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[Creaca]

We (Americans) have done it before. With. One. Fucking. Bomb. Each. TIME.

Not to mention that, thanks to us, Bikini Island no longer exists. Thanks to us and the Hydrogen Bomb.

I'm pretty sure that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are both still around.

Of course, if you pour enough nukes into any problem, it'll go away. Certainly with proper application of modern nuclear weapons you could completely destroy a city, you'd also irradiate half the planet, so it's not exactly the ideal solution.

Not to mention Rotters and Runners would be immune to the Radiation, 3rd Degree burns, and the Lions Share of the Debris that hit them. That was what caused the serious causalties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,More or less any zombie that escaped being vaporized or being flung in a way that caused it's head to be smashed open.

TABLE A: Estimates of Casualties
__________________Hiroshima   Nagasaki
Pre-raid population   255,000   195,000
Dead____________   66,000   39,000
Injured__________   69,000   25,000

Source: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml

Out of 255,000 people in Hiroshima, 66,000 died. That's roughly 4 people alive for every 1 killed. If we're talking about Zombies here, you can likely cut that  66,000 by a forth. And that's being generous.

[Neruz]

The vast majority of the damage a nuclear bomb causes is in the overpressure shockwave and the lingering radiation. The heat and actual blast are pretty nasty, but they're fairly localised. That's why an air burst is more destructive than a ground burst; shockwave hits a bigger area.

It would indeed be far less effective against most types of Zombies, although still incredibly destructive, you'd probably do just as much damage to yourself as you did to the Zombies though.


Take out say New York with nukes for example, and congrats, the entirity of North America is now pretty much uninhabitable. And you probably got a fair chunk of south america, russia and europe as well, depending on prevailing winds.

[Strife26]

Nukes have gotten a lot bigger, just as a comment.

[RedWarrior0]

Yes, they obviously did not read that we blew a whole fucking island out of existence. That's called "Hydrogen Bombs", boys, and they will do much, much more than the wimpy sticks of dynamite we (Americans) threw at Japan.

Fat Man on Hiroshima: 20-22 kT
Little Boy on Nagasaki: 12-15 kT
B83 (Most powerful in US service, maximum is listed): 1200 kT
W76 (Warhead of a Trident missile): 100 kT

If you wanted stats on nukes. Ideally, we (America) will get effective antimatter weapons technology by the time of a zombie outbreak. I don't feel like doing the math on what the yield of one of those would be.

[sonerohi]

They are supposedly, pound for pound, 100 or so times more explosive than hydrogen bombs.

[Creaca]

The problem isn't that if a nuke can take out a zombie infested city. The problem is that a nuke powerful enough to take out a zombie infested city will also turn the surrounding countryside into fallout covered wasteland. Uniformly killing off all survivors, and leaving plenty of zombies left.

[Strife26]

Honestly, if one doesn't care about collateral, incendiary is probably the way to go. Possibly followed up by cluster bombing once all the cover is gone.

[Creaca]

The problem with bombing is that you'd need to expend the manpower to keep airbases defended and supplied. Even if you managed to keep the throngs of zombies, and possibly infected survivors seeking shelter out, you'd still have to deal with keeping the base supplied and running. With most production centers for military hardware either shutdown or outright razed or looted you'd be limited to the supplies you'd have on base. Including but not limited to Fuel, Skilled Personal (Such as the guys who perform regular maintenance on the aircraft and trained pilots.), replacement parts, food, bombs, and ammunition. For some of these it'd be feasible to raid other local places for supplies, but that requires even more manpower, and serious risk to personnel.

You'd also need to retake a local powerplant and get that running, unless the base was packing some seriously heavy backup generators. In addition the power plant would also need to have whatever it's burning resupplied too.

[Strife26]

Last time I checked, level a few modern cities with modern nukes (which don't focus on radiation) wouldn't do that much damage to the world ecology.

[Neruz]

Congratulations, you are ignorant.

[Strife26]

Congratulations, you are ignorant.

I'd appreciate if you didn't start a long running thread that I'm quite proud of starting down a slippery and negative slope.

However, I'd direct you to http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-2003-2007.pdf. Limited use of nuclear weaponry would have a large effect on ecology, but would be recoverable. Especially when you consider that a fair chunk of the world's population is going to be dead via zombification if we're resorting to nukes. It's not an optimal solution, true, but it would work to remove a few cities off of the map (of course, there's not much point, when one can just leave a zombified city alone, as opposed to blowing it up)

[Neruz]

No Strife, we're talking about flattening a city (presumably in America) that has been infected to contain the outbreak.

All the other cities are still fine. It's just this one, lets say Los Angeles, because it's always Los Angeles.


Want to tell me what effect you think nuking Los Angeles will have on the rest of the US of A? And lets be generous and say they develop a truly modern nuke instead of using one of the old ones stockpiled from the 80's.

[Strife26]

A modern nuke expressly designed for use against zombies (no one's built a new configuration for nukes in a couple of decades)?

Either a neutron or clean nuke would do pretty well, I do believe. It'd depend on the sort of zed, but if they're killable by radiation, neutron the place. Radiation mostly contained in the area, thanks to the inability of neutron radiation to get much beyond the blast radius.

Otherwise, one could restart the clean nuke programs and make a overwhelmingly fusion based bomb. Use just like a really big conventional.


You get some dust problems with the clean bomb plan, but I doubt that it'd be much worse than what one sees in a major volcano or the bombings of yesteryear.

[The Architect]

Nukes are not a viable weapon, they're a scare tactic. Let's stop bullshitting each other back and forth as if we're all nuclear physicists and historians, shall we?*

Most of the posts are the typical forum-esque bullshit from people who don't know what they are talking about. I appreciate the people who actually took the time to do some research and share it with us, especially about the only two atomic bombs ever used in war.

Incendiaries are more effective and have less disastrous side-effects. Firebombing of single cities in World War Two killed more in one night on some occasions than both of the atomic bombs put together. And that's in depopulated German cities well behind the frontlines! Firebombing literally creates intake winds that suck human beings down the streets to a toasty near-instant death. Rest assured that if a modern military wanted to whipe a city out, it would be both more viable and effective to use high explosives and incendiaries than an atomic bomb.

And of course there's just leaving it well enough alone, so that the city remains intact and can be repopulated and used after the infection has run its course (should that be a viable option).

Let's not have a flamewar over this. I exercise my right as an American citizen to say that RedWarrior0 does not represent a significant portion of the American population. Neruz, do us all a favor, clean up the language and be nice.

Edit: Strife, this isn't directed at you or any of the others who have been moderately mature or better about this.

[Strife26]

Let's change the subject!


Why would it ever be necessary to completely level an infected city?