Could the World Ever be Cleansed?

[Severus Snape]

I was reading through another topic, and a thought occurred to me that I'd like to ask if people have an opinion on. The question:

Can the world ever be cleansed of the zombie threat?

Assume that there are pockets of survivors out there, and they are working their hardest to stay alive. That involves, at the very least, some contact with zed and his family. And that contact can only end in one of 3 ways: Survivors kill zombies, zombies kill survivors, or survivors escape to safety. But even in the last scenario, some zombies or survivors might be killed.

If enough survivors got together and started cleaning out small pockets of zombies, concentrating in one area - say, rural Wisconsin, or rural Nebraska - could it conceivably be possible that more and more survivors will show up to the zed-free area, and that eventually larger and larger survivor forces will start being able to reclaim all of what used to be society?

Could this feasibly be done at some point? Could mankind stage an epic comeback of divine proportions and eliminate the zombie threat?

My answer: I think it's feasible. We've got stockpiles of military-grade weapons lying about, and if you could start with a small island somewhere, maybe you could launch some offensive strikes at the larger cities, wiping out a bunch of zeds at one time. It won't be easy by any means, but I think it could be done.

[Grell]

NACHOS!

I believe the best possible outcome would be one where man can re-settle the wilderness and relegate old population centers to something like zombie habitats. It's probably easier to deal with them as they come to you instead of going into the nest.

[Zamion138]

With zombies going into statius and wating it out, it would be super hard to clear all of them world wide for good, humanity could clear out spots that flurish with huge surrounding kill zones of easy views and warning systems.
"taking back NYC" yeah thats a few generations of and not worth the man power really. if you go into get a specfic tool or peice of what ever great, try to clear a place with how many stories up and down of zombie hidie holes naa.....just give up and let it rot. to many zeds, fence it in, herd the zombies that try to leave to a kill zone, just put places like it under quarintine, I wouldnt nuke the cities though, to much art culute and such that could be scavenged by future generations.
But if you were getting escapes and such from the quarintine then yeah drop some high yields on it why not.

[azazel1024]

Eventually yes. Of course there is also likely a tipping point where if the human living population got small enough it would be impossible to "retake" the Earth and eventually all of humanity would be wiped out. At a certain point you just don't have the resources or the population to fight back against the zombies and eventually a zombie group will overwhelm you just about no matter where you are located.

If you didn't hit that tipping point, then yeah eventually you could. Just read World War Z. Even if things had gotten worse than it did in that book you could likely still do it. However, it would take generations if things got in to the stages of a truely massive outbreak.

[Zamion138]

Also I know im huilty of this im only thinking america when i first looked at this...or at least NA.
If any of the larger islands could be wiped of zeds (Iceland,greenland,madagascar,japan,austrilia england/ireland, ect.) you might be able to ride it out there till they rot away.

[Ranger]

Humanity would be restricted to isolated pockets...islands and such would be the easiest to start with. Then expand out from there.

[Epically]

Watch a movie called, "Fido" with Carrie Fisher and Billy Connerly. It should explain everything for this thread.

[azazel1024]

That was an awesome movie.

Good point on how is it spread. If it is only human to human and generally requires full on bite to transmit like a lot of "traditional" zombie movies/fiction, then I think it absolutely could be contained and eliminated eventually. If it can be transmitted by animals and/or insects.

Well, good by humanity.

[Severus Snape]

I should have clarified how the disease is spread when I started this topic. So to clarify (and so everyone knows how I feel about zombies):

I always discuss them in the classic Romero sense, in that only humans are susceptible AND the infection is spread by bites. Unless the topic starts off by saying differently, this is how I discuss them.

[Severus Snape]

Stormrunner, I'm aware what the book states about zombies. But I'm asking the question using the prototypical Romero zombie.

[PapaMambo]

Stormrunner, I'm aware what the book states about zombies. But I'm asking the question using the prototypical Romero zombie.

Honestly, I don't think humanity could ever truly reclaim the world after a zombie apocalypse. No matter the amount of weaponry, unless we had sheer numbers on our side, I doubt we could ever truly win that war, especially in today's day and age.

If you think of things (traditionally in the Romero sense). Patient zero starts the spread of the disease. Unless you manage to eliminate the threat early on (say contain it to a small town), eventually the disease spreads too rapidly to contain.

This is how outbreaks happen. In 1918, the world's worst epidemic of the Spanish flu killed MILLIONS of people. Why? Because travel by ship was much more common, and soldiers were returning home from war. Soldiers returned from Europe to Canada, Australia, and many other places all over the world. So, a flu outbreak that may have been easily contained 200-300 years before, was now a global pandemic. This was less that 100 years ago, before air travel was common, and before millions of people traveled to and from different countries every day. A zombie outbreak would be almost impossible to contain if it happened in a large urban population center, and had a chance to spread. And once it does spread, it would be even more difficult to reign it in again, and make it manageable.


Nowadays, what would happen is that Patient zero would infect someone, that person would go home, disbelieving that some bum had just bit them. They might seek medical attention, they might just go home and try to sleep it off. If they go home, they wake up dead and infect the rest of their family. If they seek medical attention, they infect the nursing and medical staff at the hospital who in turn infect the other patients, and so on and so forth. Maybe they were just about to hop a plane to go on vacation to sunny Disney World, and no damn bite from some infected bum is gonna stop them from their dream vacation.. When they land, they start infecting people in another city (Orlando this time), and people there start infecting others who are maybe about to start travelling home (other countries)... Eventually, the virus is completely rampant, and unable to be contained..

All the weapons in the world would be useless. First off, you would need able bodied men, women and children to man them. You would need people knowledgeable enough to launch nukes or other WMD's (if you chose to do that - leading to a whole mess of other issues in the meantime). You would need to be defensible first, and offensive after the fact. And remember - even if you did use some of the most powerful weapons known to man - they may not be effective against the walking dead. Humans generally are susceptible to radiation, burns, and fallout - zombies?? Not so sure. They may be preserved by the radiation. You'd definitely take alot out in initial blasts, but the ones that weren't killed would be all sorts of bad news for mankind.

Honestly, the best hope for mankind in the event of a ZPAW would be for the outbreak to happen in a small town in America, and caught right away where it could be treated, or failing that, the town could be sterilized with little fear of collateral damage.

The worst case scenario would be for an outbreak to happen in a less that civilized area of the world (small village in Africa, or China for example). An outbreak there would spend weeks or months going unchecked, and would eventually spread like wildfire before someone with the technological know how realized exactly what was going on - by then it would be too late.

One of the best books I've read (well, I've read a lot of books lately on ZPAW, and zombies in general) is Day By Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne. It describes alot of what I am alluding to. A bunch of other great ones are World War Z and the Zombie Survival Guide (but you've all read them already haven't you??), As the World Dies by Rhiannon Frater, and a bunch of others that I can't seem to call to mind at the moment. Another good one related to Post Apocalyptic worlds is One Second After by William R. Forstchen. While not related to zombies, it's about a what-if scenario where America is hit with a series of EMP bursts that knock out all communications, and electronics. The book goes into great detail how society would quickly degenerate in the blink of an eye.

Ultimately, we'd have to all unite against a common foe before we could hope to defeat it..

[Armorlord]

Yes, though the hard part will be actually learning enough about the force behind the outbreak and combating them directly.

[Neo]

Even a systematic cleansing of the world would not eradicate all of them, decades would go by and eventually they would resurface. It`s like exterminating cockroaches or rats, they would come back and it would likely be after everyone had thought they had gotten them all.

[PapaMambo]

Even a systematic cleansing of the world would not eradicate all of them, decades would go by and eventually they would resurface. It`s like exterminating cockroaches or rats, they would come back and it would likely be after everyone had thought they had gotten them all.

Not to mention the fact that for every one of US that falls, their numbers grow by one...

[Neo]

Also the cultists, I think they would be the largest factor to play against the survivors. Even if you had a city large enough to hold off the zombies, a death cult would eventually be able to break the siege.

[Oberoth]

The human race would likely never get a full cleansing (Some would say purification) of the zombie population as mentioned before. Best thing for us to do is quarantine the big population centers (i.e. Fences, barricades, and trenches), get some distance from them and fortify a safe place where you can get organized.

How the pandemic is transmitted and how long it takes to "turn" a person will dictate how difficult it will be to eradicate the infected population. The type of virus as in 28 Days Later would be difficult to stop simply because it turns you within seconds. Add fast movers and the problem is compounded. Romero zombie's on the other hand turn slower, and move slower. So containing and fighting them is slightly easier.

[ZorValachan]

I should have clarified how the disease is spread when I started this topic. So to clarify (and so everyone knows how I feel about zombies):

I always discuss them in the classic Romero sense, in that only humans are susceptible AND the infection is spread by bites. Unless the topic starts off by saying differently, this is how I discuss them.

My knowledge is that this is not the 'classic Romero' spread. That classic romero is only human (we agree) anyone who dies for any reason becomes a zombie (unless brain is destroyed). Those bit will always die from it, and therefore become a zombie. But the death that leads to becoming a zombie does not have to be from a bite.

In Romero's Dead series, any human being who dies after the onset of the zombie apocalypse can and will reanimate shortly after death, excluding those who died by massive brain trauma (such as a gunshot wound to the head) or had their brain incapacitated post-mortem. Being bitten by a zombie is not a prerequisite for returning to life, as any deceased human, regardless of exposure to a zombie, will return. No Romero film has definitively revealed the cause of reanimation, but several have featured characters speculating on possible causes, including radiation from a NASA probe, divine intervention, and viral infection. The length of time between death and reanimation seems to vary, but generally is only a few minutes.

If a character is bitten by a zombie, they will become violently ill and die within three days. The interim till death seems to be dependent on the location and degree of the bite (meaning that bites on or near major arteries or veins will spread the infection much faster than small bites or scratches). Multiple bite wounds will cause the infection to spread all the faster. Also, massive blood loss caused by one of these bites will speed the death of the victim.

[G]

When answering this question be sure to account for the effect of an army of half dead, able to sweep through cities cleansing slouchers.

By the time you get to a full military with effective tactics against the undead (traps, etc).. there will be few casualties among the soldiers. By this point you are able to for example, use big construction machinery outside a city to create a huge trench, then send in a person in an ultralight helecopter to wake up all the undead and start a convergence on the trenches...once the convergence is in the trenches you drop in thermite grenades.

[Rockwolf66]

Also the cultists, I think they would be the largest factor to play against the survivors. Even if you had a city large enough to hold off the zombies, a death cult would eventually be able to break the siege.

Yup, all it would take was a semi truck or two ful of zombies for a city to become a slaughterhouse. Really except for the thinkers Zombies are as dumb as mud and really easy to destroy once you get organized and equipped. Cultests on the other hand are smart and there leadership spends their spare time trying to figure out how to kill or convert you. They are the guys who want to see you fail in the worst possible way.

Look at fixed defenses. Zombies have really only one option against fixed positions: The Undead wave attack. Realisticly emplaced machineguns and area effect weapons do horrible things to this sort of attack. When the 7.62 NATO first came out people wondered how effective it really was Unit a single shot fired into a rioting crowd in British Cuiana killed three people and wounded a fourth. Now with zombies you can only really kill them by shooting one spot. Fortunatly machinegun tactics are designed so that one machinegunner can turn multiple rows of fast zombies into crawlers who are flamethrower bait.

Unfortunatly all it takes is one cultist with a mortar and your defenses have a hole in them.

[kaneman19]

all i got to say is where did the army go with their tanks and battle ships and aircraft carriers. also lets not forget all those nuclear reactors that could have gon boom

[G]

With the dead outnumbering the living only 10:1 people still have a good chance because there are still a lot of people left.

It means each person only needs to kill ten to get rid of the zees.

Hmmm I wonder if too many people have survived and will thus use up the remaining resources too quickly making it actually harder to survive than I thought it would be.

[Ravenwing]

Nope. the world can never be cleasned, there will always be zeds. If nothing else the Death Cults will keep a few in reserve, feeding them and keeping them undead healthy. The only way to cleanse the world is to kill every last human, only when humanity is dead will the zombies die, simply because their food is all gone.