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Zombie apocalypse now?

Started by Spear80, February 06, 2015, 02:33:13 PM

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Lustful Bride

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on February 16, 2015, 07:45:20 PM

It is worth mentioning Romero, though, because everyone seems to forget that the original zombie movie - Night of the Living Dead itself - ends with the humans turning the tide and killing off the ghouls. It was a small-scale horror, about one group of people trapped and mostly eaten by the living dead; later imitators decided that wasn't epic/scary enough and made the whole world be affected instead. And thus we get to today.

I know! And it leaves me disappointed, I always wanted to see more of that, people banning together to form posse's and militias fighting the zombies and being pro active.


Also I remember the scene in Dawn of the dead was it? Where we see soldiers and random hunters working together to hunt the zombies, I really wanted to see more of that!

Wolven Soul

Quote from: Lustful Bride on February 17, 2015, 09:51:09 AM
I know! And it leaves me disappointed, I always wanted to see more of that, people banning together to form posse's and militias fighting the zombies and being pro active.


Also I remember the scene in Dawn of the dead was it? Where we see soldiers and random hunters working together to hunt the zombies, I really wanted to see more of that!

I agree that would be fun to see.  For me though, the best parts of zombie movies are never the zombies themselves, for when they are used the right way, they are never anything but tools.  The real story of any good zombie fiction, is in how the people interact with the other people.  Any apocalypse will bring out the best and worst of people, but zombie apocalypses for some reason tell these stories the best in my opinion.  Perhaps it is because the zombies are in a way a reflection of the ugliness of humanity.
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Mathim

It really depends on whether it's purely viral or if, Romero-style, you can count on any dead body getting back up again shortly after expiring (provided the brain hasn't been destroyed). If there was any hope of fighting back, it would only be really feasible with the latter, otherwise you'd never be able to be fully secure since there'd be new ones popping up all the time. You could be sleeping next to your spouse and wake up to find them trying to eat your face if they had a heart attack or aneurysm and died in their sleep.

They did kind of make it feasible in the movie Fido, to control the situation despite people reviving as zombies no matter the cause of death.
Considering a permanent retirement from Elliquiy, but you can find me on Blue Moon (under the same username).

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Mathim on February 17, 2015, 05:25:18 PM
It really depends on whether it's purely viral or if, Romero-style, you can count on any dead body getting back up again shortly after expiring (provided the brain hasn't been destroyed). If there was any hope of fighting back, it would only be really feasible with the latter, otherwise you'd never be able to be fully secure since there'd be new ones popping up all the time. You could be sleeping next to your spouse and wake up to find them trying to eat your face if they had a heart attack or aneurysm and died in their sleep.

They did kind of make it feasible in the movie Fido, to control the situation despite people reviving as zombies no matter the cause of death.

This is one of the things I really like about the Newsflesh trilogy, a set of books that take place after a zombie apocalypse that we win. Part of society's adaptations to a post-zombie world (caused by a viral plague that infects all living humans, but only goes 'live' when they die) is adapting to prevent spontaneous death-and-reanimations from causing new outbreaks, and among other things is a strong resurgence in separate rooms for spouses like in the first half of the 1900's.

Mathim

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on February 17, 2015, 07:16:06 PM
This is one of the things I really like about the Newsflesh trilogy, a set of books that take place after a zombie apocalypse that we win. Part of society's adaptations to a post-zombie world (caused by a viral plague that infects all living humans, but only goes 'live' when they die) is adapting to prevent spontaneous death-and-reanimations from causing new outbreaks, and among other things is a strong resurgence in separate rooms for spouses like in the first half of the 1900's.

Even though that wasn't how it worked in World War Z, I still liked that there were enough zombies out there (frozen, or at the bottom of the ocean, etc.) to make everyone still on high alert from that point on. It only takes one to start another outbreak, after all.
Considering a permanent retirement from Elliquiy, but you can find me on Blue Moon (under the same username).

TheGlyphstone

I think my favorite part of the World War Z book (speak not of the cinematic abomination that bears its name) was the Mystery of North Korea, and how no one knows what happened even at the end - and no one was particularly inclined to find out.

Wolven Soul

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on February 17, 2015, 10:53:17 PM
I think my favorite part of the World War Z book (speak not of the cinematic abomination that bears its name) was the Mystery of North Korea, and how no one knows what happened even at the end - and no one was particularly inclined to find out.

Holy crap I fully agree with you about that freaking movie.  What kind of freaking zombie gives a crap if a person has a deadly disease?  I mean honestly...
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Oniya

Quote from: Wolven Soul on February 18, 2015, 06:01:55 AM
Holy crap I fully agree with you about that freaking movie.  What kind of freaking zombie gives a crap if a person has a deadly disease?  I mean honestly...

Maybe they don't taste as good?
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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Lustful Bride

#58
Quote from: Wolven Soul on February 18, 2015, 06:01:55 AM
Holy crap I fully agree with you about that freaking movie.  What kind of freaking zombie gives a crap if a person has a deadly disease?  I mean honestly...

If they were going to have running zombies, I wish they would have gone the route of the "Morningstar Plague" books. Where the zombie virus in a living human turns them into rage filled monsters. But while they are still capable of being killed like a normal human, if its not a headshot then the runner will them come back to life as a shambler and can only be dropped by a headshot.

EDIT: I find it so ironic that in the beginning of the first chapter one of the main characters is telling a US colonel how easily a virus like Ebola could spread all around the world just by being in a paerson who was on a plane.

audiobook is on youtube...yay youtube!


Inkidu

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on February 17, 2015, 10:53:17 PM
I think my favorite part of the World War Z book (speak not of the cinematic abomination that bears its name) was the Mystery of North Korea, and how no one knows what happened even at the end - and no one was particularly inclined to find out.
Yeah, I liked that part, too. What I didn't like about the WWZ book though was that it was a little too self-serving.

Thermobaric over-pressure would be absolutely devastating against zombies. Over-pressure can basically liquefy any given organ in the human body, and so that giant ass bomb they dropped would have absolutely devastated large swaths of zombies. You don't even need a special bomb for it, any sufficiently large air-burst bomb would probably have a brutally effective kill-to-bomb ratio.

However, it doesn't work because black goo (which would actually make it worse (over-pressure is magnitudes worse in water than air). Still a good book, but he does kind of try to make his points first.     
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Mathim

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on February 17, 2015, 10:53:17 PM
I think my favorite part of the World War Z book (speak not of the cinematic abomination that bears its name) was the Mystery of North Korea, and how no one knows what happened even at the end - and no one was particularly inclined to find out.

That's why I spake not of it. I'm really hoping all that crap about sequels was just bluster, too. Especially since the end of the first one basically made the entire thing seem like it had an airtight solution at the end. Typical Hollywood ending.
Considering a permanent retirement from Elliquiy, but you can find me on Blue Moon (under the same username).

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Inkidu on February 18, 2015, 07:55:16 AM
Yeah, I liked that part, too. What I didn't like about the WWZ book though was that it was a little too self-serving.

Thermobaric over-pressure would be absolutely devastating against zombies. Over-pressure can basically liquefy any given organ in the human body, and so that giant ass bomb they dropped would have absolutely devastated large swaths of zombies. You don't even need a special bomb for it, any sufficiently large air-burst bomb would probably have a brutally effective kill-to-bomb ratio.

However, it doesn't work because black goo (which would actually make it worse (over-pressure is magnitudes worse in water than air). Still a good book, but he does kind of try to make his points first.   

Agreed. The Battle of Yonkers is the single part of the book that is utter nonsense. To make his plot happen, he basically has to give the entire US military lobotomies and replace the missing tissue with chunks of stupid. It's extra weird when the desperation and competence of the other national militaries in their own defenses (that we see) is plenty dramatic enough - but he decides being driven back past the Rockies and then reconquering America mile by mile is KEWL, so we get Yonkers.

Wolven Soul

Quote from: Oniya on February 18, 2015, 06:23:32 AM
Maybe they don't taste as good?

Bah, they're zombies, they don't care about taste.
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Mathim

Quote from: Wolven Soul on February 18, 2015, 02:13:28 PM
Bah, they're zombies, they don't care about taste.

Actually, in Marvel Zombies, they DO care about taste.
Considering a permanent retirement from Elliquiy, but you can find me on Blue Moon (under the same username).

Mathim

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on February 18, 2015, 12:17:46 PM
Agreed. The Battle of Yonkers is the single part of the book that is utter nonsense. To make his plot happen, he basically has to give the entire US military lobotomies and replace the missing tissue with chunks of stupid. It's extra weird when the desperation and competence of the other national militaries in their own defenses (that we see) is plenty dramatic enough - but he decides being driven back past the Rockies and then reconquering America mile by mile is KEWL, so we get Yonkers.

If you also read the Zombie Survival Guide prior to reading World War Z, you get a much, much better idea of how the virus that animates zombies (Solanum) affects their physiology so it is much more believable that certain things that would affect humans would not do the same to zombies. Particularly where it describes what happens to the brain during infection.
Considering a permanent retirement from Elliquiy, but you can find me on Blue Moon (under the same username).

TheGlyphstone

#65
Quote from: Mathim on February 18, 2015, 09:18:06 PM
If you also read the Zombie Survival Guide prior to reading World War Z, you get a much, much better idea of how the virus that animates zombies (Solanum) affects their physiology so it is much more believable that certain things that would affect humans would not do the same to zombies. Particularly where it describes what happens to the brain during infection.

I've read it, and Solanum doesn't actually make it entirely believable, just gives more handwaved explanations. Solanum doesn't just reanimate corpses, it gives them magical superpowers of selective indestructibility. A normal moving corpse would be utterly crippled after weeks or months of movement, from the tiny microstrains and microscopic injuries that using our muscles to capacity puts on them. Humans can heal these tiny injuries, which is the fundamental of muscle-building exercise, but a zombie shouldn't be able to heal them. Just walking barefoot everywhere would eventually grind the soles of their feet down to the bone and make them unable to walk. The ZSG gives lip service to this, but ignores it in 'reality'. Zombies are too stupid to blink, so that same period should also accumulate dust and debris in the eyes that would leave them blind - except Solanum zombies are granted a magic sixth sense that can detect prey anyways, a fact the ZSG is pretty open on it being unsupported by science.  Solanum wipes its butt with the laws of thermodynamics, but it's also refreshingly honest about this - zombie cells magically require no energy to function indefinitely; producing oxygen in great quantities out of nowhere but needing neither food or water of any kind. There's a whole portion of the post-zombie book about finding frozen zombies and smashing them before they defrost again, but frozen human tissue will utterly destroy itself when the water - which has to still be there, since the virus does not consume it - expands and bursts the cell walls.

Also, the problems with Yonkers have nothing to do with the specific mechanics of Solanum anyways. When your plot requires that, for better or worse, one of the strongest and most experienced modern militaries in the world is digging foxholes for its tanks (who carry only anti-tank ammunition) and failing to bring enough bullets for their infantry (who are also in dug-in foxholes and trenches) against a millions-strong enemy with no weapons other than fists and teeth and no tactics other than a slow mass shamble forward, you're either making a clumsy political statement (entirely possible) or using Author Fiat to make your plot happen.


Don't get me wrong, the ZSG is probably one of the best-available flavors of 'zombie disease' in terms of plausibility. But it still requires a lot of handwaving to create a functional and remotely threatening post-mortem zombie, instead of just a lot of corpses.

(for reference, http://zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Zombies_%28Max_Brooks%29

Oniya

Foxholes for tanks?  That sounds like a M*A*S*H episode right there.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

TheGlyphstone

#67
Well, hull-down positions. I don't know what you call those when it's a tank, but it's a foxhole when you dig it for a human. The things you need to protect your tanks/people from the other team's incoming bullets. The things that zombies have none of.

Yonkers could have been won in an afternoon with a battalion of heavy tanks and a bazillion gallons of diesel fuel. Plow the tanks back and forth through the hordes, swapping out whenever the tracks start to get gummed up or the fuel tanks run low. It wouldn't kill most of what it hit, but a hundred cubic acres of immobilized zombies are a navigational hazard, not a threat to civilization. Or just a mobile battle in general, firing from vehicles. Or, as the viewpoint soldier mentions, PUTTING YOUR TROOPS ON TOP OF BUILDINGS INSTEAD OF IN TRENCHES.

Inkidu

Quote from: Mathim on February 18, 2015, 09:18:06 PM
If you also read the Zombie Survival Guide prior to reading World War Z, you get a much, much better idea of how the virus that animates zombies (Solanum) affects their physiology so it is much more believable that certain things that would affect humans would not do the same to zombies. Particularly where it describes what happens to the brain during infection.
Yeah, I read both, twice. It makes the brain mushy, and he gives a lot of lip service to that "black goo thing" that the zombie body has, but as I pointed out: Liquids actually intensify the effects of explosions.

Something explodes in water it will hurt you more than if you were a comparable distance on dry land. Not to mention that zombies could not walk on the bottom of the ocean and come out unharmed. Also, ice damage affects every liquid. The only way to stop ice damage on cells is to stop them from freezing (or freezing them absurdly quickly) which happens in none of it. Those two things get a hand-wave so I'm willing to let that slide I suppose, but it's pretty weak.

So bombs would still be a lot more effective than the books make them out to be. Now I agree fragmentation explosives are next to pointless because they're meant to propel shrapnel. However, the stuff dropped from planes usually doesn't concern itself with that. HE tank rounds would have been pretty useful (more than canister actually).

Also, Brooks apparently thinks we're still fielding the first-model M16 from 'Nam. Stuff that was fix during 'Nam, by the way. The M16 and AK-47 are both better than ever, and for zombie killing they now both take the standard NATO round because Russia is a good guy now.

Also, the 5.56 Nato is probably the better zombie killer. It's comparable to a .22 in weight and effectiveness.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love the books (remember I read them twice) they're a stealthy and subtle satire, but I just think he tends to fudge more than you'd expect to prove his point. *shrugs*
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

NotoriusBEN

Is it wrong that I find an upside to an apocalypse or horrible disaster being that a lot of stupid people will die in the process?

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: NotoriusBEN on February 18, 2015, 10:24:49 PM
Is it wrong that I find an upside to an apocalypse or horrible disaster being that a lot of stupid people will die in the process?

Sure, but a lot of smart people will die also. Things like apocalypses have a nasty tendency to be indiscriminate in who they kill off, and extremely smart people could in fact be more likely to die. Who's going to live longer in a zombie uprising, for example, Steven Hawking or Bubba Jones the gun-toting redneck?

Mathim

#71
Quote from: TheGlyphstone on February 18, 2015, 10:32:10 PM
Sure, but a lot of smart people will die also. Things like apocalypses have a nasty tendency to be indiscriminate in who they kill off, and extremely smart people could in fact be more likely to die. Who's going to live longer in a zombie uprising, for example, Steven Hawking or Bubba Jones the gun-toting redneck?

Could we not be troubled to pick a smart person who isn't completely immobilized by a tragic degenerative condition? I mean, if you were going to (I assume) make up Bubba Jones, you could contrast him with brilliant yet neurotic cowards like the fictional Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter. Smart as they are, they wouldn't stand a chance.
Considering a permanent retirement from Elliquiy, but you can find me on Blue Moon (under the same username).

TheGlyphstone

#72
I chose him specifically because he's an incredibly brilliant person and definite net contributor to humanity, compared to the fictional Bubba the Redneck (selected as a generic substitute for any number of real world low-IQ low-income stereotypical individuals) who is almost certainly not. But the 'stupid' person in this example, Bubba, has the much higher chance of surviving an apocalypse, intended to counter NotoriousBEN's implied point that an apocalypse would benefit humanity by killing off a lot of stupid people.

Though as much as I dislike them, I'd rate Sheldon and Cooper with pretty good odds of survival, if they can get their hands on firearms. Nerds and pop-culture geeks will be the people fastest on the uptake to see zombies for what they are, and their entire character concepts are basically being uber-nerds.


Wolven Soul

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on February 18, 2015, 11:23:03 PM


Though as much as I dislike them, I'd rate Sheldon and Cooper with pretty good odds of survival, if they can get their hands on firearms. Nerds and pop-culture geeks will be the people fastest on the uptake to see zombies for what they are, and their entire character concepts are basically being uber-nerds.



I don't know, they are pretty bad at paintball, so they must not be very good shots.
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TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Wolven Soul on February 19, 2015, 02:11:12 AM
I don't know, they are pretty bad at paintball, so they must not be very good shots.

Okay, there is that. Not that I care particularly much either way, they are two 'smart' people the world can definitely spare.