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[Neruz]

Well we've already determined that nuclear weapons aren't going to be as effective against non-living type zombies as they are against people. What i meant was be generous and assume a year or two to whip up a nuke with minimized fallout.

Even the misnamed 'clean nukes' aren't actually all that clean. Cleaner than throwing two lumps of plutonium together sure. Unless you're getting a 100% conversion rate, you're going to have fallout. And even in the best fusion weapons we have, the conversion rate is still fairly low.



Co-ordinated Fuel-air bombing runs would probably be nearly as effective, and far less hazardous.

[The Architect]

A single centralized bomb is just not that effective for the purpose of leveling a city. Should anyone be crazy enough to decide on that...

Let's take LA: carpet-bomb it with incendiaries, and the whole thing goes up. Once heat builds, steel and other conventional building materials have high rate of failure. They're chemically altered beyond repair, and the pressure will cause anything multistoried to crumble (crushing anyone inside); with the high heat of incendiary bombs and resultant fires even the streets and many so-called nonflammible materials will burn, killing everything within the affected area. I don't mean scorching all creatures, I mean leaving nothing but carbon.

It's true that resources are somewhat limited, but you wouldn't do this to dozens of cities. I don't really see why you would level even one city, but any dense city is best handled by traditional firebombing. Leveling a city wouldn't really do anything to help with an infection. All cities have suburbs, and large cities generally have suburbs that don't really ever end until they touch the next city or major town.

[Neruz]

Fuel-Air bombs would probably work better than incendiaries.

[Creaca]

Let's change the subject!


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

If it isn't powerful enough to take out all the buildings, it won't take out all the zombies. Heck, even if it was leveled, there would still probably be droves in sewers systems, subway systems, rivers, and the rubble left behind.

[QuakeIV]

I don't mean scorching all creatures, I mean leaving nothing but carbon.

I took that to mean that it pretty much wiped everything out, including the sewers.

[redacted123]

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[sonerohi]

Collect thousands of rats and give them nukes on a radio detonator.

[The Architect]

I don't mean scorching all creatures, I mean leaving nothing but carbon.

I took that to mean that it pretty much wiped everything out, including the sewers.

I didn't really cover sewers and subways. There isn't any way of doing that, period. That's why something like Gears of War makes so much sense in some ways. Everything above ground level, though, would be totally whiped out. All buildings would collapse, to repeat myself.

And anyone who thinks rubble will be difficult to clear needs to realize that if something is smashed by several thousand pounds of rubble isn't moving again. Pretty much only the very, very small percentage of evil that happens to be underground in very sheltered areas would survive.

Fuel-Air bombs would probably work better than incendiaries.

"Fuel-air bombs" are incendiaries, technically speaking. "Incendiaries" is commonly used as slang for incendiary rounds, but that's not the meaning of the word.

[Creaca]

I don't mean scorching all creatures, I mean leaving nothing but carbon.

I took that to mean that it pretty much wiped everything out, including the sewers.

You seem to be confusing Nukes with firebombs.

Edit: Speaking of firebombs, I've been doing some research into their effects. (For instance, what is the Area of Effect for a BLU-96 2000 pound bomb, but all the sources I find are annoyingly vague.

[Neruz]

"Fuel-air bombs" are incendiaries, technically speaking. "Incendiaries" is commonly used as slang for incendiary rounds, but that's not the meaning of the word.

True, but the military usually categorizes things a bit more than that, since broad categories are useless.

[The Architect]

It's called incendiary bombing, or more commonly firebombing, and it utilizes fuel combustion in urban environments.

The reason you might not find much on it is that it's a civilian-killing tactic, thus not something we employ in the modern era. It was reprisal for what was done to England, though I believe a very small amount may have been done during some of the Cold War Era campaigns. We certainly bombed a lot of cities, but we tended to focus purely on strategic production, transportation and communication targets.

It may be difficult to look up because "Fire Bombing" has been commonly used since then as a name for arson. I'll do a little research now, since there's interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II
It seems the figures may have been exaggerated by the media of the time, which estimated over 200,000 deaths in this one bombing. I guess old veterans and the History Channel aren't the best sources for some information.
Here's a much better example.
http://www.folds.net/Haney/firebombing.html
Another. I'd heard about the fire sucking people down the streets, but I didn't know that was in Japan.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0310-01.htm
A final source showing the entire firebombing campaign against Japan, in which raids targetting mainly industrial centers had huge collateral damage and killed hundreds of thousands even in areas where civilians had fled.

Turns out this isn't hard to research at all. Given modern precision-bombing technology and the fact that zombies don't intelligently hide or flee, I would expect we could blanket an entire city and not just a dozen blocks of industrial production. The resultant fires would be entirely inescapable, and would probably cause polution similar to a small volcanic eruption. Possibly not, as a single large volcano can cause more pollution than the entire history of the automobile industry.

[RAM]

One of the biggest problems with zombie outbreaks is that it only happens in movies, so some things are out. For example, one of the first things people would do once some defensie lines were drawn up would be to capture some zombies for study, looking for cures, vulnerabilities, and, eventually, medical and military applications. Unfortunately, any such attempt will invariably result in zombies escaping and getting behind your lines...

Fire should be pretty effective against undead zombies once they have had some time to dry out. And full scale incendiary bombing would be effective at reducing their numbers. Fire really isn't a good idea for disorganised survivors, but if a military group needs to stop several million zombies from reaching the next city then it would have to be an option, and should avoid the threat of potential infectious shrapnel being spread across the landscape.

Do consider that a major forest fire in the midst of a zombie outbreak could present its own problems...

[Neruz]

One of the biggest problems with zombie outbreaks is that it only happens in movies, so some things are out. For example, one of the first things people would do once some defensie lines were drawn up would be to capture some zombies for study, looking for cures, vulnerabilities, and, eventually, medical and military applications. Unfortunately, any such attempt will invariably result in zombies escaping and getting behind your lines...

In movies yep. In real life, probably not.

[The Architect]

I have to agree with Neruz here. That sort of thing is forced for the sake of moving along movie plots, but people aren't generally that incompetent. It's just a plot device.

[Neruz]

Scientists are deliberately both insane and incompetant in movies because it's more dramatic that way, and it lets Hollywood preach the evils of Science, which they love doing at every available opportunity.

In real life, Scientists are incredibly cautious people who, on the record, will not speculate on the colour of their socks without first looking down.

Off the record however, they'll happily spin wild tales about how they are in fact wearing fish.