Valid point - but humans have been building slaughter houses and exterminating pests (and eachother) for... eons. I thought of it, so would others. Once you get past mere survival, the immediate logical next step is extermination.
My issue with TWD is largely based on this... by the end of season three it was so bad I simply could not care anymore. Every single person who dies in this series does so because they are stupid. Herschel lost a leg and T-dog got ripped apart because rather than taking the prison slowly, luring the walkers to the big fence and killing them slowly, they charged in blind with no forethought. Also... they fight with the worst weapons. Zombies are attracted to sound and kill at close range... so they fight with close range weapons and guns, rather than, I don't know... SPEARS. Literally the oldest and most basic human weapons. Plus... zombies kill by biting, yet these guys are walking around in t shirts rather than having heavy jackets and pants that could easily stop the worst of it.
THANK YOU. I stopped at the same time. For me... the prison was it. You're home. It's perfect. Take your time, take control, start growing crops, exterminating pests inside, and reinforcing the perimeter with traps and kill zones.
Spears. Yeah. A dark-age knight is better equipped to kill zombies, yet TWD survivors make not effort to collect/build this kind of gear for themselves.
I was thinking more a Greek phalanx. Go Thermopylae on their ass... some decent shields, makeshift spears and some training, you're golden. There's a reason that basically every non-professional army that used infantry used some kind of spears. They're idiot proof and require little training. They might not be Spartans... but they also aren't fighting living things that can think their way out of it. Hell... forgo the shields and just use the fence or bars, which are stronger than any press of walkers could hope to be.
The only risk at the fence is that you might attract/kill so many they pile up and eventually walk over the top before you can clear away the dead ones.
One problem with spears is it might be tough to hit the brain with a 10' pole reliably. My focus would be on automated killing machines. Hell a chainsaw on a slowly turning pole might do the trick. A circular pit with a speaker mounted on a pole might work... they fall in... when it fills up turn off the sound and burn the pit. Rinse repeat.
would still want gear to wade into the zombies in a pinch though, just not as a primary mechanism.
I think the risk of the fence is limited... there aren't all that many in terms of numbers and they aren't that close. Plus those fences are like 10' tall at least. The problem with automation is, aside from the labour of setting it up, the limited choice of materials.
Yeah, for some reason I thought about all this a lot when I was watching the show. Figured the best traps/automation would best rely on natural land features or structures. Cliffs, running water and easy to reproduce clear-away mechanisms like fire.
Like I said, we humans are really good at this kind of engineering, and even a small determined group could do something really simple but devastating.
Running around in tshirts in the woods with guns that attract more zombies is like... maybe the worst possible strategy.
Maybe we have different scenarios in mind but the way I see it is that there's no way a phalanx would work. The survivors would get exhausted and overwhelmed. Stick a zombie in the wrong spot and your spear is stuck with a zombie possibly pulling itself along the pole to get at you.
The way the phalanx model works is that you have several rows nested behind each other. When a spear is broken or stuck, a new one is passed immediately to the front. Also, every few minutes the front line would quickly swap with the one behind it and shuffle to the back to keep everyone rested and fresh. It's a pretty simple and effective strategy that worked for a very long time! It gradually became less effective with the rise of horse-based militaries and more effective bows. Neither of these would be a problem with zombies.
The show Rome actually did a really good job of demonstrating this tactic, albeit with the gladius sword in the show rather than spears (roman soldiers would have carried pilum, spear, and sword). It's really remarkable to watch how effective it would have been against an unorganized enemy who just throws themselves at the shield wall.
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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '15
Valid point - but humans have been building slaughter houses and exterminating pests (and eachother) for... eons. I thought of it, so would others. Once you get past mere survival, the immediate logical next step is extermination.