss]

When the attack comes, what will you do to make sure you don't become one of THEM?

 

Stop voting for zombies.

 

Duh.

[Moontanman]

that will pose a problem for food stocks, we will need to have an internal area of our fortress devoted to livestock.

 

how about plantlife? do zombies function as a herbicide or a fertilizer?

 

I'm not sure if zombies have any effect of plants or not but one way to tell if a group of people have zombie infected among them is to nerve gas them, the regular people die but the people who are developing into zombies do not!

[Klaynos]

The problem with more recent or adapted castles is they started putting in large windows near the ground... Which are not going to hold off zombies...

[CaptainPanic]

As suggested before, the solution lies not in keeping the zombies out (they pile up, dead or aliveless), but in removing them completely. Therefore I stick to my idea of rapid zombie combustion.

 

Since it has to be an ad hoc solution (I doubt that zombies will announce their plans in the paper), you just need to go with a simple solution, but none the less a solution that really removes the zombies, and turn them into CO2 and H2O. We can all agree that you cannot zombify a molecule, so once they've been combusted, you have removed the problem.

 

Zombies also come to you, all by themselves, so you don't have to worry about trapping them.

 

If animals die from eating a zombie, then a zombie body also does not rot. So, you can shoot all zombies in the head, but the bodies will be around forever. So, again: combustion is the only permanent solution.

 

Gas stations can be a good start for your zombie annihilation program (ZAP). But in the end, you need to realize that it is possible that you need to annihilate a number of zombies equal to the world's population. That's a lot. You need to think Big. Bigger. Biggest. Petrochemistry is the type of industry that also thinks that big. It provides energy for a continent, and all that is situated on a few square kilometers of land. So obviously, that's where you need to be .

 

And I wish to bring up Godwin's Law. Talking about zombie annihilation... we're asking for it

[Sisyphus]

I'd like to see a study on the effects of burning zombie fumes. You might not be able to "zombify a molecule" (although we might be surprised - it all depends on the physical causes of zombification), but it could still be highly toxic. I don't want to survive a zombie attack just so I can unleash a chemical WMD on every survivor outpost left standing.

[Sayonara]

A lot of this thread depends on whether the zombism is viral or supernatural.

 

We need a flow chart!

[Mr Skeptic]

The final level of Call of Duty 5 is an unbeatable level of wave after wave of nazi zombies. It is also a great example of where not to hide -- there are windows everywhere.

[CharonY]

Not enough info regarding the zombies. E.g. if it is not supernatural we can assume that they need some kind of energy or that they need some structural integrity to function.

E.g. how about moving into an extremely hot region? Zombies outside should dehydrate rapidly, as they appear only to drink blood anyway...

[Moontanman]

In World War Z interviews of the veterans and other people who fought the zombies said that the older zombies were the more decrepit they became. Although they killed and ate humans and other animals the flesh wasn't digested and simply came out their rectum as rotten meat. If a zombie was disemboweled it wasn't harmed but any meat it ate just fell out through the hole in in it's torso. zombies have a limited life span, they slowly deteriorate over time. Lower temps slow this process, that why zombies on the bottom in deep ocean were a threat, they were preserved at those low temps but still able to slowly make their way to shallow water and land. This means that even though zombies on land die off in a reasonable time frame (very long time frame) those in cold or cool conditions do not. Zombies frozen in cold regions reanimate when thawed out.

[Pangloss]

World War Z also proved that zombies were caused by Republicans and global warming deniers, and that being a good, progressive liberal will save you from certain destruction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The Aristocrats!"

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

That seems counterintuitive. I thought the zombies wanted to eat the people with "braaaaiaaiiiiinnss" first.

 

 

...sorry.

[Reaper]

If they are attracted to brains, then why are we even formulating these plans in the first place? Surely most of America (and the world) is lacking in such things...