History Headscratchers / WorldWarZ

** Saying that the military is uneducated about fighting zombies is like saying the US navy in uneducated about fighting wooden frigates. Technically true but irrelevant since actual soldiers, or even actual insurgents are far, far tougher to kill. Over confidence is one thing, balls to the wall idiocy is another. An overconfident commander overextending himself and getting flanked is understandable. An overconfident tank commander getting his company blown up after entering a city without infantry support is understandable. A command capable of getting high tech equipment and air support failing to contain a group of shambling unintelligent enemies is populated with complete and utter idiots. Since when is the brain immune to concussive force from artillery? Food for thought: You know why infantrymen were issued helmets in WWI? Not to stop rifle bullets since they weren't strong enough to do so at regular combat ranges but to protect soldiers from artillery, since the head is the most likely part to get hit by shrapnel from air burst munitions. The zombies being tightly packed would make them vulnerable to artillery and bombs, plus it would allow more powerful weapons like 50 cals and 20mm cannons to take out multiple enemies with one bullet. And not you do not have to take out the head to neutralize the zombies, a zombies that has been expose to enough fire will simply fall apart. Plus, if the first rank of zombies falls, the next rank will have trouble going over them and so on until a literal wall of bodies have been formed.

** The superior durability of a zombie compared to a human isn't a very good excuse, since humans have a very big advantage over zombies in this kind of situation. They don't stand shoulder to shoulder by the thousands and they scatter and take cover once shelling starts. Being able to take X times more shrapnel to kill isn't much use when it comes with the side effect that you're 5-10X times more likely to get hit.

** "If this is a "publicity battle" then why are the military units under supplied?" Because the military wasn't planning on their troops having to do anything other than mop up survivors. THis isn't the first time a military has underestimated how the tide of battle would turn and paid for it. Read the chapter again; the plan was that the zombies would be almost completely destroyed by artilary, with the troops on the ground only having to mop up stragglers. From that perspective the troops on the ground had enough ammo forwhat they were intended to do, why give them all the ammo in "an insanely large area" when they wouldn't use it while other fronts could need it? Again, the military plan was to kill most zombies long before they got within firing range of the troops, so pretty much everything that bugs the OT is accounted for. "Men in trenches?" Vast overstatement of what actually happened. "Barbed wire and deep pits?" Overconfidence, they planned on the zombies being eliminated from long range. The "insane troll logic" idea that zombies would suffer less damage from a MLRS barrage when clustered together? Conviential weapons are designed to kill through shock, blood loss, concussive force, etc. etc. Zombies can only be killed by brain damage. The problem was that while plenty of zombies were killed in the barrages, there were plenty more who only suffered damage to their limbs or torsos, which at most reduced them to crawling. With all the zombies packed so tightly it also meant that each zombie effectively acted as a shield for the one behind it. And finally, they were fighting the entire zombified population of New York, several million zombies in fact, and they had to stop the great panic by showing they had the situation under control. So in short, overconfidence in the effectiveness of their artillery, a need to show the world (which at this point is in a state of near-complete anarchy and terror) that they could control the situation, and a lack of understanding how zombies work combined with the fact that everything they had and trained for was dealing with human enemies.

** Surely the whole point of Yonkers is not just that the men are undersupplied, but that they're undersupplied in the things they ended up needing? The military have prepared this whole 'shock and awe' thing without having fully thought it through, and it comes back to bite them. Furthermore, Yonkers initially looks like a success -- they wipe out a whole load of zombies in the first go -- but no one's considered the possibility that more and more and more might keep coming?

*** Yes, but in nations such as Australia where the official Head of State is a monarch and not a president, such rooms are generally referred to as the 'royal suite'. As such rooms are usually called in Australia.

** Just imagine the way the real world military would react to a zombie attack. They're incredibly undereducated about zombies, especially the older commanding officers who weren't exposed to the fiction around them. The man telling the story about Yonkers is just a soldier. He had no control over the strategies and tactics of the battle, which is probably why he complained about it the whole time he told the story. The operation at Yonkers was just put together horribly from overconfident military leaders and an undereducated population. Hindsight's 20/20, right?

*** Yes, but in nations where the Head of State is a monarch and not a president, such rooms are generally referred to as the 'royal suite'. As such rooms are usually called in Australia.

*** Yes, but in nations where the Head of State is a monarch and not a president, such rooms are generally referred to as the 'royal suite'.

* The explanation for the battle of Yonkers is total crap. If this is a "publicity battle" then why are the military units under supplied? Every single scrap of ammo should have been removed from every installation in an insanely large area to supply such an important propaganda battle. Since when are men in frigging trenches a decent propaganda image? The media outgrew such a conception after world war I. Massive artillery salvos, and bombing runs are a much better propaganda image today. Why are MLRS salvos being wasted on a few dozen zombies that can be dispatched by riflemen. Why are do zombies, in a bizarre twist of insane troll logic, suffer less casualties from an MLRS barrage when they cluster together. Why weren't barbed wire and deep ditches, two insanely simple and to zombies nearly insurmountable obstacles, not deployed? They weren't given enough time? Utter crap, as they managed to find all the showoffy ECM vehicles and such. The battle of Yonkers is completely unrealistic and there is no way it could have happened liked that.

* The explanation for the battle of Yonkers is total crap. If this is a "publicity battle" then why are the military units under supplied? Every single scrap of ammo should have been removed from every installation in an insanely large area to supply such an important propaganda battle. Since when are men in frigging trenches a decent propaganda image? The media outgrew such a conception after world war I. Massive artillery salvos, and bombing runs are a much better propaganda image today. Why are MLRS salvos being wasted on a few dozen zombies that can be dispatched by riflemen. Why are do zombies, in a bizarre twist of insane troll logic, suffer less casualties from an MLRS barrage when they cluster together. Why weren't barbed wire and deep ditches two insanely simply and to zombies nearly insurmountable obstacles not deployed? They weren't given enough time? Utter crap, as they managed to find all the showoffy ECM vehicles and such. The battle of Yonkers is completely unrealistic and there is no way it could have happened liked that.

** That's an incredible simplification of it. You're completely neglecting the sheer ignorance (nobody knew about it, ergo nobody knew to watch out for it) and denial (What, me, infected? You must be joking.) ...In fact, aren't there huge portions of the book dedicated to explaining ''exactly how'' it spread so much?

** The book ''does''say the Aussie government moved to Tasmania, same chapter.

* I don't get how this disease managed to get worldwide. It moved through human bites, and organ transplants, with a 24 hour incubation - but that still doesn't add up for me how this disease managed to get global.

*** They ''did''. Militarily, Yonkers was a defeat but not a disaster. But it was a devastating blow to morale and public relations. I got the impression that the zombies didn't actually do all that much damage; sure, there were a handful of people killed by zombies, but most of it was panic. I only recall there being one description of someone being killed by zombies (which were explicitly said to have not been from the main horde), while most of the chapter talks about soldiers accidentally shooting the living instead of the dead, tanks crushing other vehicles while they retreat, helicopters colliding in midair or crashing while trying to chop zombies up with their rotor, etc. The point was that the military itself wasn't immune to the Great Panic. They were supposed to stand up and show everyone that they had things under control, but they hadn't themselves really figured out how to deal with the zombies yet (contrast Yonkers' obsession with technology to Hope's focus on ''people''), so when things didn't go as planned, the military collapsed and ran away in confusion.

** Honestly, there's only one way to describe the battle of Yonkers: Max Brooks had to show the military trying and failing to stop the zombie horde, and there was just no logical way to do that. He had them do every absurdly idiotic thing he could possibly think of and it still didn't make sense how the battle turned out as a disaster. How did the soldiers not just walk away when the zombie horde got close?

** Honestly, there's only one way to describe the battle of Yonkers: Max Brooks had to show the military trying and failing to stop the zombie horde, and there was just no logical way to do that. He had them do every absurdly idiotic thing he could possibly think of and it still didn't make sense how the battle turned out as a disaster. How did the soldiers not just walk away when the zombie horde got close?

** What about the caliber of said ammo? [[IHaveThisFriend I have this friend]] that used to go to sites with graphical war pictures and [[IHaveThisFriend he]] told me that firing a high caliber weapon into a mass of bodies will rip the bodies apart. Even armored bodies.

** What about the caliber of said ammo? [[IHaveThisFriend I have this friend]] that used to go to sites with graphical war pictures and [[IHaveAFriend he]] told me that firing a high caliber weapon into a mass of bodies will rip the bodies apart. Even armored bodies.

*** Agreed. They expected the zombies to break and run (well, shamble away) after large numbers of them had been 'killed'. They weren't anticipating having to destroy every last one of them. Plus, the Army wasn't given that much preparation time and they had to go into battle with whatever ammo they could get to the front line, however unsuitable.