Poll of the Day > If a Zombie Outbreak happened today...

(+) Yeah! (+)

Do you believe your government would be able to contain it? Would they fail utterly? Would they seek to cover their own rears and lie to save face? Would they respond properly? What about other nations governments (such as China's)? Would they make it better or worse? Do you think humanity could survive a Zombie Outbreak?

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Are we talking fast zombies, slow zombies? What's the vector of infection? Is it a bite, a scratch, or is everyone infected and when they die they turn.

At any rate I would guess most govs would f it up.

Are zombies easier or harder than COVID-19?

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hungrymike posted...

Are we talking fast zombies, slow zombies? What's the vector of infection? Is it a bite, a scratch, or is everyone infected and when they die they turn.

At any rate I would guess most govs would f it up.

Traditional shamblers. Bites only, though scratches can infect if there's material transfer from the host to the victim.

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I think that it would honestly be a pretty manageable threat. Thats why almost all zombie shows/games/stories gloss over the part where society actually breaks down and then the main story picks up afterwards

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Mead posted...

I think that it would honestly be a pretty manageable threat. Thats why almost all zombie shows/games/stories gloss over the part where society actually breaks down and then the main story picks up afterwards

I agree. Slow zombies, which TC confirmed is what we're dealing with, would be virtually no threat at all except perhaps to small children and elderly, at extremes.

And fast zombies are unrealistic anyway, because zombies=decayed muscle mass.

NRA and 2A types would be drooling at the chance to unload their toys on real threats and to be celebrated lol

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MondoMan180 posted...

NRA and 2A types would be drooling at the chance to unload their toys on real threats and to be celebrated lol

yeah that is basically what happens back in the old Night of the Living Dead

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Yeah shamblers that can't even climb are totally not a threat at all, almost to the extreme of being silly.

The zombies in the walking dead for instance, why wouldn't like everyone just live on top of roofs or other things you have to climb, and then just shot the heck out of all zombies from up high till there are no more threats?

New town? Drive through the zombies to the ammo store (although you prob have plenty of ammo already from the last) load up on ammo and blare noise to get all zombies to come while your on top of the store. Shoot em till no more zombies. Drive around town with someone (or two) on top of a van (seats buckled down etc so they can just concentrate on firing). Shoot all zombies that come out to the noise. Before long town is cleared. Head to next town repeat.

There would be no challenge at all.

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With Biden in office, America would be fucked.

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Zeus posted...

With Biden in office, America would be fucked.

I mean, wouldn't Biden be leading them?

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wolfy42 posted...

Yeah shamblers that can't even climb are totally not a threat at all, almost to the extreme of being silly.

The zombies in the walking dead for instance, why wouldn't like everyone just live on top of roofs or other things you have to climb, and then just shot the heck out of all zombies from up high till there are no more threats?

New town? Drive through the zombies to the ammo store (although you prob have plenty of ammo already from the last) load up on ammo and blare noise to get all zombies to come while your on top of the store. Shoot em till no more zombies. Drive around town with someone (or two) on top of a van (seats buckled down etc so they can just concentrate on firing). Shoot all zombies that come out to the noise. Before long town is cleared. Head to next town repeat.

There would be no challenge at all.

Not saying they would be a serious threat but I think you gravely overestimate the amount of ammo a gun store would have. Once word of the outbreak hits everybody and thier mother will rush to the local pawn, Cabelas or whatever and buy/loot all the ammo they can. Right now Everytime someone starts a dialogue about gun control everyone buys that shit up to the point of emptying the stores so imagine a real reason to buy it all.

Driving around gunning zombies down like that is a terrible plan logistically, you're wasting a massive amount of resources that would be better used if you held on to them if you need them. In even a small scale zombie Outbreak bullets would quickly become very valuable.

Cruddy_horse posted...

Not saying they would be a serious threat but I think you gravely overestimate the amount of ammo a gun store would have. Once word of the outbreak hits everybody and thier mother will rush to the local pawn, Cabelas or whatever and buy/loot all the ammo they can. Right now Everytime someone starts a dialogue about gun control everyone buys that shit up to the point of emptying the stores so imagine a real reason to buy it all.

Driving around gunning zombies down like that is a terrible plan logistically, you're wasting a massive amount of resources that would be better used if you held on to them if you need them. In even a small scale zombie Outbreak bullets would quickly become very valuable.

Very true, but I was more going along the lines of walking dead etc where basically everyone is dead or a zombie other then a VERY small number of people.

This of course creates the zombie hoards in such shows (cause obviously even if it was a ratio of 20 zombies to 1 non-zombie, the humans would be able to take them out super easily).

If the ammo stores were all empties, then there would either A: be almost no zombies because the bullets were used to kill them already, or B: lots of guns laying around and zombies would often have bullets on em once you shoot etc etc (lol itwould be like loot in a video game!! Kill a zombie get a gun and bullets!!).

As far as number of bullets here is something I found online that is interesting, basically states there are 10's of billions of rounds of ammo in the US. Not only would there be enough bullets to kill EVERY zombie (even with a 99.9% infection rate) but you would have enough bullets to kill EVERY zombie in the entire world, just from what is available here.

So yeah, plenty of bullets to go around, just maybe not all at the ammo shops.

"Borrowing from Matt, It is estimated 12 BILLION rounds of ammunition is sold each year in the USA. Not all of that ammo is shot off each year so it is reasonable to assume the total number of rounds in the US just in civilian hands alone is in the 10s of billions."

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The government would probably be like you're all going to die. I certainly wouldn't be hopeful after how this latest incident was handled.

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^That was Trump.

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If the pandemic is any indication it entirely depends on who our president is here in the US

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Metalsonic66 posted...

Where is the lie

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wolfy42 posted...

Very true, but I was more going along the lines of walking dead etc where basically everyone is dead or a zombie other then a VERY small number of people.

This of course creates the zombie hoards in such shows (cause obviously even if it was a ratio of 20 zombies to 1 non-zombie, the humans would be able to take them out super easily).

If the ammo stores were all empties, then there would either A: be almost no zombies because the bullets were used to kill them already, or B: lots of guns laying around and zombies would often have bullets on em once you shoot etc etc (lol itwould be like loot in a video game!! Kill a zombie get a gun and bullets!!).

As far as number of bullets here is something I found online that is interesting, basically states there are 10's of billions of rounds of ammo in the US. Not only would there be enough bullets to kill EVERY zombie (even with a 99.9% infection rate) but you would have enough bullets to kill EVERY zombie in the entire world, just from what is available here.

So yeah, plenty of bullets to go around, just maybe not all at the ammo shops.

"Borrowing from Matt, It is estimated 12 BILLION rounds of ammunition is sold each year in the USA. Not all of that ammo is shot off each year so it is reasonable to assume the total number of rounds in the US just in civilian hands alone is in the 10s of billions."

That's a really dangerous assumption, that 1 round = 1 kill. Especially in the hands of panicky, untrained, civilians. IRL the ammo to kill ratio is something like several thousand to 1; but a lot of that is because they need to do things like suppression fire and whatnot which won't happen with zombies. But still, I'd expect that, even if your average civilian were to find a box of 20 5.56 rifle rounds I wouldn't be shocked if they wasted all of them and got only 1 kill if even that (and that's assuming they even had a gun that could fire it).

While a heavily armed civilian population would SLOW the zombies for certain a lot of people simply don't have the rounds, guns, and/or training to be actually effective at killing them. Remember, you wing a zombie in the shoulder it keeps coming; but do the same to a human and they might bleed out and will likely be down for the count.

Plus there's plenty of nations OTHER than the U.S. who have much, much, less guns and ammo. If the zombies built up in, say, Mexico first..

I feel like the red states would fair better only because a lot of them are more rural with a hunting culture meaning more gun familiarity. But even with them in full swing they'll still need help from the government to resist a horde.

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Unbridled9 posted...

Do you believe your government would be able to contain it?

Easily, because in a real-world scenario, all the problems that movies, TV, and games ignore would actually come into play.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18683_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly.html

The only way a zombie outbreak would be legit a problem is if magic was somehow involved, but at that point any assumptions we make are meaningless anyway.
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yeah biden sniff them into oblivion

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Zeus posted...

With Biden in office, America would be fucked.

The irony

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Metalsonic66 posted...

The irony

I mean, he's the only president who has as much trouble climbing stairs as the zombies :)

er.....recent president (heh FDR).

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What about the one in the wheelchair

Lol nice

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People really think covid would have been just as bad if it spread through bites.

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MondoMan180 posted...

I agree. Slow zombies, which TC confirmed is what we're dealing with, would be virtually no threat at all except perhaps to small children and elderly, at extremes.

And fast zombies are unrealistic anyway, because zombies=decayed muscle mass.

NRA and 2A types would be drooling at the chance to unload their toys on real threats and to be celebrated lol

I wouldn't be drooling over it but id probably a tad less scared than non gun owners. My concern would be ammo conservation. I have a fair amount of ammo but its various calibers and carrying a bunch of different guns and ammo is ineffiecent. If they are as slow as im imagining id probably break out a sword (I have one that should be sturdy enough as most of mine are just decorative) if blunt trauma to the head drops them i have a state issued expandable baton. And in my spare time id actually have the motivation to work on my archery. Only got 5 arrows but I could feasibly retrieve them or learn to make my own.

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Metalsonic66 posted...

LMAO.
But America does have an actual plan for a zombie outbreak.

BigBangBro posted...

But America does have an actual plan for a zombie outbreak.

Assuming a certain spray-tanned turd didn't scrap the plan during his tenor.

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mooreandrew58 posted...

And in my spare time id actually have the motivation to work on my archery. Only got 5 arrows but I could feasibly retrieve them or learn to make my own.

Normal arrows will probably break if you shoot zombies in the head. Honestly ammo should never be a problem as either there will be tons of other humans around shooting the zombies, or there is so much ammo available that you could quickly load up with unlimited ammo for your favorite gun/guns.

The estimate of 10's of billions of round in the US means even if it was 1 human to every 10,000 zombies, each human should in theory be able to easily find enough ammo to blow away the 10k zombies even if they waste 10 shots per kill.

In the above scenerio, that means of the 200 million or so adult mobile population (zombie kids be a pain tho), 20k of them would be humans.

Just to make numbers easy, lets say there are 20billion rounds in the US, that means each human would have 1 million rounds if it was divided evenly (which it obviously wouldn't).

If each human took 10 shots to kill a zombie on average that would still mean 100k kills per human. 20k*100k=2billion dead zombies (with only 200million adult ones in the us).

Ammo wouldn't be a problem

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Boris Johnson pleads with the undead to show goodwill and common sense and refrain from biting the living if at all possible.

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BigBangBro posted...

But America does have an actual plan for a zombie outbreak.

To be fair, America also has a plan for if Canada attacks, which is even less likely.
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BigBangBro posted...

LMAO.
But America does have an actual plan for a zombie outbreak.

I read World War Z, we'd still be fucked

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Metalsonic66 posted...

I read World War Z, we'd still be fucked

How? We would barely even need the military, just militias and police.

But if we DID use military, ever imagine what napalm/white phosphorous/thermite would do to a horde of massed zombies (they are always mashed together remember that's another critical weakness of zombies is their lack of intelligence)

Now one thing that might be a problem and one of the first posters ask this but was the vector of contamination itself. What's the transmissability rate of the zombie virus, how fast does it take, is it asymptomatic or are the symptoms clearly identified?

Well he did say only bites/ contact that breaches skin (so not like aerosol spread) so again, easy peasy lemon squeezy

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Depends on what type of zombies and how the infection spreads.

If we're talking about traditional zombies that move slowly and need to bite you to infect you than most abled body people should be able to defend themselves and the injection shouldn't spread as fast as most movies portray since the number of non infected should vastly outnumber the infected at the start.

Also, depends on the location, as there is a big difference from a small town where everyone has guns, and, a big city where nobody has guns.

If we're talking about an airborne virus that's a much larger problem, but now it would depends in if you "zombify" once infected, or you need to "die" before you turn into a zombie.

Also, if we're using realistic science, zombies that don't eat should continue to decay over time by themselves until they can't move anymore.

If we're talking a massively infectious airborne virus that survives without moisture or body heat for long periods of time, the the fact that it causes "zombies" is actually incredibly irrelevant at that point.
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Contain it... No! The politicians would say the zombies have a right to eat people and mandate that everyone take classes on their "vital sign privilege".

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My government is zombies.

zebatov posted...

My government is zombies.

Are you saying your government would be immune to zombies due to not having any brains of which zombies would be interested in?
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https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/social-justice-warriors-lord-zeus/1124448924

He really is a writer and it is in line with his ideology, so it might actually, really be him!

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wolfy42 posted...

Normal arrows will probably break if you shoot zombies in the head. Honestly ammo should never be a problem as either there will be tons of other humans around shooting the zombies, or there is so much ammo available that you could quickly load up with unlimited ammo for your favorite gun/guns.

The estimate of 10's of billions of round in the US means even if it was 1 human to every 10,000 zombies, each human should in theory be able to easily find enough ammo to blow away the 10k zombies even if they waste 10 shots per kill.

In the above scenerio, that means of the 200 million or so adult mobile population (zombie kids be a pain tho), 20k of them would be humans.

Just to make numbers easy, lets say there are 20billion rounds in the US, that means each human would have 1 million rounds if it was divided evenly (which it obviously wouldn't).

If each human took 10 shots to kill a zombie on average that would still mean 100k kills per human. 20k*100k=2billion dead zombies (with only 200million adult ones in the us).

Ammo wouldn't be a problem

Id have to procure any extra ammo and surely I wouldnt be the only one looking for some. I aint trying to kill or get killed over a box of ammo.

And why would a normal arrow break when as far im aware it doesnt on humans. Shit just forgot I got access to a crossbow as well. Not mine but its in the house. My arrows I believe are typical hunting arrows. Id probably need to go get a better now though mines just a practice bow.

I'd still lean towards melee options if they are indeed super slow though and save ammo for if they are in a group

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mooreandrew58 posted...

And why would a normal arrow break when as far im aware it doesnt on humans

Depends on the type of arrow, but yes, arrows can break hitting a skull bone. Here is a video showing them being used on a moose skull (they don't break in the video). You can see though that the damage done is SIGNIFICANTLY less then from a gun shot, as the gun shots expand after penetration.

Basically your arrows may not penetrate much past the skull itself, and the damage done could be significantly less. You could literally have a zombie walking around with 4+ arrows sticking out of it's skull hehe.

You could certainly kill them, don't get me wrong, but it wouldn't be as easy as Daryl did it in the Walking Dead with his crossbow, and often you would take the shot, and even with penetration not actually take a zombie down.

A gun, especially if you double tap everything, is going to work WAY better, it's easier to carry many rounds with you, but does have the disadvantage of being much louder (Even a silencer doesn't usually totally silence the shot, it just makes it significantly quieter.

Anyway I wouldn't say using a bow/xbow vs single zombies that are slowly shambling at you would be a horrid idea to conserve ammo, or reduce noise so more zombies don't approach, but I wouldn't use it if multiple zombies were approaching.

As far as melee weapons....if they are really shambling along, then yeah, a good sledge hammer could do the trick. Still, if there is a hoard or many zombies....it's probably just not worth the risk to get anywhere near them. Climb on almost ANYTHING and the zombies can't get to you ,e ven if you just randomly pass out etc. Your 100% safe.

Move in for melee and...trip, or misfire your gun or not notice a zombie coming from the size etc etc and bam your zombie chow.

Range + the ability to climb make you pretty much invulnerable to zombies....might as well use those advantages.

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wolfy42 posted...

Depends on the type of arrow, but yes, arrows can break hitting a skull bone. Here is a video showing them being used on a moose skull (they don't break in the video). You can see though that the damage done is SIGNIFICANTLY less then from a gun shot, as the gun shots expand after penetration.

Basically your arrows may not penetrate much past the skull itself, and the damage done could be significantly less. You could literally have a zombie walking around with 4+ arrows sticking out of it's skull hehe.

You could certainly kill them, don't get me wrong, but it wouldn't be as easy as Daryl did it in the Walking Dead with his crossbow, and often you would take the shot, and even with penetration not actually take a zombie down.

A gun, especially if you double tap everything, is going to work WAY better, it's easier to carry many rounds with you, but does have the disadvantage of being much louder (Even a silencer doesn't usually totally silence the shot, it just makes it significantly quieter.

Anyway I wouldn't say using a bow/xbow vs single zombies that are slowly shambling at you would be a horrid idea to conserve ammo, or reduce noise so more zombies don't approach, but I wouldn't use it if multiple zombies were approaching.

As far as melee weapons....if they are really shambling along, then yeah, a good sledge hammer could do the trick. Still, if there is a hoard or many zombies....it's probably just not worth the risk to get anywhere near them. Climb on almost ANYTHING and the zombies can't get to you ,e ven if you just randomly pass out etc. Your 100% safe.

Move in for melee and...trip, or misfire your gun or not notice a zombie coming from the size etc etc and bam your zombie chow.

Range + the ability to climb make you pretty much invulnerable to zombies....might as well use those advantages.

Still the ammo thing would eventually be a problem. Let's face it zombies happen and every gun toting redneck is going to be looting every pawn shop and walmart for ammo. At first it might be civil enough and maybe just some people get beat up for the ammo but eventually people will be desperate enough to kill.

I could honestly see ammo being a type of currency in a zombie infested world.

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mooreandrew58 posted...

Still the ammo thing would eventually be a problem. Let's face it zombies happen and every gun toting redneck is going to be looting every pawn shop and walmart for ammo. At first it might be civil enough and maybe just some people get beat up for the ammo but eventually people will be desperate enough to kill.

I could honestly see ammo being a type of currency in a zombie infested world.

Yeah ammo could easly be currency. In fact The Walking Dead got one thing VERY right, which is that zombies are not the real danger, OTHER PEOPLE are the real danger. That is even more true if more then just a small number of humans survived.

There is PLENTY of ammo to go around, so much it's silly, but people would still kill each other over it.

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TigerTycoon posted...

Are you saying your government would be immune to zombies due to not having any brains of which zombies would be interested in?

More or less.

MondoMan180 posted...

Look, I found @Zeus !!

https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/social-justice-warriors-lord-zeus/1124448924

He really is a writer and it is in line with his ideology, so it might actually, really be him!

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