World War Z (the film)

[SDF]

And its terrible (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HcwTxRuq-uk)

The awful CG, the family focused characters, the same regard that iRobot had for the book. It is all there.

[Tebryn]

The books Max Brooks wrote weren't very good either so I'm really not surprised.

[Tergon]

Max Brooks, in the book, was very specific on two points. One: that this was a serious subversion of America Saves The Day, because the US was caught hilariously unprepared for the zombie uprising. Two: that zombies are slow, stupid, and were only a threat because they took everyone by surprise after the global media hushed up the problem until it was too big to stop. Those are the primary themes of World War Z: a truly global threat only allowed to happen because of humanity's own idiocy against a threat that should have been possible to stop.

This movie very specifically says that the zombies are abruptly appearing worldwide for no obvious reason; it is very clearly about the American action hero and his own family rather than the entire world; and the single most awful crime of all, these are fast, superpowered zombies.

In short, this movie has absolutely no resemblance to the book of World War Z aside from the title and the fact that it includes zombies. And everything that made the book great (in my opinion), that being the survivors from around the world sharing this story, is completely gone.

Dear movie-makers, please go directly to hell and take this monstrosity with you.

[t209]

One more thing I hate is that most of the world just like explosion and action, including my dad and my friends from Burma. I think
the simple jack fans in Tropic Thunder is no longer a joke anymore. I mean I used to like Quest for Camelot, and even Scrappy Doo before I discovered that it sucks.

[Tiki Snakes]

Two: that zombies are slow, stupid, and were only a threat because they took everyone by surprise after the global media hushed up the problem until it was too big to stop.

Well, that and the bit where they were immune to tank shells, but not otaku samurai.

[Tergon]

Actually that was pretty well justified by Brooks. A tank shell explodes and can disembowel you, burn you, suck the air out of your lungs, burst your veins with the pressure and break your legs with the damage, to say nothing of knocking you unconscious or putting you into severe shock - but none of that will stop a zombie. Nothing short of severing the spine will immobilize one, and nothing short of cranial trauma will kill one, and short of a direct hit neither of those are guaranteed from an exploding shell.

The blind gardener was bull****, I'll grant you that, but I sort of took that with a grain of salt. Max Brooks wrote an entire world full of real characters suffering through the Apocalypse and kept them all beautifully grounded in the real world. And then he said, "Now, I want a blind samurai to kill some zombies." Can you really find it in your heart to deny him that? I figure he's allowed one freebie. And let's be honest, it was a fun freebie.

[Dienekes]

Actually that was pretty well justified by Brooks. A tank shell explodes and can disembowel you, burn you, suck the air out of your lungs, burst your veins with the pressure and break your legs with the damage, to say nothing of knocking you unconscious or putting you into severe shock - but none of that will stop a zombie. Nothing short of severing the spine will immobilize one, and nothing short of cranial trauma will kill one, and short of a direct hit neither of those are guaranteed from an exploding shell.

The blind gardener was bull****e, I'll grant you that, but I sort of took that with a grain of salt. Max Brooks wrote an entire world full of real characters suffering through the Apocalypse and kept them all beautifully grounded in the real world. And then he said, "Now, I want a blind samurai to kill some zombies." Can you really find it in your heart to deny him that I figure he's allowed one freebie. And let's be honest, it was a fun freebie.

You see this is the part where Brooks loses me. A tank shell will break the spine/head cavity. And even if it does not disembowling, blasting back, breaking the legs will most definitely slow them down quite dramatically where they can be more easily picked off.

Then there's the actual dropping of bombs to do more damage.

Then there's the bit where he wants to bring gun technology back decades for stupid, stupid reasons.

This is fine in a story, I have a very suspend-able disbelief, but then he goes on saying that this is all based off of research and is very accurate.

[Tebryn]

This is fine in a story, I have a very suspend-able disbelief, but then he goes on saying that this is all based off of research and is very accurate.

And this is the part where he loses me, other than the fact I don't find him a very -good- writer to begin with. His research is abysmal if he even did any to begin with. It takes setting up a scenario that just wouldn't happen to make these zombies a threat to begin with as well which bugs me. If you're going for a "realistic" world and then give the CDC the idiot ball and hand wave "The MEDIA" underplayed it like it actually means a thing...ya.

[Tergon]

The only time we really see the tanks in action is The Battle Of Yonkers. And there it's pretty well explained by the narrator (Todd the ex-marine, I think): They're firing a dozen tank shells into a swarming mass of literally tens of thousands of zombies. He specifically says that where the shells hit you saw zombies blasted to shreds - I think he compares it to a woodchipper at one point - but then he notes that pretty soon the tanks were out of ammunition and there were another ten thousand zombies right behind the decimated first ranks, and another hundred thousand behind them.
When the book says that tanks "did nothing" it means that they did not effect the overall battle in any meaningful way. Part of that is the lack of ammunition, and part of it is that tanks firing shells are not designed to combat soft targets, particularly en masse. The shells devestated those zombies they actually hit; it's just that the "splash damage" you expect from an explosion has a very, very reduced effect on zombies, because there's nothing there that can work on them.

As for the bombs, again, the narrator notes that the bombs did really well, and expresses utter bewilderment and frustration that there was not another bombing run after the first. So that's lampshaded. And the guns, it was noted (accurately) that the vast, vast majority of shots fired in war do not score a kill, and when you're crippled for resources to the point where bullets are very hard to come by, you need to make every shot count. A single-shot rifle that can be fired once every few seconds achieves that.

I'm not saying all of Brooks' logic plays out 100%, but he does at least go for a reasonable justification as to why it might work, given the circumstances he describes.

[erikun]

Brad Pitt versus an army of zombies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3hYKPt0uJQ) is about all I needed to know about the movie. No thanks, I'll pass.


You see this is the part where Brooks loses me. A tank shell will break the spine/head cavity. And even if it does not disembowling, blasting back, breaking the legs will most definitely slow them down quite dramatically where they can be more easily picked off.
I believe the point wasn't that a tank shell was useless against a zombie; it's that a tank shell isn't that useful getting rid of a group of zombies. Yes, you're smash the head or backbone of a few of them, but the vast majority will still be getting back up and/or crawling forward.

A large point towards the end of the book was that a calm nerves and a simple flare-bullet was all it took to eliminate a zombie. The problem was that in the beginning the governments were throwing out the most expensive equipment to do the job, and thus ended up overrun because they couldn't produce and utilize the weapons fast enough.

That, and used silliness of street-level ground troops against a mob. The book did have a number of faults.

[Erik von Nein]

While getting tied up in the particulars of a specific battle is kinda missing the point (Brooks is a terrible author), the Battle of Yonkers is mind-boggling stupid even with the explanation that the commanders apparently were brain dead (lawlz).

[Dienekes]

Ahh yes, the battle of Yonkers, the bit of stupidity where a main general could not come up with adequate supplies and was overrun by slow moving targets with 0 range capabilities. It was one of the worst tactical scenes I've read since the main characters of the Sword of Truth decided to catch a larger army by surprise by making themselves glow in the dark, while naked, in the winter. I could have come up with a better battle plan. And his reason for this bit of lunacy? Because the general was a hold over from the Cold War. Do you know what our tactics were during the Cold War? Drop mountains upon mountains of bombs. Incendiary the area. Rain Hell down upon them. And then it will take a 12 year old to figure out to also place some form of barricade around the area (doesn't even have to be a complex one as you're literally facing mindless idiots).

And yes, again, a lot of shots do not secure a kill. But then, a vast majority of shots in a war are not performed against slow moving, fleshy targets who walk straight at you without cover. And even if they were, again, shooting the legs or messing with the body will slow them down and negate them as a serious threat.

The guy picks up some information and ignores what he doesn't like to get the scenario he wants and declares that it's off of real life research.

[Erik von Nein]

It's pretty funny because they could have just said "screw shooting them" and then run them over like the world's biggest mutli game of GTA.

Actually, that would have been hilarious.

[Tergon]

Well that's the thing, isn't it? People seem to dislike the book (not just here, but others I've discussed it with) because they think Max Brooks wrote about a long string of stupid coincidence to let the zombie apocalypse happen, and then tried to claim it was plausible. But it's actually the exact opposite to that. The guy basically came up with his zombie virus, Solanum, and said "These are the rules about my zombies." And then he had to think up a way to cause the zombie Apocalypse while staying within those rules.

It took him around seven seconds to realise that no plausible scenario where this was going to happen. So, he made it happen with a gigantic global screwup where it spread in the third world where nobody heard about it, then was covered up by governments who wanted to keep their dirty secret, then spread through other channels while everyone either didn't believe it or intentionally kept the secret. Follow that up with stupid people who panicked when they found out zombies were real, and the massive chaos that caused allowed the zombie problem to grow even larger because everyone was running and nobody was stopping to think for five seconds. And at the end, when the military stepped in, they failed because of armchair generals using shock and awe tactics and vastly underestimating just how hard it is to kill a zombie. With zero morale, all usable resources for the short-term completely exhausted, and the zombie uprising a much bigger problem than anyone knew because nations weren't sharing information... that's how the apocalypse happened.

The point is, this is lampshaded left and right by every character with two living brain cells to rub together. If the people, governments and military forces of the world had not done the stupidest possible thing, the zombie apocalypse would have been stopped before it began.
Max Brooks isn't telling a story about the world led by all us clever people who sit back and say, "Well I'd have never let that happen." He's telling the story of a world where the stupid decisions did get made during the zombie apocalypse. If you don't like that, fine, but that doesn't make him a bad storyteller; it just means you missed the point of what he was doing.

[Tiki Snakes]

The guy picks up some information and ignores what he doesn't like to get the scenario he wants and declares that it's off of real life research.

Yes, pretty much this. Hence Tanks not decimating unarmed walking infantry, super-daschund and civil war era rifle line tactics being the best way to do anything other than make yourself look silly.
And the Gardener. And yes, I do deny him that, he used up his freebee on his non-magical zombies happily walking through the ocean and getting more than a few feet before the ecosystem dismantled them entirely.

[Erik von Nein]

The point's pretty obvious (weird satire) it just requires stupid levels of incompetence and coincidence for it to happen.

Plus the vignettes weren't particularly interesting. Some were kind of amusing, but others not so much.

[Dienekes]

Well that's the thing, isn't it? People seem to dislike the book (not just here, but others I've discussed it with) because they think Max Brooks wrote about a long string of stupid coincidence to let the zombie apocalypse happen, and then tried to claim it was plausible. But it's actually the exact opposite to that. The guy basically came up with his zombie virus, Solanum, and said "These are the rules about my zombies." And then he had to think up a way to cause the zombie Apocalypse while staying within those rules.

This would be fine if that's what he actually said. Again, I point to my high level of suspension of disbelief, you want to show our military losing to zombies? That's fine, I understand it's necessary for a zombie apocalypse to take place. But he does not say this, he says that his facts and figures are what would happen and it's all based off of real in-depth research into our military and weapons when it is based on nothing of the sort.

[Tebryn]

The point is, this is lampshaded left and right by every character with two living brain cells to rub together. If the people, governments and military forces of the world had not done the stupidest possible thing, the zombie apocalypse would have been stopped before it began.


That doesn't excuse it of being badly written, badly researched or poorly implemented in the cases it's lampshaded. Nor does it validate any of the times the idiot ball is thrown around either.

[Parra]

Zombie Apocalypse Movie? yes please. Who cares that's its a silly scenario, the whole notion of a Zombie Apocalypse is pretty silly in the first place. This looks like a good bit of fun with plenty of violent overkill and collateral damage.

Looks good to me.

[Dumbledore lives]

Damn. I think one of the worst things is there was an amazing script made. In 2008 it was said that the script was, and I quote, "... a genre-defining piece of work that could well see us all arguing about whether or not a zombie movie qualifies as 'Best Picture' material." That sounds like exactly what I would have wanted for an adaptation of the book, which I personally enjoyed though I understand the detractors point of view.

Instead we get this Holiwoodized to the extreme thing I'm not allowed to say on this forum. Honestly I might watch it, but I won't pay for it, and I will hate it for ruining the chance of the original getting made, especially if it does well financially and given the lead actor and budget it probably will.

[Scowling Dragon]

That doesn't excuse it of being badly written, badly researched or poorly implemented in the cases it's lampshaded. Nor does it validate any of the times the idiot ball is thrown around either.

Pretty much.

If you have to make everybody an idiot to make your satire work (And Im a person who believes that common man ISN'T stupid. Slightly paranoid? Tend to take things too simply? Yes. But not stupid) then you fail.

The book is...kinda racist in my opinion. Not too get too deeply into that, but It felt like he simplified countries to the barest minimum (Pretty much EVERY country) in order to tell his story.

He makes his story so difficult to pull off he ignores every other fact.

How can we loose to zombies if we have tanks? Just get 20 of those suckers and just run over everybody.

edit:

Also the zombies would have killed themselves in hours.

Think about the HUNDREDS of daily things that you do that if they wen't wrong, you would seriously damage yourself.

As a Zombie, you lack those instintcs:

A slightly bumpy road, sidewalk, sharp edges, would reduce you to crumbled mush.

Double edit all the way:

The whole thing reminds me of this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLlUgilKqms)

[Killer Angel]

The book isn't so bad.
Brooks explained why many kind of ammo didn't work well against zombies, both for the collateral damage, both for things like "who cares if you suck out the air?". Some explanation works, some others, much less.
It's not realistic? again, who cares? we're talking 'bout zombies, it's not that a scenario with zombies with supernatural abilities (ala L4D) is less stupid.
in WWZ, zombies are impervious to explosions and so on, this is the setting.

'bout yonkers. It's stupid? yes. It is somehow justified? sort of. Soldiers were wearing senseless equipment for the presence of the TV, it was a sort of spot. See, we all know it was totally dumb, the whole trenches thing, the stationary tanks, yadda yadda.
You know what? it happens. Real military history, even the recent one, is literally full of battles losed by dumb decisions, made because you overestimate yourself, and undervalue your enemy. To be absolutely sure of your victory, usually leads to disaster, and (just to cite a famous example) you don't need to be a genius to guess that charging frontally a fortified position filled with cannons, with a cavalry light brigade, isn't probally the best option available.

So, I can buy one Yonker. I'm less incline to buy that a single battle losed, throws into chaos your entire army and you're not able to do anything in your whole country except fleeing.

[Scowling Dragon]

Also: Bullets have kinetic energy. Even ONE bullet is likely to knock even a very well balanced person on their butt.

What about zombies that can barely even stand?

Brooks seriously undervalues damage done to zombies outside of the head.

Hit the spine and then just collapse. Hit the legs and they collapse.

Hit the body and they just fall down and collapse.

[Erik von Nein]

I don't think he could have left the collapse of civilization and everyone's death vague or an unknown like in Zombieland (or even L4D) with the scope of his story, but his description of it is bonkers and is so wacky that it just doesn't satirize military or government incompetence very well.

But then it could be forgiven if the rest of the book was half-way decent.

I kinda hope the movie is so ridiculous that it ends up in Red Dawn land, only without so much nationalism and more bone-headed action. Or go full-insanity and make it like Starship Troopers. Heh.

[The Succubus]

I confess I've never read World War Z but Max Brook's Zombie Survival Guide did show a lot of careful thought and research throughout.

[Giggling Ghast]

I always thought World War Z was an unfilmable concept. If it's bad, I won't be surprised.

[Killer Angel]

Also the zombies would have killed themselves in hours.
Think about the HUNDREDS of daily things that you do that if they wen't wrong, you would seriously damage yourself.
As a Zombie, you lack those instintcs:
A slightly bumpy road, sidewalk, sharp edges, would reduce you to crumbled mush.


Also: Bullets have kinetic energy. Even ONE bullet is likely to knock even a very well balanced person on their butt.
What about zombies that can barely even stand?
Brooks seriously undervalues damage done to zombies outside of the head.
Hit the spine and then just collapse. Hit the legs and they collapse.
Hit the body and they just fall down and collapse.

True, but seriously, this can be said for basically all the films with the shambler zombie type. And also for a certain amount of the other zombie movies.
When you shoot with an heavy machine gun the crowd of zombies, you obtain nothing.



The awful CG, the family focused characters,

It hurts, doesn't it? :smallwink:

[Scowling Dragon]

True, but seriously, this can be said for basically all the films with the shambler zombie type.

Yeah, but at least their ADMITTING to being goofy or at least fantastical.

WWZ does the sin of taking itself too seriously and insisting that its really factual.

But whatever. The guy tried and failed. Nothing horrible. Except for the stereotyping.

[Jimorian]

Damn. I think one of the worst things is there was an amazing script made. In 2008 it was said that the script was, and I quote, "... a genre-defining piece of work that could well see us all arguing about whether or not a zombie movie qualifies as 'Best Picture' material." That sounds like exactly what I would have wanted for an adaptation of the book, which I personally enjoyed though I understand the detractors point of view.

Instead we get this Holiwoodized to the extreme thing I'm not allowed to say on this forum. Honestly I might watch it, but I won't pay for it, and I will hate it for ruining the chance of the original getting made, especially if it does well financially and given the lead actor and budget it probably will.

I wonder if that was the J. Michael Straczynski script, because I know he was one of the early ones taking a shot at it. Of course, there were probably at least a half-dozen iteration after his. I always envisioned something like Band of Brothers for this, but that's too much to hope for. It might still work as a popcorn flick on its own terms, I'll have to see more to get a better feeling, though.

[Giggling Ghast]

I think it's generally acknowledged that non-superhuman zombies aren't going to stand much of a chance against modern artillery, which is why most zombie media takes the perspective of average schlubs trying to survive amidst the horror.

But still, whether or not tanks can simply roll over zombies and machine guns can shred undead flesh, zombie apocalypses are never presented as straight-up battles. The undead are too busy smashing through front doors and nibbling on survivors in shopping malls. While you may be untouchable in an armoured vehicle, when 99 per cent of the population has been converted to the shambling undead, does it really matter?

[Scowling Dragon]

It doesn't. But thats why it doesn't happen.

We already have a version of the rage zombie virus:

Rabies.

The world continues to turn.

[Giggling Ghast]

Rabies doesn't hold up too well in a comparison to the rage virus from 28 Days Later, which converted its victims into berserkers within seconds of infection. Also, while rabies may cause its victims to lash out in delirium, they aren't automatically violent.

[SDF]

Also: Bullets have kinetic energy. Even ONE bullet is likely to knock even a very well balanced person on their butt.

Nah, bullet energy transfer doesnt work that way. It may cause hydrostatic shock, but there isnt the force to knock someone down even with large caliber rounds. The FBI has a report on it, and there is a Mythbusters episode on the subject.

[Aotrs Commander]

For that matter, tanks don't shoot their main guns at people. Even an HE round is generally inferior to using the coax or pintle MG. I suppose you might get more milage out of an HE round on something that doesn't try to take cover, but it's still not very optimal.

(Heck, tanks don't even see very well to shoot infantry. The vision from a buttoned-up tank has been akin to looking at the world through a toilet roll tube. On the other hand, aside from the genuine danger of causing a tank to shed it's tracks on their borken bodies, there's not much a zombie can do to an MBT. Real world tanks aren't only slightly more durable than a civilian car like most popular-culture depictions of the show. On a heavily armoured modern MBT like a Leopard or Challenger, even a lot of RPGs aren't very effective even from the rear, and the hatches are designed to be almost impossible to open from the outside; basically, the only way you can get in is by using a weapon that can penetrate the armour, so you could probably sit pretty safely inside one while the zombies banged around helplessly outside as soon as you'd thrown your tracks from mowing them down...!)

[Dienekes]

The book isn't so bad.
Brooks explained why many kind of ammo didn't work well against zombies, both for the collateral damage, both for things like "who cares if you suck out the air?". Some explanation works, some others, much less.
It's not realistic? again, who cares? we're talking 'bout zombies, it's not that a scenario with zombies with supernatural abilities (ala L4D) is less stupid.
in WWZ, zombies are impervious to explosions and so on, this is the setting.

'bout yonkers. It's stupid? yes. It is somehow justified? sort of. Soldiers were wearing senseless equipment for the presence of the TV, it was a sort of spot. See, we all know it was totally dumb, the whole trenches thing, the stationary tanks, yadda yadda.
You know what? it happens. Real military history, even the recent one, is literally full of battles losed by dumb decisions, made because you overestimate yourself, and undervalue your enemy. To be absolutely sure of your victory, usually leads to disaster, and (just to cite a famous example) you don't need to be a genius to guess that charging frontally a fortified position filled with cannons, with a cavalry light brigade, isn't probally the best option available.

Yes but that famous example was the cause of miscommunication and misunderstanding that followed military theory at the time, it was not a ridiculous plan from the onset. Yonkers is. Does this still happen? Sure. There's the Russian general in WWI who bragged about not having read a military text in years and sent his men charging at trenches. The result was not pretty.

The problem is Brooks tries to use that excuse, that the military leadership is old and would do something like this, when the military leadership of the time had a different mentality. Oh the love of advanced tech is still there, but the tech used would have destroyed the zombies.


So, I can buy one Yonker. I'm less incline to buy that a single battle losed, throws into chaos your entire army and you're not able to do anything in your whole country except fleeing.

Yeah I didn't want to go into that.


True, but seriously, this can be said for basically all the films with the shambler zombie type. And also for a certain amount of the other zombie movies.
When you shoot with an heavy machine gun the crowd of zombies, you obtain nothing.

Oh yes you do. From force you can unbalance them, and if a leg/spine/head is hit they will fall down with enough bullets the front line of zombies could fall down or die since again it's much easier to aim when the target is coming at you without cover. And since they are in a group you will hit something. Make that something fall down, and get trampled. If this is done from behind some form of barricade or even a bloody hole in the ground it could be very effective of slowing down a zombie horde.


I confess I've never read World War Z but Max Brook's Zombie Survival Guide did show a lot of careful thought and research throughout.

Actually I have a survivalist friend who disagrees. Though I as well have not read it.

[Scowling Dragon]

Nah, bullet energy transfer doesnt work that way. It may cause hydrostatic shock, but there isnt the force to knock someone down even with large caliber rounds. The FBI has a report on it, and there is a Mythbusters episode on the subject.

Isn't it as strong as a good punch?

[SDF]

Here is an online version of the FBI report I mentioned

http://www.thegunzone.com/quantico-wounding.html

Further, it appears that many people are predisposed to fall down when shot. This phenomenon is independent of caliber, bullet, or hit location, and is beyond the control of the shooter. It can only be proven in the act, not predicted. It requires only two factors to be effected: a shot and cognition of being shot by the target. Lacking either one, people are not at all predisposed to fall down and don't. Given this predisposition, the choice of caliber and bullet is essentially irrelevant. People largely fall down when shot, and the apparent predisposition to do so exists with equal force among the good guys as among the bad. The causative factors are most likely psychological in origin. Thousands of books, movies and television shows have educated the general population that when shot, one is supposed to fall down.

IIRC they used pig carcases on Mythbusters and could barely get them to move.

[ThiagoMartell]

I liked the book, it's sad that the film seems to be sucky.

[Scowling Dragon]

Huh. OK. So no knockback. How about throwing basketballs?

Still, Zombies pose no threat. At all.

[The Succubus]

In real life, if there truly was a zombie outbreak that had managed to overwhelm a city, the rest of the world would reduce said city into radioactive rubble pretty damn quick and the consequences be damned. Planes from the unlucky country would either be turned away or shot down.

[Scowling Dragon]

Not even nukes. Just a ton of regular bombs to prevent fallout.

[Gamerlord]

And its terrible (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HcwTxRuq-uk)

The awful CG, the family focused characters, the same regard that iRobot had for the book. It is all there.
...Is it weird that I started humming the Katarami Damacy theme about halfway through the trailer?

[Killer Angel]

Oh yes you do. From force you can unbalance them, and if a leg/spine/head is hit they will fall down with enough bullets the front line of zombies could fall down or die since again it's much easier to aim when the target is coming at you without cover. And since they are in a group you will hit something. Make that something fall down, and get trampled. If this is done from behind some form of barricade or even a bloody hole in the ground it could be very effective of slowing down a zombie horde.

I was just saying that i don't recall a movie shoving that entire bursts of M16 (or the equivalent) do something effective. Usually, they don't even slow down the zombies, despite all those injuries that, even if not painful, should be structurally meaningful.


The problem is Brooks tries to use that excuse, that the military leadership is old and would do something like this, when the military leadership of the time had a different mentality.


Well, i agree that currently there's a different mentality, and certainly Brooks exaggerated the worst possible outcome... but even now (or at least in the recent past), you can find some commander too overconfident, that plans operations without keeping in mind that things can go wrong. The subject is touchy, but the operation eagle claw is an example.
Apparently, Brooks filled all the headquarters and the whole military enstablishment with this kind of commanders. :smalltongue:

[t209]

I wonder if Trailer showed it as action film, but what it's kafka komedy for Brad Pitt's character (as in no matter what you do, you will always lose).
Sometimes movie is more that how you see in the trailer.
Still, it will suck though.
There is still Hydroshock from artillery that will destroy the brains.

[Tergon]

He didn't fill ALL of the commanding roles with these sorts of Armchair Generals. He just did it to America, and he did it with justification. Look, do some basic maths. Let's say, I don't know, 50 tanks rolled up to the Battle of Yonkers. It's safe to say that is a veritable buttload of tanks for any kind of battle, can we agree? And let's say each tank did really damn well. Let's say each tank accounted for five hundred zombies. Each. Again, that's saying these tanks are doing remarkably bloody well, don't you agree? Well, those figures mean the tanks would have completely wiped out twenty-five thousand zombies at Yonkers. That is by anyone's measure a huge number of rekilled zombies. The problem is that they were facing a swarm of tens of thousands more than that. The narrator who describes the Battle of Yonkers estimates that there were a million zombies, every single undead body in New York City, chain-swarming the soldiers at Yonkers.
They could have bombed New York, sure, but they didn't because this was supposed to be a morale victory, to say to the people during the Great Panic, "We can beat these things!" That's also the reason they used their fanciest and most expensive weapons, to show their superiority. If the plan had worked, they'd have stood triumphant with their high-tech weaponry and cheered in the streets of reclaimed New York. This is a perfectly reasonable plan; the problem was that they had a very poor understanding of zombie physiology, they used their weapons in an inefficient manner, and they were simply overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

That is the only major battle we get full information on, and it is legitimately justified as the worst-case scenario come true. Other battles went considerably better, and other nations survived considerably better. This was just The Big Fight for the US, and they lost because they went in over their heads. I honestly cannot understand why this scenario is so unbelievable - if you suspend your disbelief enough to say, "Okay, swarm of zombies!" why is it so hard to accept that the army fighting them might not win?

[Tiki Snakes]

It's unbelievable because the explanation boils down to one of two things;
Magically immune zombies laughing off machinegun and tank fire or the military simply forgetting to bring enough ammunition.

[Dienekes]

That is the only major battle we get full information on, and it is legitimately justified as the worst-case scenario come true. Other battles went considerably better, and other nations survived considerably better. This was just The Big Fight for the US, and they lost because they went in over their heads. I honestly cannot understand why this scenario is so unbelievable - if you suspend your disbelief enough to say, "Okay, swarm of zombies!" why is it so hard to accept that the army fighting them might not win?

That is not what I have a problem with. For the third time I believe. I'm fine with the zombie apocalypse overrunning the army. Cool, it's necessary for a zombie apocalypse to happen. But if you go that route, do not go around saying this is totally what is going to happen and that you went and backed up all of your information with facts. Which is what Brooks did, repeatedly, when clearly he did no so such thing and instead set up a frankly ridiculous scenario designed for the zombies to win. A situation that does not just require every single general involved with the plan to be stupid, but also every soldier to ignore all the training we've had in the last 50+ years just so they can be overrun.

It's not the story I have a problem with, it's the author.

Well, I didn't much like the story either to be honest. But the main point I'm arguing here is the author.

[Tergon]

Magically immune zombies laughing off machinegun and tank fire

Magically immune to what? The high-velocity rounds that would pass through a torso without slowing them more than a solid punch would? The burns that they can't feel? The pressure-wave from an explosion that won't effect a dead body? The disemboweling, rib-breaking, and shrapnel punctures that would have no effect at all? The blinding, deafening, disorienting fire that doesn't matter in the slightest to a mindless drone that only knows "walk toward meat"?
All of those things would stop a human on the spot because he'd drop dead if it happened to him. This will not happen to the zombies. Every single impact has to either smash in the skull, sever a spine, or blow off a leg, otherwise that zombie will at worst be knocked down. It will then immediately get back up and resume its advance.

If we cheerfully say that, I don't know, one machine gun bullet in five successfully did that, or that every tank round did this to ten zombies, fine. And let's say that the narrator, Todd, was so disoriented that he multiplied the size of the swarm by ten. So instead of a million zombies, there are a hundred thousand of them. Using these figures, try to work out how many actual rounds would need to be fired to kill them all.

In short, yes. Zombies are magically immune to tank rounds and machine gun fire, because they are zombies. And given that, it is extremely believable that the soldiers were not physically carrying enough bullets for the task. I mean, how many rounds do you think they were carrying each? A few hundred? That would be nowhere near enough. And you can't resupply from the truck when there are fifty zombies hanging off it. It just... it makes no sense that they could win that battle.

[Emmerask]

And its terrible (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HcwTxRuq-uk)

The awful CG, the family focused characters, the same regard that iRobot had for the book. It is all there.

well awful cg is a bit of an exaggeration, while not good at all its tolerable I think.

I don´t really mind the super zombies because lets be honest without something like an instant 50+% of the population turning to zombies thing (contaminated vaccination; flu like contamination with only a few resistant etc) the stupid slow shamblers just don´t pose any kind of threat whatsoever especially in a country like the us where there are more weapons then people available and ammo to kill everyone about 10.000+ times.
And this not only in military bases but distributed around the country.

The main turnoff for me however is the family characters and the apparently single point of view we get instead of the multiple povs with a narrator to tie it all together.
This makes it look pretty much like any other zombie flick we had so far, which is really a shame, might still watch it and maybe even be entertained but I´m not expecting all that much anymore sadly :-(

As for the book, I liked reading it but it was in no way realistic, yes it tried to be but it fell short quite a bit :smallwink:

[Dienekes]

Magically immune to what? The high-velocity rounds that would pass through a torso without slowing them more than a solid punch would?

Shoot to slow them down and keep them within given locations to be bombed.


The burns that they can't feel?

If you burn away a leg muscle they cannot move.


The pressure-wave from an explosion that won't effect a dead body?

High pressure waves will most definitely effect a dead body. Actually it can potentially tear apart a dead body.


The disemboweling, rib-breaking, and shrapnel punctures that would have no effect at all?

Except that now they are literally tripping over their own insides, that shrapnel can puncture scull, especially if the zombies do not take cover. And while rib-breaking will not affect them, leg and spine breaking will.


The blinding, deafening, disorienting fire that doesn't matter in the slightest to a mindless drone that only knows "walk toward meat"?

But will make their body completely ineffectual and can actually fry the brain within the body.


All of those things would stop a human on the spot because he'd drop dead if it happened to him. This will not happen to the zombies.

Yes, some of it will.


Every single impact has to either smash in the skull, sever a spine, or blow off a leg, otherwise that zombie will at worst be knocked down. It will then immediately get back up and resume its advance.

Slowly, these zombies move slowly, and stupidly. If one falls it's actually entirely possible, even likely that it will trip up a couple more. While all the army has to do is backpedal to not be overrun.


If we cheerfully say that, I don't know, one machine gun bullet in five successfully did that, or that every tank round did this to ten zombies, fine. And let's say that the narrator, Todd, was so disoriented that he multiplied the size of the swarm by ten. So instead of a million zombies, there are a hundred thousand of them. Using these figures, try to work out how many actual rounds would need to be fired to kill them all.

Like we did during the Cold Wars, you know, like the general in command of this mess. Doing so would be inefficient. Instead we'd have the smell of napalm in the morning.

[Emmerask]

High pressure waves will most definitely effect a dead body. Actually it can potentially tear apart a dead body.


Especially if you consider what will happen to the brain (which apparently they still need) under a high pressure wave.
None magical zombies can´t survive that :smallwink:

[Tergon]

That is not what I have a problem with. For the third time I believe. I'm fine with the zombie apocalypse overrunning the army. Cool, it's necessary for a zombie apocalypse to happen. But if you go that route, do not go around saying this is totally what is going to happen and that you went and backed up all of your information with facts. Which is what Brooks did, repeatedly, when clearly he did no so such thing and instead set up a frankly ridiculous scenario designed for the zombies to win. A situation that does not just require every single general involved with the plan to be stupid, but also every soldier to ignore all the training we've had in the last 50+ years just so they can be overrun.

It's not the story I have a problem with, it's the author.

Well, I didn't much like the story either to be honest. But the main point I'm arguing here is the author.

Basically, from what I could see, Brooks did the research to find what Standard Operating Procedure would be for a pitched battle against a massed infantry force in a suburban environment. Maybe picking one that was a little out of date to justify his "older general" excuse.
Then let's say he gives them overpowered and overcomplicated equipment to justify what he claims for the story: that this was to be a "morale victory" to prove that modern man with his powerful weapons and technology could easily trump a bunch of silly ole zombies. In other words, poor tactics and the desire for good publicity took precedence over understanding the environment that the troops were going into.
And last, probably the biggest: he's decided that this is Zombie New York, and there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of zombies. And they're all going to show up at once.

Given the "zombie apocalypse" genre, I'd say that any of these plot devices are 100% reasonable for the sake of his story. God knows we've seen them in other movies. I do agree that combining all three of them for a single clusterf*ck of a battle just to dump the US in an unwinnable fight is... well, it strains credulity a bit. He could have handled that better. But ultimately, he's just roped together a few quite reasonable concepts to get to the end result his story needs. That's hardly the worst liberty taken with common sense or, y'know, the laws of physics in modern pop culture today.

If you don't like his style of writing, I can respect that, and nothing I say will change your mind. All I'm trying to do is defend a story that I genuinely liked. Yeah, it's got its holes in it, but find me a Zombie Apocalypse story that doesn't! And yes, maybe him claiming that, "This would all happen according to my research!" is a bit silly. But is that any worse than, oh, any "Based On A True Story" story you've ever seen? At least Brooks has the good humour to hang a lampshade on himself in the story and acknowledge how stupid it is. That's more than you'll get in a Michael Bay movie.

[Killer Angel]

It's unbelievable because the explanation boils down to one of two things;
Magically immune zombies laughing off machinegun and tank fire or the military simply forgetting to bring enough ammunition.

Your first objection:
Zombies are immune to a good amount of effect of tank's fire. It is explained why as part of the setting. In media, some zombies are fast, some are intellingent, some got superpowers. Brooks' ones are particulary resilient to bombing. It's simple as that.
BTW, the previous version of the official NATO cal, received criticism for the poor performance of the bullet on target, especially the first-shot kill rate when the muzzle velocity of the firearms used and the downrange bullet deceleration didn't achieve the minimally required terminal velocity at the target to cause fragmentation. This failure also occured when the bullets passed through only minimal tissue, such as a limb or the torso of a small individual (or a zombie with poor muscolar tissue, I would add), as the bullet may exit the body before it has a chance to yaw and fragment.

Your second objection:
Military with problems with ammo, facing great number of enemies? It already happened (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana#Reasons_for_the_British_defea t).

[Dienekes]

Military with problems with ammo, facing great number of enemies? It already happened (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana#Reasons_for_the_British_defea t).

That is a 134 year old battle, back when the tactics Brooks demonstrates would actually have been considered efficient.

[Killer Angel]

That is a 134 year old battle, back when the tactics Brooks demonstrates would actually have been considered efficient.

My point is: probably Brooks took historical facts, military debacles and so on, mixed them together and depicted the scenario of Yonkers.
Is the scenario believable? On the whole, not so much, but at least is enjoyable.

[Tergon]

(Various responses to my post that I'm removing to save post size.)
Shortening to save space...

Firstly, you're of course right that a pressure wave will damage a dead body; that was stupid of me to phrase it like that. What I was meaning was that it would have less of an effect on a dead body than a live one. It might toss them like a ragdoll and cause their veins to burst along with their stomach, eyeballs and eardrums, but again, none of that will do anything more than slow a zombie down. Damage that would actually disable the zombie is perfectly possible, but it's a very long way from guaranteed.
Yes, burning through a muscle will make it useless, but moist flesh will burn very slowly, and superficial burns won't slow the zombie down at all. This would only work on a direct or near-direct hit, which will probably just blow the leg off anyway.
Blinding and deafening a zombie won't do anything; Brooks specifically states that Solanum zombies have been witnessed with their eyes and ears and nose damaged to the point where they should have been useless, but that zombie is still able to sense and move toward prey, and nobody is sure how. Yes, it's a handwave, but one he's long-since established.
Tightly-packed bodies will absorb the shock of a blast. That shrapnel wave will take down the ones immediately close by, and not even reach the rest of the zombies beyond a short radius.
As for the rest of it - bombing, sustained fire to slow them down, falling back to another position - well, that's sort of the point. The soldiers at Yonkers tried it. They tried all of it. And it all failed because the zombies just kept coming through the hail of fire, because that's what zombies do. And when the first line of soldiers got attacked, the rest of the troops' morale broke and they cut and ran. The simple fact is that they tried those tactics and they did not work!

If you're trying to argue that a modern weapon could kill a zombie, well, of course I agree with you. Obviously that's true.
What I'm trying to say is that a group of very frightened men using sub-optimal weaponry, without adequate support, don't have a realistic way to deal with a few hundred thousand walking corpses that break almost every rule of biology these soldiers have been trained to understand. The problem wasn't that they couldn't kill zombies, it's that they couldn't kill them fast enough. And given that at this point in the story, the commanding officers were not prepared to level an entire city with bombs, that really does make sense. I mean, what could these guys bring to bear that could take out that many undead?

[CthulhuEatYou]

The thread of zombies were never the fact that they are incredible resilient, it's just that they're everywhere, and in incredible big numbers. In a George A Romeo Scenario (Everyone is infected), the problem is, that in the long run, you going to have 7 billion zombies, and evey weapon that would wipe them out (Nukes, bombs, armies, ect.) would either wipe as many humans out in the process or themselves becomes zombies. The problems with zombies is they inhabit the same places as humans, so any weapon effective against them will eradicate as many humans as zombies, or you'd have reached a point where there'd simply be too many of them to eradicate. Bear in mind, that there is always survivors of bombs, and just a single surviving zombie can start it all over. (There for example were this Japanese guy who survived both the nukes in the end of the WWII and just continued to work, even though everything around him burned to ashes and were hellishly irradiated. He lived to be 80-90 somthing.)

Just imagine fighting a hundred unarmed people, even if you had the biggest most bad-assed assault rifle, you could easily find yourself overwhelmed. That besomes an even bigger problem with a thousand, and even a bigger one with ten-thousand, or a million for that sake. Or if you live on the wrong continent, a couple of billions.



It doesn't. But thats why it doesn't happen.

We already have a version of the rage zombie virus:

Rabies.

The world continues to turn.

Rabies doesn't work the way you think It work. It basically just cause inflammation to the brain and kills humans outright, no zombie behaviour there. Dogs go feral, but they doesn't hunt other dogs down and become cannibalistic, they just go mad. A more likely disease is Mad Cows disease, which actually changes the brain, instead of causing so much pain its victim goes mad. There exist no disease that, even mildly, is similar to a zombie virus, so we cannot in anyway make comparison to the real world. The zombie virus is fictional, and hopefully continue to be exactly that.

[HandofShadows]

For that matter, tanks don't shoot their main guns at people. Even an HE round is generally inferior to using the coax or pintle MG. I suppose you might get more milage out of an HE round on something that doesn't try to take cover, but it's still not very optimal.

With the right ammo they most certainly do. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgn1nhUEgo8


Not even nukes. Just a ton of regular bombs to prevent fallout.

Cluster bombs. Very good for pulverising stuff. Or if you really want things gone, some B-52's. Thats over 6 toms of bombs per plane. And those planes canbe deployed anyplace in the world in a couple of days at most. For a target in the US they could have planes over it in a matter of a few hours.

The assertation that the US Military is hidebound and working with old tactics is wrong. The US military has for a long time been highly innovative and *flexible*. Brooks in attempting to justify what happens in his book clearly ignored the real thing.

[HandofShadows]

The thread of zombies were never the fact that they are incredible resilient, it's just that they're everywhere, and in incredible big numbers.

The thing that is the problem is that when a zombie outbreak starts, it will soon attaract the attention of the CDC and similar organizations. And this will be long before you have hundereds of thousands of zombies. Do a seach for "7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail" I don't to directly link to it since it probably has bad language.

[Draconi Redfir]

I'm not going to hide the fact that I’m a bit of a Max brooks fanboy, i own the zombie survival guide, i own world war Z, i own the comic-style recorded zombie attacks book, heck shortly after reading world war Z i started (but never finished) writing my own little self-insert fanfiction in which i survive an outbreak in my own little town and start helping other survivors get out, with full intention on finding a way to send it to Brooks once it was finished in hopes he'd bring it up or otherwise include it in his next book should he ever write one.


That said, yeah it sucks that the world war Z movie includes fast zombies and focuses on the states as the big heroes, but you know what? that's fine. it's still a zombie movie, and it's still a world war that happens to be against zombies, i'm probably going to see it anyways.

Though i must ask, does anybody know if Brooks actually has any say or pull in this movie or did he simply allow the folks at Hollywood to make it?

[CthulhuEatYou]

The thing that is the problem is that when a zombie outbreak starts, it will soon attaract the attention of the CDC and similar organizations. And this will be long before you have hundereds of thousands of zombies. Do a seach for "7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail" I don't to directly link to it since it probably has bad language.

The crack one? Yes, I've read it, it's bogus, it assumes too much and knows to little. It's like asking a a comic book writer to make a detailed account of bio-chemical virology. The point being, it's not scientific at all. Which means it attempts to be somthing which it isn't. Half the reasons are directly wrong, the rest assumes to much to be taken seriously. If you want, I can go through every one of the points made in it and tell you what exactly is wrong with it from a virologists, biologist and logical point of view. Although, I should think you would be able to see most of it yourself.



Though i must ask, does anybody know if Brooks actually has any say or pull in this movie or did he simply allow the folks at Hollywood to make it?

As far as I remember he decided to not have anything to do with it at all.

[HandofShadows]

The crack one? Yes, I've read it, it's bogus, it assumes too much and knows to little. It's like asking a a comic book writer to make a detailed account of bio-chemical virology. The point being, it's not scientific at all. Which means it attempts to be somthing which it isn't. Half the reasons are directly wrong, the rest assumes to much to be taken seriously. If you want, I can go through every one of the points made in it and tell you what exactly is wrong with it from a virologists, biologist and logical point of view. Although, I should think you would be able to see most of it yourself.

They may overstate a few points, but for the most part things actually are logical and factually based. For instance dead bodies will rot and rot quickly in hot weather. Insects will have a field day with them (some insects laying eggs in just a few hours). If you see the aftermath of any large battle where the bodies have not been cleaned up, you will see what I mean. (only if you can take it though. Bloated bodies are not fun to look at.). Freezing destroys cells because ice ruptures the cell membrane. Cells are not dead, they are destroyed, turned into mush. There is nothing there to animate. And that includes the cells that make up your muscles.

[Tebryn]

The crack one? Yes, I've read it, it's bogus, it assumes too much and knows to little. It's like asking a a comic book writer to make a detailed account of bio-chemical virology. The point being, it's not scientific at all. Which means it attempts to be somthing which it isn't. Half the reasons are directly wrong, the rest assumes to much to be taken seriously. If you want, I can go through every one of the points made in it and tell you what exactly is wrong with it from a virologists, biologist and logical point of view. Although, I should think you would be able to see most of it yourself.


I'd certainly like to see you argue against the undead being unable to see is illogical. Or that dead bodies rot, especially well so in hot humid areas. Or how biting is a really bad way to transfer disease or that your top predator being your food supply as well is a pretty bad survival tactic. Have at it I suppose.

[Brother Oni]

IIRC they used pig carcases on Mythbusters and could barely get them to move.

Out of curiosity, what was the largest size round they used (my google-fu is failing me)?

While I have no trouble accepting a 5.56mm round not knocking over a zombie, I get a bit iffy when considering .50 calibre machine guns and I refuse to believe a 25mm round from a Bradley IFV's main weapon wouldn't send a human-size object flying (or at least put massive holes in it).

Edit: found it, a .50 from a sniper rifle wouldn't send them flying, so I suppose a MG wouldn't send them flying either (would probably knock them down with repeated hits).

[CthulhuEatYou]

They may overstate a few points, but for the most part things actually are logical and factually based. For instance dead bodies will rot and rot quickly in hot weather. Insects will have a field day with them (some insects laying eggs in just a few hours). If you see the aftermath of any large battle where the bodies have not been cleaned up, you will see what I mean. (only if you can take it though. Bloated bodies are not fun to look at.). Freezing destroys cells because ice ruptures the cell membrane. Cells are not dead, they are destroyed, turned into mush. There is nothing there to animate. And that includes the cells that make up your muscles.

So first we have to assume they are dead, which breaks every natural law as we know them. Then we have to assume in this reawakened state that they have no immune system, which is fair, and no other bodily functions. Then we would have to assume this doesn't cause them to develop bodily toxins, the toxins caused by no longer having a functioning bodily system. Which normally happens for a still moving body with disabled intestines; because, just because. This would take care of all natural predators in for of insects and bacteria. After all that, assuming zombies have any less of an immune system than ours, provided they are dead, which already are beyond magical, that they are eaten away at near impossible speed, so fast that they can't infect others at all.
When we have assumed all of this nonsense, we have to assume that the incests and bacteria would at all react to this new phenomenon, although we know it have taken millions of years for them to adapt to eating what they eat now and that zombies are completely outside the category of everything. Then we have to assume that the virus, especially designed or evolved to do this task has not, at all, evolved to take care of insects and bacteria to survive, which is the case with many viruses. Then we would have to assume insects eat the corpse at superhuman (super-insect) speed, as it takes alot more (http://www.freewebs.com/forensicentomology/earlycommoninsects.htm) 20 days ca. for insects to devour a human corpse normally. Far to slow, if it were to prevent the zombies from spreading.

Also, why do you assume zombies, when they are turned, suddenly drops all their cloth and freeze to death and/or lose all body warmth.

Also, it could be very likely that half humanity is already infected, as per the very real Toxoplasma gondii parasite which actually affects approximately 50% of all human, and affect human and animal behaviour. Also that a couple of weeks would be enough. After all, a Canadian scientist's study have shown it would take zombies 28 days to exterminate/spread the virus to 95% of humanity. Although the accuracy of this, too, is very doubtfully. (This later came to inspire the name of an movie and its sequal).

Basically, for any of cracked's theories to be true we'd have to assume zombies breaks all laws of nature, in which case we cannot assume anything. Cracked are for crackhead theories...



I'd certainly like to see you argue against the undead being unable to see is illogical. Or that dead bodies rot, especially well so in hot humid areas. Or how biting is a really bad way to transfer disease or that your top predator being your food supply as well is a pretty bad survival tactic. Have at it I suppose.

Why do we assume biting spreads the disease, when the creator of modern zombies himself (George A. Romeo) said that all humans were already infected. Which would either suggest a airbourne disease or a parasite like Toxoplasma gondii. Also, I have to remind you that the zombie is not the predator, but the disease/parasite/whatever is the predator. And the zombie might mearly be a way to spread the host or speed up the infection process.

[HandofShadows]

and I refuse to believe a 25mm round from a Bradley IFV's main weapon wouldn't send a human-size object flying (or at least put massive holes in it).

A 25mm round would NOT send a human sized object flying. Unless you count it being splattered all over the place. :smalleek:

[Metahuman1]

Also: Bullets have kinetic energy. Even ONE bullet is likely to knock even a very well balanced person on their butt.

What about zombies that can barely even stand?

Brooks seriously undervalues damage done to zombies outside of the head.

Hit the spine and then just collapse. Hit the legs and they collapse.

Hit the body and they just fall down and collapse.

Addendum: Hit the pelvic girdle, the baseline skeletal structure will not allow them to GET back up, and there made even slower as they drag themselves on there arms. And tear themselves up doing so if over longer distances for longer periods of time.

[CthulhuEatYou]

I think the thing with the projectiles is simply that they fly right through the body rather than delivering the kinetic force to it.

[Brother Oni]

Then we would have to assume insects eat the corpse at superhuman (super-insect) speed, as it takes alot more (http://www.freewebs.com/forensicentomology/earlycommoninsects.htm) 20 days ca. for insects to devour a human corpse normally. Far to slow, if it were to prevent the zombies from spreading.

While true, the insects wouldn't have to eat the corpse to nothing, just enough so that it stops being capable of moving.


I think the thing with the projectiles is simply that they fly right through the body rather than delivering the kinetic force to it.

Some do (main problem seen with the 5.56 rounds in Afghanistan and Iraq), but larger rounds simply cause large holes which would stop the body from functioning. It's slightly hard to walk with a shattered femur, even if such an injury couldn't kill you.

In addition, over penetration is mainly an issue with military ball ammunition. Civilians and law enforcement can use hollowpoint rounds which do significantly more damage to soft targets (specifically tear and destroy muscle in the case of zombies).

[Wookieetank]

...Is it weird that I started humming the Katarami Damacy theme about halfway through the trailer?

Nope. And now I want to play a zombie version of Katamar Damacy.

Back on topic: Yay for Zombies! :smalltongue:

[Killer Angel]

The assertation that the US Military is hidebound and working with old tactics is wrong. The US military has for a long time been highly innovative and *flexible*.

Sadly, this is not completely true.
Military history is full of examples of bad tactics, wrong approaches, mistakes, overconfidence, and US military is not excluded.
Every time people tend to think that the current army is led by brilliant mind, and often that's true, but in every army you'll find high officiers not able to adapt.
Let's pick only the (relative) recent history.
DUring the american civil war, it appeared that applying a napoleon-like formations, marching toward well defended positions, was not a good idea. Manoveurs were far better, and yet there were lots of examples of frontal charges against trenched positions.
Was the lesson learned in WWI? nope. The formations were abandoned, but there was frontal assault to trenches, barbed wires, machine guns' nests.
There are examples of massive frontal assault of infantry even in WWII.
Of course army is innovative and flexible. But sometime you don't "see" that you're staying behind. At the begining of WWII, many failed to see the power of air force and tanks' manoveur, and put their faith in fortresses. Anzio failed due to poor decisions after the landing, and so on.
After WWII, someone discovered that you cannot successfully apply WWII tactics to an enemy that uses giungle guerrilla.
When US army had become invincible on an "army" scale, still you can see total failure in planning rescue operation such as Eagle Claw.

Every army will commit mistakes, due to bad planning ad overconfidence, every army has its Little Big Horn. So, Yonker will happen.
Only, it won't happen in the way described, because you're going to fail while applying a current tactic (such the actual ones in dealing with popular riots, or the ones used in urban warfare). Actually, no one is seriously going to dig trenches.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Sadly, this is not completely true.
Military history is full of examples of bad tactics, wrong approaches, mistakes, overconfidence, and US military is not excluded.
Every time people tend to think that the current army is led by brilliant mind, and often that's true, but in every army you'll find high officiers not able to adapt.

Here's the difference: zeds add exactly nothing to the equation.

They are literally the oldest conceivable army in existence, unorganized, unarmored, unarmed, infantry. What's going to happen when an a zed comes up against a position with an M2, one of the most dirt common machine guns in the world? Something probably not unlike what happens to this watermelon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tTAYFSnRW4), only worse because that was just a rifle not automatic machine gun fire. And that's only the ground floor of what the weapons we have are capable of.

There is no place for the human body dead or alive on the modern battlefield. Infantry can only survive when they are either not easily detected, easily reached, or the opposing force chooses not to just level the area. All of which basically amount to hiding, something zeds largely won't do.

Never mind you have to basically micro-manage the armed forces to not allow tanks to just run the zeds over.

And this is even granting the zeds one of those hordes everyone does. Those don't actually make sense you know. People like to fondly imagine you release a single zed in a supermarket and a hundred zeds walk out. When in reality that place is going to clear out when the screaming starts. Maybe two more zeds walk out.

And biting is such a terrible form of attack for a human its fairly likely even a single person can fight a zed off with any type of tool. You basically need to get "any fluid contact" style to actually have zombies that can profit on their attacks. Just biting (like Brooks and most use) or the like you will barely replace the zed before someone comes along and puts a bullet in its head.

People imagine cities as a all you can eat buffet. Nope. They are a honeycomb of walls and barriers that will slow zeds down where not block them entirely. So these endless hordes are a load of crap too.

How Brooks doesn't just politely ignore this to make a story about a group of survivors work and we all agree to not ask how it got that bad in the first place... he has the audacity to not only say that it would seriously work like that, but that he also knows better and proscribes a bunch of ridiculous nonsense.

(Fun Sidbar: This guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLFYvG6MsZU) and his friends, probably good for thousands of zeds before he goes down)

[SoC175]

Actually that was pretty well justified by Brooks. A tank shell explodes and can disembowel you, burn you, suck the air out of your lungs, burst your veins with the pressure and break your legs with the damage, to say nothing of knocking you unconscious or putting you into severe shock - but none of that will stop a zombie. Nothing short of severing the spine will immobilize one, and nothing short of cranial trauma will kill one, and short of a direct hit neither of those are guaranteed from an exploding shell. But most of that will effectively neutralize the zombie as a threat. Who care if he's technically still "alive" and even has some limited mobility left, he's no longer a danger. "Wow, these zombie dragging himself along on the stumps of his arms and legs sure has fighting spirit. Too bad for him that he can't bite me anywhere higher than my ankle and is totally unable to bite through my combat boot"

Yonkers should have been a curp stomb battle by the military even with the tactics they were described to be using, because even these tactics with these means would be devastating to the zombies orders of magnitude above how they worked in the book.

Heck, they could have just drove over them with their tanks and IFVs without the zombies being able to do anything but being crushed under them

Also: Bullets have kinetic energy. Even ONE bullet is likely to knock even a very well balanced person on their butt. Actually no. Bullets have real knock back effect. Normal bullets don't transfer enough kinetic energy and really powerful bullets (e.g. from anti material rifles) are actually worse at that since the pierce a soft thing like a body so quickly that they actually transfer even less force due to their quick exit (or you get to the point where the body just goes splash, but that's not so much knocking it back as knocking it everywhere at once).

If a knock back effect occurs it's due to a subconscious attempt to "roll with the blow", not from the actual force applied by the bullet.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Actually no. Bullets have real knock back effect. Normal bullets don't transfer enough kinetic energy and really powerful bullets (e.g. from anti material rifles) are actually worse at that since the pierce a soft thing like a body so quickly that they actually transfer even less force due to their quick exit (or you get to the point where the body just goes splash, but that's not so much knocking it back as knocking it everywhere at once).

If a knock back effect occurs it's due to a subconscious attempt to "roll with the blow", not from the actual force applied by the bullet.

Check my first link to above. Observe watermelon exploding from being shot with a single .50 BMG round.

While large rounds are less efficient due to overpenetration... the problem is I've yet to find where that quite seems to you know matter. Especially on against a zombie horde where it will just hit another zed.

[Pokonic]

Rabies doesn't work the way you think It work. It basically just cause inflammation to the brain and kills humans outright, no zombie behaviour there. Dogs go feral, but they doesn't hunt other dogs down and become cannibalistic, they just go mad. A more likely disease is Mad Cows disease, which actually changes the brain, instead of causing so much pain its victim goes mad. There exist no disease that, even mildly, is similar to a zombie virus, so we cannot in anyway make comparison to the real world. The zombie virus is fictional, and hopefully continue to be exactly that.

Yeah, Prion diseases are scary. Of course, it takes tends to take decades for the typical infectie to show symptoms, but some strains can inflict there horror in years.

While this may not seem like much, thats a gap between the onset of old age to hitting a infectie before there twenty. Now, lets say something like that gap happens in another strain, such as, say, screwing up a subject in a month of consuming the tainted meat?


A mass rabies-outbreak would end with the infecties dieing thanks to a lack of, you know, drinking fluids. A big load of beef getting into the markets could end with a large slice of the population ending up with a brain-ravaging condition with no cure.

[Tebryn]

So first we have to assume they are dead, which breaks every natural law as we know them.

Ya, well I hate to be the one to tell you this but Zombies aren't real so we're going to have to delve into some fantasy here. Most go with the "Undead" because ya know...that's the most common type of zombie. Both mythologically and based on Romero. We'll get to Romero later on since you want to use him to defend your arguments.



Then we have to assume in this reawakened state that they have no immune system, which is fair, and no other bodily functions.

So far so good. This is a fair assumption.


Then we would have to assume this doesn't cause them to develop bodily toxins, the toxins caused by no longer having a functioning bodily system. Which normally happens for a still moving body with disabled intestines; because, just because.

And this is where you start to break down. Why would we have to assume that? The body isn't functioning for the most part in the typical zombie. Bodies rot when they're not alive. Zombies are not alive. They rot. What ever is animating them non-withstanding. Romero went with "The Brain" or ya know "When there is no more room in Hell" explanation.


This would take care of all natural predators in for of insects and bacteria. After all that, assuming zombies have any less of an immune system than ours, provided they are dead, which already are beyond magical, that they are eaten away at near impossible speed, so fast that they can't infect others at all.

Well, since your third assumption is based on...I don't even know...this doesn't exactly follow. Humans body rot when they're dead


When we have assumed all of this nonsense, we have to assume that the incests and bacteria would at all react to this new phenomenon, although we know it have taken millions of years for them to adapt to eating what they eat now and that zombies are completely outside the category of everything.


Again, you're the one making the assumption. That's cool and all but you're not arguing with anyone here. You're demanding we make assumptions that we don't have to make or make at all.


Then we have to assume that the virus, especially designed or evolved to do this task has not, at all, evolved to take care of insects and bacteria to survive, which is the case with many viruses.

Wanna name one?


Then we would have to assume insects eat the corpse at superhuman (super-insect) speed, as it takes alot more (http://www.freewebs.com/forensicentomology/earlycommoninsects.htm) 20 days ca. for insects to devour a human corpse normally. Far to slow, if it were to prevent the zombies from spreading.

No we wouldn't. Twenty days is long enough to hole up somewhere with supplies and wait for the wandering dead to fall apart while the insects rejoice at the all you can eat buffet.


Also, why do you assume zombies, when they are turned, suddenly drops all their cloth and freeze to death and/or lose all body warmth.


We don't. Again. You're telling us we're assuming things our arguments aren't. Have you ever -been- to Phoenix? I actually live in Arizona and I can tell you it doesn't matter if you're wearing clothing or not. Phoenix is REALLY REALLY HOT. Try standing around in downtown Phoenix for a few hours without drinking anything. You're going to be in a really bad state. If the zombie is a living thing, it's actually worse. Because if they follow the rules of living things, they're going to dehydrate swiftly. Running around and sweating does that for you.

As for losing body heat...yes. Dead bodies lose body heat. Doesn't matter if you're wrapped up tighter than a hot dog at a Fat Camp. Clothing is for insulation for the most part after all. Having lived in the mountains and areas that get lake effect snow as well...being caught out in a blizzard even in nice heavy clothing isn't going to do much for you. By the end of being in a blizzard, you're wet and freezing. That's bad news for a zombie living or undead. Living zombies are going to sucumb to hypothermia rather swiftly.


Also, it could be very likely that half humanity is already infected, as per the very real Toxoplasma gondii parasite which actually affects approximately 50% of all human, and affect human and animal behaviour.

I don't know where you're getting those numbers but it's not the CDC or the WHO. Because they count it at an estimation of about 1/3rd the human population. While you're correct that Toxo has been linked to depression, schizophrenia OCD and even Brain Cancer the research is still out and being conducted to this day. So saying "It actually etc" when we still don't know with a shadow of a doubt...ya.

Not to mention that a generally healthy human being with a strong immune system can live with Toxo with no real health impact what so ever.


Also that a couple of weeks would be enough. After all, a Canadian scientist's study have shown it would take zombies 28 days to exterminate/spread the virus to 95% of humanity. Although the accuracy of this, too, is very doubtfully. (This later came to inspire the name of an movie and its sequal).

Ya, dubious scientific studies really don't cut the mustard.


Basically, for any of cracked's theories to be true we'd have to assume zombies breaks all laws of nature, in which case we cannot assume anything. Cracked are for crackhead theories...

Well, Cracked is a Humor Website so taking your scientific information from there as the LAW is a bad idea all over.



Why do we assume biting spreads the disease, when the creator of modern zombies himself (George A. Romeo) said that all humans were already infected.

And here we get to what I mentioned above. Romero (With an R) started with the animated dead Zombie. It's in the title of the first movie. It's in the title of all of Romero's movies. So saying "Well Romero" said while decrying the Undead Zombie archetype as unrealistic is rather silly don't you think? But lets look at what Romero actually says about the Infections in his movie shall we?


Romero's original Night of the Living Dead explains that an unknown phenomenon causes re-animation of the brain. Instead of being spread from person to person, the phenomenon presents itself in any human that has recently died from any cause (except those that destroy the physical structure of the brain). The first animated corpses appear in many locations simultaneously, quickly reaching pandemic levels. Characters speculate about the cause of the phenomenon; suggestions at various times include a spaceborne virus, divine punishment, radiation from a satellite returning from Venus, or that "there's no more room in Hell". While bites from these reanimated creatures are uniformly lethal, by mechanics unknown, death by other means would have the same result, so a bite is not necessary. It is suggested in Day of the Dead that the immediate amputation of bitten limbs may prevent victims from dying, but while the treatment is attempted, its success is never conclusively demonstrated. In George Romero's original Day of the Dead idea, a person was to have his bitten arm amputated, but still return as a zombie. Survival of the Dead shows that, in the rare instance of a living person biting the undead, that person will become infected. Many characters in films (including George Romero himself) have referred to the bitten area as the "infected area" or "infection".


So unless you've got a source that has evidence against ya know...the films themselves then Romero actually never has come out saying what it is over all. It's even odder considering that none of Romero's movies are sequels so him quantifying -every- zombie move he's ever made into a single reason...well...it seems unlikely to me without a source.


As for the biting...that's the common Zombie transmission system. It's not realistic. But hey, neither are zombies so what are you going to do?


Which would either suggest a airbourne disease or a parasite like Toxoplasma gondii.

It would, if the entire world was infected. That raises some questions in and of itself however. Like how we never noticed before the Zombie Apocolypse. The "Whole World is Infected" idea is even more laughable than undead Zombies. How long have people been infected? Like a week? Because doctors are going to start noticing when -every- one of their patiants start popping up with a strange infection or parasite that they've never seen before. It would make the news. It would be the -biggest- news other than Aliens coming down to Earth en mass or some religious event.


Also, I have to remind you that the zombie is not the predator, but the disease/parasite/whatever is the predator. And the zombie might mearly be a way to spread the host or speed up the infection process.

No, I don't think you understand. We, the humans, are the predators. We're the predators of zombies. We're also their food source. Parasite or not. We're what the Infection needs, healthy humans. We're also the main source of competition against the virus. The analogy Cracked used was rather apt. It'd be like fighting a lion every time you want a hamburger. We are better organized, more intelligent and better armed than the average zombie.



So, in summation. You said half the Cracked Article was "Bogus" or "Wrong". So from a realistic, still living zombie outbreak level would you mind going through the seven points and explain how they're "Bogus"? Keeping in mind however that the Cracked article isn't about "Realistic" zombies at all well. They're going off the Romero, shambling dead zombies.

1. Natural Predators

2. They Can't Take the Heat

3. They Can't Take the Cold

4. Biting is a Terrible Way to Spread Disease

5. They Can't Heal from Day to Day Damage

6. The Landscape is full of Zombie Proof Barriers

7. Weapons and the People who Use them

[Tergon]

The important thing is that these aren't Romero zombies, they are Solanum zombies. World War Z follows the rules laid out in The Zombie Survival Guide, Brooks' other zombie book set in the same universe, and he has extremely detailed notes laid out for how his zombies work. It's basically what you expect, standard zombie stuff, with a few exceptions.

One, Solanum is very specifically a virus transmitted by infected fluids. Most commonly saliva from a bite, but also infected tissue and blood spatter. Or, as was the case in a few major cities in World War Z, infected donated blood and organs in hospitals. So it's not Romero's "Any dead person becomes a zombie'; you have to have actually been infected with the virus. The problem is that if you're within touching distance of a zombie, infection is really easy.
Two, the virus is deadly. Any infected creature becomes horribly ill within hours of infection, suffers agonizing pain and necrosis, slips into a coma, and their organs shut down. Infected humans don't need these organs and become zombies, but any non-human infectee will die. This means there are no zombie predators, at all. No bugs, no animals, not even bacteria will attempt to eat a zombie, which slows the breakdown of the body immensely. Without the cells being broken down by bacteria, zombies don't rot, and can exist in their undead state for literally years.
Three, these zombies possess no unusual abilities, but they have all of the advantages of a human body with none of the weaknesses. They can hunt in perfect darkness using sound and scent far better than a human can, because they don't rely on their eyes as much as we do. They also never tire or get bored or feel pain, which makes them hard to keep out, because they'll just keep attacking the barrier until either it collapses or their bodies literally shut down from muscle degradation. As Brooks puts it, "Barricades that would stop three grown men have been known to eventually fall to a single determined zombie." After three hours of punching a wooden wall, your hand will hurt too much and you'll be too tired to keep punching. A zombie will do this for three days without difficulty, until the wall simply caves in.

There's other, relatively minor stuff as well, but if you're talking about how the zombies spread in World War Z you can't look at this like the Romero zombie. Those little differences change the rules more than you'd think. And remember, the outbreaks started in densely-populated third world regions, not Hometown USA. By the time the zombies started attacking the developed nations that could have controlled the threat, there were already millions of them.
I'm not saying all this makes the zombie uprising plausible, but if you're not doing Romero's policy of "All dead people in the world are now zombies, and there is no explanation", you generally go with the Zombie Virus explanation. Brooks has the best explanation for that wildly improbable scenario that I've ever seen, short of a deliberate release of the virus by someone who wanted the apocalypse to happen.

[Brother Oni]

Two, the virus is deadly. Any infected creature becomes horribly ill within hours of infection, suffers agonizing pain and necrosis, slips into a coma, and their organs shut down. Infected humans don't need these organs and become zombies, but any non-human infectee will die. This means there are no zombie predators, at all. No bugs, no animals, not even bacteria will attempt to eat a zombie, which slows the breakdown of the body immensely. Without the cells being broken down by bacteria, zombies don't rot, and can exist in their undead state for literally years.


I've not read the Zombie Survival Guide, but could I clarify that they suffer massive organ damage and tissue death prior to death, but afterwards their bodies enter some form of biological stasis, with the Solanum providing the energy for both locomotion and this stasis?

I assume that this Solanum also provides the reason why the zombies aren't attacked by wildlife and bugs?



They also never tire or get bored or feel pain, which makes them hard to keep out, because they'll just keep attacking the barrier until either it collapses or their bodies literally shut down from muscle degradation. As Brooks puts it, "Barricades that would stop three grown men have been known to eventually fall to a single determined zombie." After three hours of punching a wooden wall, your hand will hurt too much and you'll be too tired to keep punching. A zombie will do this for three days without difficulty, until the wall simply caves in.

And because of their biological stasis, the zombie doesn't have any broken bones and torn muscles from this? Or does the act of destroying the barricade also pretty much incapacitate the zombie in the process?

Note that pain is a warning sign that you're damaging your body through over-stressing it, so a zombie can keep up its superior physical capabilities for a while until it literally tears itself apart (presumably what you mean by muscle degradation). However this contradicts the biological stasis mentioned earlier, unless I'm mis-understanding what Solanum does.

[ThiagoMartell]

I've not read the Zombie Survival Guide, but could I clarify that they suffer massive organ damage and tissue death prior to death, but afterwards their bodies enter some form of biological stasis, with the Solanum providing the energy for both locomotion and this stasis?

I assume that this Solanum also provides the reason why the zombies aren't attacked by wildlife and bugs?
Yes, you should read Zombie Survival Guide.


And because of their biological stasis, the zombie doesn't have any broken bones and torn muscles from this? Or does the act of destroying the barricade also pretty much incapacitate the zombie in the process?

Note that pain is a warning sign that you're damaging your body through over-stressing it, so a zombie can keep up its superior physical capabilities for a while until it literally tears itself apart (presumably what you mean by muscle degradation). However this contradicts the biological stasis mentioned earlier, unless I'm mis-understanding what Solanum does.
Yes, you really should read Zombie Survival Guide.

[TechnoScrabble]

It looks like it'll be a as big a middle finger to the book as Starship Troopers was to its own book.

[The Glyphstone]

It looks like it'll be a as big a middle finger to the book as Starship Troopers was to its own book.

Worse. The ST Movie and Book were at least both satire, even if they ended up satirizing polar-opposite attitudes. WWZ is just a bland, film-by-numbers action flick using the WWZ mythos as window-dressing.

[Forum Explorer]

I confess I've never read World War Z but Max Brook's Zombie Survival Guide did show a lot of careful thought and research throughout.

No no it did not. Well perhaps careful thought but there are so many flaws throughout that book which suggests a total lack of research.

Like how much damage the human body can sustain and still be considered a threat. For example if you got shot in the arm and couldn't feel pain? You would be lucky to be able to move your arm correctly as the muscles would be torn up, worse by even trying the muscles get torn up more. If you could move your arm you wouldn't be very strong with it. It's not a matter of pain it's a matter of your muscle has a gaping hole in it.


*Why Zombies don't work.*

Exactly this post. Go read it.


I've not read the Zombie Survival Guide, but could I clarify that they suffer massive organ damage and tissue death prior to death, but afterwards their bodies enter some form of biological stasis, with the Solanum providing the energy for both locomotion and this stasis?

I assume that this Solanum also provides the reason why the zombies aren't attacked by wildlife and bugs?



And because of their biological stasis, the zombie doesn't have any broken bones and torn muscles from this? Or does the act of destroying the barricade also pretty much incapacitate the zombie in the process?

Note that pain is a warning sign that you're damaging your body through over-stressing it, so a zombie can keep up its superior physical capabilities for a while until it literally tears itself apart (presumably what you mean by muscle degradation). However this contradicts the biological stasis mentioned earlier, unless I'm mis-understanding what Solanum does.

Alright, Solarium basically makes them immune to rotting as wildlife naturally avoids them and they're poisonous to everything. Except humans. We zombify instead.

However it does not address the degradation that the human body naturally goes through every time you do well anything. As well as all the minor injuries that you get when you can't feel pain and lack the intelligence that slugs have.

So yeah they might take a while to rot but they will cripple themselves very fast just by not resting. Plus they are very easy to just walk away from. Hordes of zombies don't happen because they are hunting prey that are faster then them, smarter then them, possess tools and the ability to create barriers, and possess weapons that can easily destroy zombies.


The problem with Brooks is that he went out to make his zombies realistic and still an actual threat. Naturally he failed as I think that's pretty much impossible. But he didn't realize that he failed and that's the problem.

[Tergon]

Brooks addresses the decay of muscles and the zombie's inability to heal. As he puts it, "this allows for an all-powerful first attack, but results in progressively weaker zombies over time." Basically, a human doesn't put 100% into their attacks because they will feel pain or exhaustion, but a zombie does. This means a "fresh" zombie is terrifyingly strong and persistent, but the older a zombie is, the less of a threat it is. Still, if you're facing a horde of zombies and the eldest of them is less than a week old, that means you are proper buggered.

And yes, the Solanum is the reason why they don't decay. Flesh doesn't just vanish over time, after all; it breaks down and rots, largely because of bacteria, and most of these kinds of bacteria will stay away from infected flesh. The result is basically like treating the flesh with a preservative. Not all bacteria are repelled, which is why zombies do rot over time, but the process is much, much slower than with a non-animated corpse.

As for the rest of it, it's a recurring theme in both World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide. He tells the story of literally dozens of people who took on swarms of a hundred zombies and survived by simply not being an idiot - they found an elevated position where the zombies could not harm them, used their literal mindlessness against them, and wiped out the swarm with relatively little difficulty. Other stories also involved people simply escaping the zombies by not backing into a corner and standing still - if you can move outside the range of their senses, and they don't stumble across you by sheer luck after walking in the same direction for an hour, you can get away easily.
What it deconstructs is the sort of person who says, "Man, I'd kill those zombies by getting the semi-automatic I keep under my bed and blowing their heads off!" It deconstructs them by pointing out that the average person would find it hard to open fire on another person, even if that person was a zombie. It deconstructs them by pointing out that unless you knew for certain that person was a zombie, shooting them means you're a deranged psychopath, while that person could simply be unwell. It deconstructs them by pointing out that a 60-shot clip is wonderful if you can make every shot count and there are less than 61 zombies, but that if there is one more zombie than you have bullets for, or if you miss a single time in this high-pressure situation, you will die. And then after all of that, it deconstructs them literally by tearing them to pieces.

If World War Z is a parody or a sendup of anything, it's mocking the people who say, "But I could easily survive a zombie apocalypse!" by pointing out that no, you probably couldn't. You don't actually have those survival skills at hand, you don't have those tools at hand, and even if you do, there are ten thousand zombies and you'll be beaten by sheer numbers.

[Tebryn]

The body of the zombie is already succumbing to necrosis. It's rotting just from the virus itself. You seem to be missing the point. It doesn't matter what the books are "about", and reading them I certainly didn't get what you're getting, it's about Max Brook acting like he knows what he's talking about when he doesn't actually have a clue. That's the main sticking point.

[Forum Explorer]

Brooks addresses the decay of muscles and the zombie's inability to heal. As he puts it, "this allows for an all-powerful first attack, but results in progressively weaker zombies over time." Basically, a human doesn't put 100% into their attacks because they will feel pain or exhaustion, but a zombie does. This means a "fresh" zombie is terrifyingly strong and persistent, but the older a zombie is, the less of a threat it is. Still, if you're facing a horde of zombies and the eldest of them is less than a week old, that means you are proper buggered.


Oh hey I forgot that he actually mentioned it. Doesn't change anything though. I mean congrats for mentioning it but a failure at how fast you'd lose strength.

I mean have you ever worked a good 12-14 hour shift? By the end of it your feet are killing you and you're exhausted. And that's with breaks. Imagine if you never stopped standing and were constantly putting stress on your legs, pain aside I doubt you'd be able to move after a week, not just be slightly less strong. If you weren't healing from the stress that is, unless of course you were somebody who was very strong and used to such things. But then you are in the best condition to not become a zombie in the first place.

[Tergon]

With respect - Max Brooks may not know what he's talking about, but are you saying that you do? Dude's talking about a fictional zombie apocalypse. Nobody knows if what he's saying is true or not.

Yes, he uses outdated military tactics, and yes, he causes a contrived string of coincidences to make his story happen. This is a tactic that can also be seen in 99% of all stories ever. If the story was, "something happened exactly as expected and the results were in no way surprising" then it'd be a pretty lousy story, wouldn't it?
He takes artistic license. And yes, he runs with it further than he probably ought to. But so what? It makes for a fun story, and at least he does a better job of making it "real" than the 99% I mentioned above. He's made an effort, as opposed to Roland Emerich justifying the end of the world in 2012 because "The Neutrinos have mutated and they're heating up the planet!"
Max Brooks is attempting to justify a fictional, physically impossible phenomenon, and then stretch that into a global apocalypse, and we're splitting hairs because his fictional biology lesson isn't fictional enough?

Look, if you don't like the story, then that's fine; I respect that, and you as well. Nobody's saying you have to. But at this point in the conversation, this is like walking into a thread about whether Batman or Iron Man would win in a fight, and informing everyone that You guys are talking about fictional characters, this is pointless? Didn't you know they're not real? Of course we know that, but that doesn't mean the story isn't fun.
Essentially, I'm saying don't be that guy. You don't wanna be that guy. If you didn't like World War Z or thought it was badly done, that's fine; I just disagree.

[Tebryn]

With respect - Max Brooks may not know what he's talking about, but are you saying that you do? Dude's talking about a fictional zombie apocalypse. Nobody knows if what he's saying is true or not.

Really? No one knows whether or not what he's saying is true or not? I don't think so. You'd be right if the complaints were only on the Zombie bit but it's not. It's about the biology and the weapons and the survival and a whole ton of other things that he claimed to research. As to whether or not -I- personally know about all of what he's talking about...that's not really the point is it? I mean, I know enough to know Max Brooks is talking out his butt. But I'm not the one who wrote a series of books claiming I know what I'm talking about when I don't.

[Forum Explorer]

With respect - Max Brooks may not know what he's talking about, but are you saying that you do? Dude's talking about a fictional zombie apocalypse. Nobody knows if what he's saying is true or not.

Yes, he uses outdated military tactics, and yes, he causes a contrived string of coincidences to make his story happen. This is a tactic that can also be seen in 99% of all stories ever. If the story was, "something happened exactly as expected and the results were in no way surprising" then it'd be a pretty lousy story, wouldn't it?
He takes artistic license. And yes, he runs with it further than he probably ought to. But so what? It makes for a fun story, and at least he does a better job of making it "real" than the 99% I mentioned above. He's made an effort, as opposed to Roland Emerich justifying the end of the world in 2012 because "The Neutrinos have mutated and they're heating up the planet!"
Max Brooks is attempting to justify a fictional, physically impossible phenomenon, and then stretch that into a global apocalypse, and we're splitting hairs because his fictional biology lesson isn't fictional enough?

Look, if you don't like the story, then that's fine; I respect that, and you as well. Nobody's saying you have to. But at this point in the conversation, this is like walking into a thread about whether Batman or Iron Man would win in a fight, and informing everyone that You guys are talking about fictional characters, this is pointless? Didn't you know they're not real? Of course we know that, but that doesn't mean the story isn't fun.
Essentially, I'm saying don't be that guy. You don't wanna be that guy. If you didn't like World War Z or thought it was badly done, that's fine; I just disagree.

That's not the problem. If he had went with the classic of not explaining anything then it would be fine.

However he didn't and instead explained pretty much everything about the zombies. And by those rules they do not work. And by that I mean that they aren't a threat. Not for an End of the World scenario at least. I doubt they would be a threat even on the individual scale.

[Tergon]

Oh, okay, I get it. The problem is that Brooks claimed to be an expert on all these topics when the plot holes trip him up.

Just one question, then - where, exactly, does Brooks make those claims? I mean, I'm holding my copies of the books here. I found the bit where he thanks those who assisted with his research, and I found the bit where he openly acknowledges that not all of the tactics listed in his two books will play out the same way 100% of the time, and of course I found the bit where the book is listed as Fiction.
But judging on the comments in this thread, I'm forced to assume that in some copies of the book, there's a paragraph where Brooks says, "I have researched every possible way these scenarios would play out, and I have chosen the ones that will be correct 100% of the time. Everything I have said is completely real and true, no part of this has any artistic license whatsoever, and above all, I am a bona-fide expert on all of these subjects and therefore you must accept everything I have said as fact." And it's frustrating because, y'know, my copy of the book doesn't have that paragraph. If I could just get a page number, or..?

Or maybe (utterly crazy idea here), he did a lot of research on how these scenarios would play out, asked a lot of experts, did all the hard work people are lampshading here, and then picked and chose which parts he wanted to use in his story. Y'know, like every author who has ever written a fictional piece has done in the history of storytelling. And maybe he figured that since he was writing a fictional book about a fictional apocalypse caused by fictional monsters, a couple of plot holes in his scientific theory and military tactics didn't matter horribly much, and that hopefully the reader would just go along for the ride.
Oh, and maybe he also littered the book with in-jokes and lampshades, so that if a reader did pick up his book and thought "this is unrealistic", they'd catch those clever references of him essentially saying, "Yeah, of course it is, but so what? Just sit back and enjoy the show."

You can say that you don't like the story because Brooks claims to be an expert when he's not. And that'd be fine - if at any point he actually claimed to be an expert. Which as far as I can see, he does not! He tells the fictional story as it happened in his universe, and really that's his ballgame. We can't say, "No it didn't!" because it's his universe, so yes it did. And he says he did a lot of research, and I'm quite certain he did, but that doesn't mean that every printed detail is presented as the word of a professional and an expert quoting facts. It means he did some research and that is all it means. Whether or not he used any is completely irrelevant to the fact that he did it. As for the fact that it's unrealistic - it's a book about the zombie apocalypse. Of course it's bloody unrealistic.

If you don't like the book, that's fine! Then own up and just say that. It's opinion, nobody's gonna argue, you're allowed to not like it. But saying you don't like it because some outrageous fact is not 100% scientifically accurate when Brooks claimed it was... that's so far removed from the point of the story that you might as well be complaining that you hate the fact that the book is made of paper. It's got nothing to do with anything.

[ThiagoMartell]

That's not the problem. If he had went with the classic of not explaining anything then it would be fine.

However he didn't and instead explained pretty much everything about the zombies. And by those rules they do not work. And by that I mean that they aren't a threat. Not for an End of the World scenario at least. I doubt they would be a threat even on the individual scale.

Man, that's the whole point of the book. Tergon has said so several times. I'm forced to agree with him. If you don't like it, fine. Just don't be that guy.

[Tebryn]

Oh, okay, I get it. The problem is that Brooks claimed to be an expert on all these topics when the plot holes trip him up.

Just one question, then - where, exactly, does Brooks make those claims? I mean, I'm holding my copies of the books here. I found the bit where he thanks those who assisted with his research, and I found the bit where he openly acknowledges that not all of the tactics listed in his two books will play out the same way 100% of the time, and of course I found the bit where the book is listed as Fiction.
But judging on the comments in this thread, I'm forced to assume that in some copies of the book, there's a paragraph where Brooks says, "I have researched every possible way these scenarios would play out, and I have chosen the ones that will be correct 100% of the time. Everything I have said is completely real and true, no part of this has any artistic license whatsoever, and above all, I am a bona-fide expert on all of these subjects and therefore you must accept everything I have said as fact." And it's frustrating because, y'know, my copy of the book doesn't have that paragraph. If I could just get a page number, or..?

Or maybe (utterly crazy idea here), he did a lot of research on how these scenarios would play out, asked a lot of experts, did all the hard work people are lampshading here, and then picked and chose which parts he wanted to use in his story. Y'know, like every author who has ever written a fictional piece has done in the history of storytelling. And maybe he figured that since he was writing a fictional book about a fictional apocalypse caused by fictional monsters, a couple of plot holes in his scientific theory and military tactics didn't matter horribly much, and that hopefully the reader would just go along for the ride.
Oh, and maybe he also littered the book with in-jokes and lampshades, so that if a reader did pick up his book and thought "this is unrealistic", they'd catch those clever references of him essentially saying, "Yeah, of course it is, but so what? Just sit back and enjoy the show."

You can say that you don't like the story because Brooks claims to be an expert when he's not. And that'd be fine - if at any point he actually claimed to be an expert. Which as far as I can see, he does not! He tells the fictional story as it happened in his universe, and really that's his ballgame. We can't say, "No it didn't!" because it's his universe, so yes it did. And he says he did a lot of research, and I'm quite certain he did, but that doesn't mean that every printed detail is presented as the word of a professional and an expert quoting facts. It means he did some research and that is all it means. Whether or not he used any is completely irrelevant to the fact that he did it. As for the fact that it's unrealistic - it's a book about the zombie apocalypse. Of course it's bloody unrealistic.

If you don't like the book, that's fine! Then own up and just say that. It's opinion, nobody's gonna argue, you're allowed to not like it. But saying you don't like it because some outrageous fact is not 100% scientifically accurate when Brooks claimed it was... that's so far removed from the point of the story that you might as well be complaining that you hate the fact that the book is made of paper. It's got nothing to do with anything.

How's a one hour video about his writing style, realism and all the other stuff we're harping on. That good enough? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81VRiZLj47g)


And he says he did a lot of research, and I'm quite certain he did, but that doesn't mean that every printed detail is presented as the word of a professional and an expert quoting facts.

Hold up. You're asking us to point out where he claims he did research but you know here it is. Why do we have to do the leg work when you know that's the case? No one's said he claimed he was an expert. No one is saying that he's quoting facts. We're saying that if he did the research (and he may have) it's not implemented well. Or at all in some cases. That's the only argument. Your continued insistence of "Well, you don't like it and that's cool but own up to it being the real reason" is just silly. How often do people have to say "The level of research isn't reflected in the writing. And that's our problem" for you to understand that's all we're saying? No one here has some vendetta against the guy. He's a very funny public speaker. He's passionate about the subject he's writing about and it shows. But his grasp on what weapons actually do to the body or how things decay or any other number of things is lacking. And that would be FINE were it not for his insistence that he wants to inject realism into his work.

It's his attempts to make the world plausible and realistic where his work breaks down and makes reading his books an utterly. His world isn't realistic. And sure, you can say "But it's a Zombie Story! It doesn't need to be Realistic" but ya know, the author disagrees with you. On a lot of points. He hates "Brain Eating Zombies" because it's not realistic. He's gone so far as calling Return of the Living Dead the Song of the South of Zombie movies. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gSJtFGNZG8)Strong words, albeit amusing. But it speaks volumes about the man and his general level of study on the subject. Universities don't just let anyone go and give talks after all.

[Killer Angel]

Here's the difference: zeds add exactly nothing to the equation.

They are literally the oldest conceivable army in existence, unorganized, unarmored, unarmed, infantry. What's going to happen when an a zed comes up against a position with an M2, one of the most dirt common machine guns in the world? Something probably not unlike what happens to this watermelon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tTAYFSnRW4), only worse because that was just a rifle not automatic machine gun fire. And that's only the ground floor of what the weapons we have are capable of.

Well, the setup, the new variable in the equation, is that zombies don't react as a watermelon, you fire them and obtain little to nothing.
We can reason on the fact that they should be shredded to pieces, but it's a fiction work. Zombies got the powers the author gives them.
The first part of the book is more about the mistakes done while dealing with the situation, and those mistakes are human flaws.

[Forum Explorer]

Man, that's the whole point of the book. Tergon has said so several times. I'm forced to agree with him. If you don't like it, fine. Just don't be that guy.

Wait the point is that the zombies aren't an actual threat? Or am I misunderstanding your point?

[Killer Angel]

But his grasp on what weapons actually do to the body or how things decay or any other number of things is lacking. And that would be FINE were it not for his insistence that he wants to inject realism into his work.

It's his attempts to make the world plausible and realistic where his work breaks down and makes reading his books an utterly. His world isn't realistic. And sure, you can say "But it's a Zombie Story! It doesn't need to be Realistic" but ya know, the author disagrees with you.

I can't argue too much with this.
So, I suppose I should consider myself lucky (i'm not sarcastic), for the fact that I'm still considering WWZ a "zombie Story that doesn't need to be realistic", despite the author's intention. My suspension of disbelief was settled with a high level of tolerance, in this specific case.

[ThiagoMartell]

Wait the point is that the zombies aren't an actual threat? Or am I misunderstanding your point?
Pretty much, yeah.

[Tergon]

...How often do people have to say "The level of research isn't reflected in the writing. And that's our problem" for you to understand that's all we're saying? No one here has some vendetta against the guy. He's a very funny public speaker. He's passionate about the subject he's writing about and it shows. But his grasp on what weapons actually do to the body or how things decay or any other number of things is lacking. And that would be FINE were it not for his insistence that he wants to inject realism into his work.

Well, saying it once might be helpful.

Seriously, go back over this thread. People said that the US Army losing to a million zombies was absurd; I said it might not be. It was brought up that the zombies' biology doesn't make sense; I summed up the Solanum "rules" to try and help make it clear. And over and over and over again, people said that they disliked the way that Max Brooks "claimed to be an expert" despite the fact that he has "clearly not done any research at all", both of which are complete lies.
At no point in the discussion did anyone put it as simply, or as reasonably as you just did. And you want to know what? I can agree with it, the way you just said it. Max Brooks is a clever man, and he did do a lot of research, and he never proclaimed himself an expert on everything, but he got some stuff wrong when he wrote his story. The difference is that I quite liked the story despite that, and you apparently did not. And that's fine, because as I've been saying this whole time, I can respect a difference of opinion. I just felt the need to defend a story I like, and an author I respect, against some legitimately insulting digs that were being taken at him.

So y'know, sure. You're right, I agree. White flag waving, here, and all it took was for someone to actually say their argument in a way that wasn't nonsense.

[SoC175]

After three hours of punching a wooden wall, your hand will hurt too much and you'll be too tired to keep punching. A zombie will do this for three days without difficulty, until the wall simply caves in.
Except that the zombie would cave in much sooner. Pain is a warning sign for damage. Even if the zombie is ignoring the pain, he still suffers the damage. His hand will give in long before the wall and long before the third day

Brooks addresses the decay of muscles and the zombie's inability to heal. Yes, but he's completely wrong with his assumptions about it

Yes, he uses outdated military tactics, The issue is that even these outdated military tactic would have worked. He not only uses that tactic to make it happen, he also ignoring the results of using that tactic to make it happen. Even if the infanterie flees and the vehicles run out of bullets, zombies are no threat to an IFV or MBT, even if they swarm over the vehicles while they mash zombies underneath them, these zombies who managed to climb all over them couldn't crack them open. After driving over enough zombies they could just drive to somewhere and have the zombies being cleaned off with no danger to the crew at all.

[GloatingSwine]

The issue is that even these outdated military tactic would have worked. He not only uses that tactic to make it happen, he also ignoring the results of using that tactic to make it happen. Even if the infanterie flees and the vehicles run out of bullets, zombies are no threat to an IFV or MBT, even if they swarm over the vehicles while they mash zombies underneath them, these zombies who managed to climb all over them couldn't crack them open. After driving over enough zombies they could just drive to somewhere and have the zombies being cleaned off with no danger to the crew at all.

MBTs nothing. The US army has 80,000 or so M113 APCs, they weigh 12 tons, will make 40mph, and have an operational range of 300 miles.

Line them up, pick a direction, and drive. Zombie problem solved..

[GloatingSwine]

At no point in the discussion did anyone put it as simply, or as reasonably as you just did. And you want to know what? I can agree with it, the way you just said it. Max Brooks is a clever man, and he did do a lot of research, and he never proclaimed himself an expert on everything, but he got some stuff wrong when he wrote his story.


The problem people have is that, well, the thing he got wrong was the story.

It's like doing a jigsaw when you've got the wrong pieces, you can try and force them to join up, but people will notice that the picture looks wrong.

A really clever person would have realised that zombies are too crap to work in an apocalypse scenario (especially in open combat with modern military forces) and not written that, because the jigsaw simply cannot be put together with those pieces, they don't fit together.

That's why Mira Grant's Newsflesh books are probably the cleverest zombie fiction, because the zombies aren't the story, the story just happens in a world where there are zombies (and Kellis-Amberlee zombies had far more advantages than Solanum ones, 100% infection rate of all mammals, fast mutation rate, active conversion in any mammal over 40lbs bodyweight on either death or contact with live state virus, that means that everyone is going to turn when they die, every mammal is a potential vector, and the Rising was still put down in a few months because zombies are crap, but it's ancient history to the characters of the books. Also, zombie bears).

Hell, even Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is better, and that's a book where the joke is basically over when you've read the title, because the book itself is basically just Pride and Prejudice, the zombies are an incidental problem that society just gets on and deals with, just as they should be.

Zombies are rubbish, you can't write a story about them beating modern military and have it work without having the zombies be actively magical or having Romero style spontaneous and arbitrary conversion (Even Highschool of the Dead does better, and that's a zombie pantsu show, as it's arbitrary conversion so the military is instantly composed of 33% zombies because they spontaneously convert, and they still get their **** together and sort things out).

[HandofShadows]

Oh, okay, I get it. The problem is that Brooks claimed to be an expert on all these topics when the plot holes trip him up.


They are not plot holes. They are plot PITS. I mean the laws of *physics* get ignored as well as those of biology. He tried to make a real world explanation something that does not work and expects people to buy it. It's really an insult to peoples inteligence. As someone else said if he had not tried to push a BS explaination the story would have been better as it destroyed the needed suspension of belief. The more a story clashes with itself the worse a story will be.

[North_Ranger]

MBTs nothing. The US army has 80,000 or so M113 APCs, they weigh 12 tons, will make 40mph, and have an operational range of 300 miles.

Line them up, pick a direction, and drive. Zombie problem solved..

Until the zombies stop standing around in nice, runoverable groups... or until you run out of fuel. 'Cause brother, those things suck fuel like a sponge.

[North_Ranger]

Okay, first things first. I liked World War Z. Don't start asking me about the Too Dumb to Live generals who thought Yonkers was a good idea, or the biology of Solanum or how feasible that is. For me, the zombie genre has never been about the zombies. It's about people and how they - as persons, as groups, as societies, as a species - function or fail to function in the face of overwhelming odds, in a world where we're no longer the apex predator and the king of the hill.

In that sense, I believe WWZ works, because barring the most obvious too-cool-to-be-real characters (I'm looking at you, blind gardener!), the book introduces the reader to a large variety of human responses. There's those who try to profit from it, those who try to escape it, those who make horrible decisions (both failures and for the greater good), those who fight back... The book lampshades zombie movies and makes fun of various people and pop culture phenomena, suggesting how these things and people might react if the dead started chewing on the living.

It's a book about people and how they lived through World War Z, much as Brooks's inspiration was a book about people living through the Second World War. It touches on desperation, panic, determination and the bittersweet sensation of victory in a world that will never be the same. Does it go over the top at times? Yes. Does that diminish my enjoyment of the book? No. I enjoyed the book's building of atmosphere and the play between different points of view, and that was what I thought the more interesting and important part of the novel. Not graphs on how many ways a zombie couldn't work in the real world.

Which is why I am so goddamn disappointed and frankly pissed off about the trailer. It takes what was a touching and very different take on the zombie genre, and turns it into Just Another Zombie Movie with Nuclear Family Values, Part CLXVIII. I'm even more miffed about this having heard that there was an older script that followed the book more closely, making it more of a documentary-style piece of fiction that would have had a fair chance at the Oscars - but instead we get Just Another Zombie Movie etc. It will probably be about as touching as a piece of head cheese, but it will rake in the cash by the truckload.

Frickin' Hollywood...

[GloatingSwine]

Until the zombies stop standing around in nice, runoverable groups... or until you run out of fuel. 'Cause brother, those things suck fuel like a sponge.

The thing about zombies is, well, they're zombies. They'll only stop standing around in nice runoverable groups when there aren't enough of them left to. They're not capable of adapting to enemy tactics because they're dead.

That's another element that makes any military vs. zombies story not work except as a crushing defeat of zombies, because they're literally 100% predictable in all situations.

[Forum Explorer]

Pretty much, yeah.

I didn't get that impression but I honestly like that idea more.

[Tebryn]

Well, saying it once might be helpful.

Seriously, go back over this thread. People said that the US Army losing to a million zombies was absurd; I said it might not be. It was brought up that the zombies' biology doesn't make sense; I summed up the Solanum "rules" to try and help make it clear. And over and over and over again, people said that they disliked the way that Max Brooks "claimed to be an expert" despite the fact that he has "clearly not done any research at all", both of which are complete lies.
At no point in the discussion did anyone put it as simply, or as reasonably as you just did. And you want to know what? I can agree with it, the way you just said it. Max Brooks is a clever man, and he did do a lot of research, and he never proclaimed himself an expert on everything, but he got some stuff wrong when he wrote his story. The difference is that I quite liked the story despite that, and you apparently did not. And that's fine, because as I've been saying this whole time, I can respect a difference of opinion. I just felt the need to defend a story I like, and an author I respect, against some legitimately insulting digs that were being taken at him.

So y'know, sure. You're right, I agree. White flag waving, here, and all it took was for someone to actually say their argument in a way that wasn't nonsense.

I actually CRTL+F'd the entire thread for the word Expert, Master and a few other synonyms and the only person that's used any of the words is you. I hate to do it but it's time to call a spade a spade. You've been straw manning us this entire time. No one has said that Max Brooks has claimed he's an expert.

[SoC175]

Until the zombies stop standing around in nice, runoverable groups By then you have thinned the herd so much that it's just cleaning the leftovers.

... or until you run out of fuel. 'Cause brother, those things suck fuel like a sponge.300 miles operational range. Just go back to base to load up on fuel every 200 miles of driving over zombies.

If you make the misstake and end up with no fuel, just stay inside the vehicle which the zombies can't breach and wait for extraction.

[HandofShadows]

Really you odn't even have to use military equipment. Go to a construction site, put some steel to protect the driver/vital areas and go to town. A steam roller would do great and even a combine harvester might be usefull.

[Somebloke]

I appreciate that the discussion has moved on, but here goes:

I can appreciate the decisions they have made, even if I really enjoyed the original book- I believe that I am going to watch this movie, and may well enjoy it, on it's own merits.

In a so-bad-it's-good kinds of way.

As opposed to the original zombies from the book, I can see the super-fast zombies being a serious threat, if not a world-ending one- while they are easily killed by the sort of weapons described here, the fact that they would be found- and could spread horribly fast- in an urban environment means that even if they would lose a traditional battle, they would cause incalculable loss to the civilian population before a major military campaign could be mounted.

The sheer speed of the things, as well as their ferocity, means that there numbers would climb very quickly- your average joe and jane would simply not be able to cope. Hell, in an urban battle, it would be even odds.

Pity about Brad Pitt. But I can live with that.

If this film manages to be to the zombie theme what 'Battle:LA' was to the alien invasion theme, then I will enjoy the movie, at least the first time around.

[Tiki Snakes]

Having carefully read both sides of the argument here and considered the points that have been eloquently made, I feel I can come to a solid conclusion on my previous statement.


It's unbelievable because the explanation boils down to one of two things;
Magically immune zombies laughing off machinegun and tank fire or the military simply forgetting to bring enough ammunition.

This is incorrect.
The battle of Yonkers goes the way it does because of Magically Immune Zombies AND the military forgetting to bring enough ammunition. Fair enough. :smallsmile:

It would have been interesting to see it all played out more closely to the book. I'm not sure it would have translated very favourably, admittedly. There's a good chance it would simply have served to highlight the flaws. Though, the zombie-ooze crowd thing is kind of hilarious, so I'm not sure they've necessarily solved that problem as much as replaced it with a new and entertaining problem.

[Silverraptor]

I must admit, I have not read World War Z, but I wanted to. I just have to ask one thing. Are the zombies in the book mindless and slow like classical zombies (As opposed to this rage virus part-liquid flowing zombies that were portrayed in the trailer)? The reason I ask because when I saw the book that one of my friends was reading at the time, the zombie had a helmet and was carrying an automatic weapon in his hands and I think my friend said the zombies evolved over time to get intellegence to use weaponry or stuff like that. I may be mixing up my friends who told me this (I have dozens of friends into zombies, so I know alot about the different kinds because of this), but is this what happens in the Book World War Z?

Just curious.

[Tiki Snakes]

No, they stay slow shambling and stupid in World War Z by Max Brooks. Whether there are similarly named books with gun-toting zombies, I couldn't begin to guess.

[thubby]

seems like a typical popcorn movie. why all the hate?

to the discussion of zombie killing. we have an entire arsenal of weapons that are illegal to use on human beings because they cause too much pain and suffering

this is the list populated by flamethrowers, hollow point bullets, white phosphorous, and chemical agents that can literally melt flesh.

there are others, but these are notable for causing excessive tissue damage. zombies without flesh cant move. :smallwink:
blinding lasers are banned by various conventions, but they too would be great against zombies.

[The Glyphstone]

seems like a typical popcorn movie. why all the hate?

to the discussion of zombie killing. we have an entire arsenal of weapons that are illegal to use on human beings because they cause too much pain and suffering

this is the list populated by flamethrowers, hollow point bullets, white phosphorous, and chemical agents that can literally melt flesh.

there are others, but these are notable for causing excessive tissue damage. zombies without flesh cant move. :smallwink:
blinding lasers are banned by various conventions, but they too would be great against zombies.

Because it's a waste of an amazing intellectual property. If it was called 'Zombie Assault 2012' or 'New York Vs. Zombies', or 'When Zombies Attack', it'd be a decent popcorn movie. But by calling it 'World War Z: The Movie' and making a generic zombie movie, it means a movie actually faithful to the book will likely never get made.

[Inglenook]

The movie might look passable if only it had a different name.

I appear to be in the minority in this thread, but I actually liked the book. :smalleek: I thought the vignettes were well done, although some were certainly more interesting than others.

[Killer Angel]

All in all, if I had to choose a zombie movie, I would rather see this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DExlXcU20U).

[ThiagoMartell]

The movie might look passable if only it had a different name.

I appear to be in the minority in this thread, but I actually liked the book. :smalleek: I thought the vignettes were well done, although some were certainly more interesting than others.

As far as I noticed, only 2 posters in the thread did not like the book.

[polity4life]

I really enjoyed Brooks' pieces of fiction meant solely to entertain in spite of itself or what anyone thought of it, with no regard given to his assertions on the genre because I don't care about his assertions on the genre. He made an entertaining, though inconsistent, universe in which an interpretation of zombies exist and pose superficially plausible problems for humanity. I think that's where the buck stops for a lot of people but I could be wrong.

Given that, it is a bummer that this movie has all of the trappings of a bad box office blockbuster with little attention given to the source material. That trailer seriously looked like the trailer to 2012. :smalleek: I suppose I shouldn't have expected more considering the ridiculous production issues that have taken this project off the rails time and time again.

[Scowling Dragon]

Well the stupid things of the book aside, its a shame that a neat idea was shoved aside for the same old shtick.

[Brother Oni]

Universities don't just let anyone go and give talks after all.

*Cough* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsh1Ej2ADA4&feature=g-all-f) :smalltongue:

[Sneaky Weasel]

Well, this is a bit depressing. Not entirely unexpected, though. I heard that WWZ was in production a while ago, and I was somewhat skeptical that it would be true to the book. It looks like my fears were entirely justified.:smallfrown:

That said, I actually think the movie looked pretty awesome in the trailer. I love zombie movies, and this one has the potential to be good. But it's not WWZ, and they shouldn't call it that! When I see it, I'll try to think of it as A Zombie Movie, not World War Z. Because otherwise I'll be horribly disappointed.

[Tebryn]

*Cough* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsh1Ej2ADA4&feature=g-all-f) :smalltongue:

What? PSY isn't a nobody. He's working with Ban Ki Moon. Sure, he's an entertainer but his talk is about success and music and a ton of other things he actually knows about. So...ya. Not sure what your point is. This is exactly the kind of talk college age kids need.

[Brother Oni]

What? PSY isn't a nobody. He's working with Ban Ki Moon. Sure, he's an entertainer but his talk is about success and music and a ton of other things he actually knows about. So...ya. Not sure what your point is. This is exactly the kind of talk college age kids need.

I was attempting to refute your implication that universities only permitted well learned and academically renowned people to give talks.

Not to belittle Psy's accomplishments (I agree that he's exactly the sort of person that uni students, especially English ones, would go listen to), but his biggest success to date has been what was originally intended to be a novelty record.
I don't remember Los del Rio, best known for the Macarena, going on college speaking tours. :smalltongue:

[Tebryn]

That wasn't my point though. My point was that they don't let every Jim, Bob and Harry give talks at University. You have to have accomplished something to get up and talk to potentially tens of thousands of students.

[Hawriel]

Just watched the trailer. It just did not make sense to me. Zombie land and dawn of the dead had viral super human rabies plague zombies and it made sense. Particularly with the populations of cities and what not. This is just a bunch of CGI created zombies that kept on multiplying with no rime or reason.

Now if this movie was about super mutant army ants the size of people this would totally make sense. Think Them but with bigger ants.

Granted I'm just going on the images I saw in the trailer. Ants would be cool and I can see how the movie would play out. This is just crap.

[Killer Angel]

Just watched the trailer. It just did not make sense to me. Zombie land and dawn of the dead had viral super human rabies plague zombies and it made sense. Particularly with the populations of cities and what not. This is just a bunch of CGI created zombies that kept on multiplying with no rime or reason.

Now if this movie was about super mutant army ants the size of people this would totally make sense.

mmm...
Maybe WWZ stands for WWantZ? and the CGI is made by Dreamworks?

[Ceridan]

Your first objection:
Zombies are immune to a good amount of effect of tank's fire. It is explained why as part of the setting. In media, some zombies are fast, some are intellingent, some got superpowers. Brooks' ones are particulary resilient to bombing. It's simple as that.
BTW, the previous version of the official NATO cal, received criticism for the poor performance of the bullet on target, especially the first-shot kill rate when the muzzle velocity of the firearms used and the downrange bullet deceleration didn't achieve the minimally required terminal velocity at the target to cause fragmentation. This failure also occured when the bullets passed through only minimal tissue, such as a limb or the torso of a small individual (or a zombie with poor muscolar tissue, I would add), as the bullet may exit the body before it has a chance to yaw and fragment.

Your second objection:
Military with problems with ammo, facing great number of enemies? It already happened (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana#Reasons_for_the_British_defea t).

Possible, but you seem to have willfully forgotten Rouke Drift which happened on the heel of that battle. A company of the same British Regiment that had been decimated held off the same Zulu army by itself form a fortified position.

So, all the US army would need would be to overturn a number of cars, or just use their tanks, to block the streets. Ammo can be flown in by air and all the grunts have to do is shoot.

[The Glyphstone]

Possible, but you seem to have willfully forgotten Rouke Drift which happened on the heel of that battle. A company of the same British Regiment that had been decimated held off the same Zulu army by itself form a fortified position.

So, all the US army would need would be to overturn a number of cars, or just use their tanks, to block the streets. Ammo can be flown in by air and all the grunts have to do is shoot.

Isn't that the one they made the movie about?

[Ceridan]

Isn't that the one they made the movie about?

They made a movie about each.

Rorke's Drift: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058777/
Isandlwana: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080180/

[The Glyphstone]

They made a movie about each.

Rorke's Drift: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058777/
Isandlwana: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080180/

Huh. I'd only ever seen Zulu, I didn't know Zulu Dawn existed.

[Killer Angel]

Possible, but you seem to have willfully forgotten Rouke Drift which happened on the heel of that battle. A company of the same British Regiment that had been decimated held off the same Zulu army by itself form a fortified position.

So, all the US army would need would be to overturn a number of cars, or just use their tanks, to block the streets. Ammo can be flown in by air and all the grunts have to do is shoot.

Well, if truth must be said, I willfully ignored it, because (imo) it was not the point. I’m perfectly aware that we can have many Rorke's Drift… my point was that you can still have one Isandlwana. Yonkers is about Isandlwana, so, from this PoV, is plausible (sort of). But then, we should have plenty of successful Rorke's Drift. :smallwink:


Huh. I'd only ever seen Zulu, I didn't know Zulu Dawn existed.

I recommend it.

EDIT:
Now, a light note.


A company of the same British Regiment that had been decimated held off the same Zulu army by itself form a fortified position.
So, all the US army would need would be to overturn a number of cars, or just use their tanks, to block the streets.

But they're US army! not English! :smalltongue:
to cite Darths and Droids:
If attempting to defend an impossible position with bowmen and knights on foot against Genoese crossbowmen and tens of thousands of armoured, mounted knights, make sure you are heavily outnumbered.
If attempting to repel a force of cavalry and men-at-arms with longbowmen on St Crispin's Day, make sure you are vastly outnumbered.
If defending a hospital stockade against Zulus, make sure you are enormously outnumbered.

If you face an overwhelming force with a paltry number of defenders, make sure the defenders are English! :smallbiggrin:

[Brother Oni]

If you face an overwhelming force with a paltry number of defenders, make sure the defenders are English! :smallbiggrin:

Actually that quirk of the British Army was picked up in a German assessment of our forces during WW2 - good quality equipment and training, tenacious in defence, poorly led.

[comicshorse]

"The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office"

George Bernard Shaw

[pita]

The trailer looks stupid. Zombies can't run, their legs would break.

[GloatingSwine]

Well, fresh zombies could run.

But a key element of zombie fiction is that they don't repair damage the way living people do, and what most people forget is that using your muscles to any degree actually damages them (which is why people who do bodybuilding eat lots of protein and build in rest periods to allow their bodies to rebuild damaged muscle), so a zombie which runs around is eventually just going to cripple itself even without any obvious external damage, because the muscle fibers are too torn and useless to do any actual work.

[Killer Angel]

"The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office"

George Bernard Shaw

:smallbiggrin:

BTW, isn't GBS the one who said "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing"?
It's one of the best quotes for all roleplayers!