Zombie Cliche Lookout: There’s Never Just One
Zombies are very rarely solitary creatures. It’s not as if they’re smart enough to hunt in packs, or use teamwork to overcome challenges. It’s just that they have a tendency to clump together. They are, after all, fundamentally people, except with a lot of the finer points stripped away. Survivors pick up on this quickly, or at least those who don’t get eaten pick it up quickly; you have to learn fast in the zombie apocalypse. It doesn’t take long before people see one zombie, and start looking for more.
Forgetting this valuable survival lesson is a pretty big trope. After a dramatic victory over a zombie or two, the survivors celebrate instead of verifying their security. The result? At least one person is bitten by the zombie no one noticed.
About this Episode:
I’m really having fun with these characters. We just don’t know whether they’re trustworthy, or just playing Stewart to get back to his friends and supplies. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Other News:
A happy belated fathers day to my fellow dads out there. I hope you had a good one. Me? I did yard work. Living the dream.
Discussion Question: Fighting Zombie with Explosions
In our last episode, someone suggested hand grenades as an anti-zombie weapon, and that made me wonder: just how effective would explosives be against zombies. Based on some of the responses we got, I’ve learned that explosions kill by either shrapnel or the concussive force of the explosion. That being established (although feel free to counter if you know more than I do, which is probably most of you), would that be enough? Would it be worthwhile, or just wasteful? How could you maximize the impact of the explosion to take out the most zeds?
One Typo Alert today: Zombie Cliche Lookout, first paragraph, second sentence: their–>they’re
You confused the possessive with the contraction! 😀
Fixed. God I hate when I do that.
as for the Discussion Question, a few come to mind:
1. Atomic bomb, or H-bomb: If there’s a lack of survivors and too many zombies a modernized version of this kind of long-range weapon could easily be used to hit zombies harder than any hand-held weapon could and take out large areas of zombie infested land.
The downside is the obvious one, the radioactivity will make the land around the explosion unusable, and you can never be sure if the radioactivity will actually kill any zombies that aren’t close enough to the blast to be killed by the pressure waves.
2. Landmines: A great military warfare weapon, anti-personnel mines will probably be able to take out large numbers of zombies and all they have to do is step on one.
The downside to these is that once the zombies are gone someone will have to go dig up all of those landmines again. It would also have limited use since zombies would be mostly using the same paths people would take. They’re also not really suitable for urban areas where population density means it’s nearly impossible to plant landmines.
Like I say below, I question the effectiveness of things like landmines. Yes, I would expect it to cripple a zombie, but if your goal is actually making them truly dead, you need to take out the head. You could, if you knew what you were doing, rig landmines up as head height IEDs, which would work wonders, but otherwise you’d probably end up with a lot of crawlers. (Which admittedly would be easier to handle, so not a total waste.)
That’s my thinking as well. aren’t there landmines that spring up, and explode at chest or head height?
There are definitely huge drawbacks to both.
As far as landmines go, aren’t they primarily designed to injure? Amputating feet and legs and the like, so that the invading force has to care for wounded soldiers?
Well, the wiki article lists the m as “primarily designed to destroy or disable” so it would be possible to have a landmine powerful enough to destroy a human-sized walking zombie corpse very easily. If your zombies only had an intact head and nothing else to maneuver with, they’d be pretty ineffective zombies, right? 😀
They certainly would. Glorified trip hazards.
I still think it’s all an elaborate ploy of these two to get to Stewarts friends. This third person in the bushes might have released a Z… 🙂
I do think it seems awfully staged, but perhaps it is the lack of expression on Lego faces that make the dialogue seem fake…
Yes indeed; lack of expression is one of the biggest challenges.
Hah! They keep the zombie around for just such a situation (which isn’t a bad idea).
If I were using hand grenades to kill zombies I would only throw them on the ground as a last resort. While blowing off legs and filling the lower part of the body with shrapnel is more than enough to kill a living person, we want to take out the head of a zombie. Thus, while I might throw one or two to blow off legs and slow the zombies down in an emergency, I’d rather rig tripwires to grenades at head height as defensive measures. That would be more effective at actually killing them.
Ditto for IED type measures, pipe bombs, etc. If I can come up with a way to set it up at head height, I’ll do that instead of just tossing it at their feet.
You could still use such explosives as offensive measures I suppose, you just need something off the ground to toss it on. Perhaps running past some stairs you could set a pipe bomb up a few steps, toss it on a bed or something, anything to get it closer to the head.
Now you’re thinking.
One of the interesting things about zombies is that you could flag and clearly label the explosives to warn people away, and the zeds would be none the wiser.
Exactly. You’ve no need to conceal the explosives unless you are in conflict with other living humans and want to kill them or keep them from stealing your boom boom.
Pretty much, yeah.
That seems like a pretty good idea to me, Bob.
One thing that I’ve been thinking about for a while is something all active prepared individuals run into at least once. We all have people we know that say ”Well, my friend/cousin/neighbor is one of those survivalist types, so I’m perfectly safe in the event of any disasters.” I just wanted to hear the BOTD community’s own understanding on the eventual problems that this could cause, and how it could be dealt with effectively.
Bo hasn’t been around much, but I know he fielded that question before.
I think this is one of the major reason a lot of preppers are so secretive. People coming by and looking for a handout is one thing, but hostile people who know you have supplies would be extremely dangerous.
Was it Bo that brought up the idea of creating supply packs as charitable offerings for others? If I was in my ideal survival location (emergency bunker, farmland, standpipe, high walls) and people came by looking for help, I would give them one of these supply packs and advise them to head to the nearest town in search of further aid. Hopefully, they wouldn’t come back for any more.
I think it was Bo. I thought that was a really cool idea too.
A grenade to me would only be useful when it is in a large clump of zombies. Such as you are trapped on a billboard or water tower and they start to horde beneath you. You have, say, a high explosive grenade. Pull the pin and drop it into the heaviest clumping. Also, Other than in these desperate instances, explosions attract people who want to see what happened, and it would be the same for zombies. *BOOM* “Gruh?” “Ohcrapohcrapohcrap” would be the general chain of events.
Hah, I also wonder if the explosion might not weaken the structure you’re on? It’d be a hell of a shame is the grenade sheared off a load-bearing column.
I’m not sure if a grenade is very helpful. After it blows up, the noise with ring out for miles, attracting any dead or alive attention. Second, zombies only die from a hit to the brain, so if you miss to throw it near the undead horde, there’s a very small chance that the shrapnel with actually hit accurately on the zombies’ brains.
Yes indeed. You might just end up with a handful of crawling zombies.
While they only die from brain destruction limbless zeds are much easier to handle.
Indeed, although I would argue that legless zombies might be more dangerous because they’re less likely to be noticed in tall grass and whatnot.
True, but it’s not really worth the risk of having every zombie near you overpower you.
Explosives are an entire science on to themselves. How they are used is much more important. This goes for the grenade on the ground or held and then thrown so it airbursts and for all other types.
Take dynamite. Single sticks thrown around will kill zeds. But a half stick backed by a small dirt mound and fronted by metal junk so it makes an improvised claymore type mine is much more effective against zeds and raiders.
Lastly noise will be a factor but if your down to using explosives then you have bigger problems then the noise attractìng more attention to you.
Very good points, sir.
“Survivors…at least those who don’t get eaten…”
“Survivors,” by definition, are those who don’t get eaten. 😛
/EnglishProf
On a relevant note, I could totally see survivors making IEDs to take out zombies in territory they’re trying to secure…naturally, there would be loads of living people caught as collateral damage. I suppose, however, that the devices wouldn’t have to be camouflaged very well. They could even be painted bright colors and the zombies wouldn’t think to avoid them. Of course, that wouldn’t stop at least some people from thinking like people (instead of zombies) and hiding them really well.
I imagine that many zombie movies and shows get it wrong, at least in their long-term visions. Our earliest modern ancestors would establish themselves in an area that was relatively safe and resource rich and begin clearing out dangerous animals from the perimeter of their territory. They would regularly patrol that territory for threats. This was true of the first villages as well as temporary settlements of hunter-gatherers. Plus, they did this with no manufactured goods, canned food, or firearms, and against threats that were much more dangerous (a saber toothed cat or a bear that thinks and acts purposefully should be a much greater threat than wandering zombies, or at least not less so).
I can only imagine that after a few years, the survivors of a zombie apocalypse will have fallen into a similar, successful pattern of existence. It seems to me that it is always the desire to rely on civilization’s leftovers (food, ammo, fuels, etc) that prompt zombie story protagonists to undertake risky missions and engage in patterns of settlement (or migration) that get most of them killed. One can understand that in the early days, but after those who have grown soft on civilization (relying on security, comfort, and “stuff” while possessing a complete lack of even basic survival skills) have either been killed off or have learned, secure villages would once again appear and new rites for the dead and dying would develop to ensure zombies popping up inside the community territory were rare.