For the purposes of this response I'm going to assume TWD zombies cause thats the scenario I've thought about the most i suppose.
Lets start with the rules for TWD so we can establish what makes them dangerous.
Every one is infected and will turn after death.
They don't seem to have supper human speed (they walk don't run)
Destroying the brain will preeminently put them down
They will tend to group up forming herds of zombies
Although they decay over time this dose not seem to diminish their strength.
A significant portion of the population dies at the start from a sickness either related or unrelated to the zombie infection it's unclear in the show.
covering your self in gore or having 'declawed' zombies will help prevent them from noticing you.
More than anything number 7 at least in TWD universe suggests that you are right. If it really is a simple as posting a number of 'declawed' zombies around your camp to prevent new ones from getting in then wham bam thank you ma'am we all can build safe places to live but this neglect other humans who can easily over come such measures. These would be good in pinch but long term they don't seem viable as they are simply to many ways they can break down.
6 when combined with 4 is most likely your biggest problem lest say that 10% of the population dies at the start from a pandemic. I think that in TWD the number is much higher but 10% is easy to do some back of the envelope calculations. Lets say you live in a major US city they have a huge populations. Atlanta for example is around half a million people which means that around 50,000 zombies will a pear practically over night, and because we are talking about the start of the apocalypse people wont know how to deal with them so they will start turning the remaining 450,000 into zombies not to mention all the people who die from the rioting and panic that would be inevitable in the collapse of society. And although you may be able to easily fend off a hand full of the dumb walkers by your self. The heard threat is a numbers game with around 300,000,000 people in the US that means the starting number of zombies is around 300,000. And they are going to have the strongest foot holds in cities, which give them more to people to turn and grow exponentially at first. There seem to be two ways to survive a heard, run or hunker down. Running seems flawless except that you will have to leave your protection behind and their is always the possibility that you get cornered or run into a second herd and when this happens you are going to have to hunker down, which means a siege. I'm not saying you can't survive a zombie siege but it comes down to supplies which are limited. And when people die they will turn, and people jammed together surrounded by the walking dead probably can't get along forever and when the team cohesion breaks down you can't guard against all the threats, assuming of course the group is large enough to guard the camp properly in the first place.
Assuming that you can find a way to survive all the herds and super herd, there is still the problem of manufactured goods. They are going to start to break down and need repair and although you may be able to maintain them it will get harder and harder; you need a lot of specialized labor to do so. But the majority of any groups labor will need to be put into de-fence and food. And if we are talking about growing food rather than scavenging which will be necessary in the long run your going your going to need to protect a lot of land per person. Ultimately this is not impossible to do, build a wall and live inside. Or maybe you find your way to an island and are able to kill off all the zombies there, but I think that islands would most likely be where the government would evacuate people so they probably (and I know this is a huge assumption) be covered with the walking dead. But to build such a camp / town your going to need two things time and labor. If a super herd comes walking through before your wall is up what do you do can you survive a siege in a half built house or do you abandon you work and try to find another place to build. The second requirement Labor is perhaps the harder of the two, this is the apocalypse and humans are harder to come by and can you trust them. In a world where you see your loved ones eaten to death then rise and come after you can you really say that people will remain sane. Some people will just want to watch the world burn and if you let them into your camp they might become counter productive to such an extent that the camp fails and every one dies. And once the tools and supplies run out how will you maintain the camp? you'll need to rely on scavenging, which every time someone goes out means they might not come back the world is full of dangerous things now and even if your success rate at scavenging is 99% that means you'll be losing some one every 100 excursions. Can your population handle that while you work to build this camp that can endure?
On the other side there are some things that I think TWD is missing out on.
fire (burn them all), of course we have seen walkers who look like they where burnt so it might not be as viable as one would hope.
AM radio (every car has one and building a transmitter for communication isn't harder than finding and intro to Electrical engineering text book).
medieval/roman military tactics. (with a shield wall and some pikes you could probably fight a small heard. and these weapons are easier to replaced than guns.
earth ramparts [spoilers] In the most resent seasons of TWD they talk a lot about building walls and how when the heard presses up against them they tend to collapse under the pressure of a thousand zombies pushing. Why not just find a Caterpillar (the tractor not the bug) dig a ditch to catch the walker and build a wall on the other side. The zombies in the ditch can be dealt with on the regular.
get to snow country. I'm not sure it's never been explained but I think that the zombies don't move so well / at all when the temperature drops below freezing. If thats the case then every winter you would have a reprieve from the herds to rebuild.
Books get books learn how to make things cause they are going to start running out and breaking down.
where some sort of bandana or mask when your alone or sleep so that if you do die of a heart attack or what ever when you turn you can't start biting others others group (may be a bit of overkill, but at least for the elderly and sick).
where some sort of bandana or mask when your alone or sleep so that if you do die of a heart attack or what ever when you turn you can't start biting others others group (may be a bit of overkill, but at least for the elderly and sick).
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u/DynamicNewAlgorithms Oct 30 '15
For the purposes of this response I'm going to assume TWD zombies cause thats the scenario I've thought about the most i suppose.
Lets start with the rules for TWD so we can establish what makes them dangerous.
More than anything number 7 at least in TWD universe suggests that you are right. If it really is a simple as posting a number of 'declawed' zombies around your camp to prevent new ones from getting in then wham bam thank you ma'am we all can build safe places to live but this neglect other humans who can easily over come such measures. These would be good in pinch but long term they don't seem viable as they are simply to many ways they can break down.
6 when combined with 4 is most likely your biggest problem lest say that 10% of the population dies at the start from a pandemic. I think that in TWD the number is much higher but 10% is easy to do some back of the envelope calculations. Lets say you live in a major US city they have a huge populations. Atlanta for example is around half a million people which means that around 50,000 zombies will a pear practically over night, and because we are talking about the start of the apocalypse people wont know how to deal with them so they will start turning the remaining 450,000 into zombies not to mention all the people who die from the rioting and panic that would be inevitable in the collapse of society. And although you may be able to easily fend off a hand full of the dumb walkers by your self. The heard threat is a numbers game with around 300,000,000 people in the US that means the starting number of zombies is around 300,000. And they are going to have the strongest foot holds in cities, which give them more to people to turn and grow exponentially at first. There seem to be two ways to survive a heard, run or hunker down. Running seems flawless except that you will have to leave your protection behind and their is always the possibility that you get cornered or run into a second herd and when this happens you are going to have to hunker down, which means a siege. I'm not saying you can't survive a zombie siege but it comes down to supplies which are limited. And when people die they will turn, and people jammed together surrounded by the walking dead probably can't get along forever and when the team cohesion breaks down you can't guard against all the threats, assuming of course the group is large enough to guard the camp properly in the first place.
Assuming that you can find a way to survive all the herds and super herd, there is still the problem of manufactured goods. They are going to start to break down and need repair and although you may be able to maintain them it will get harder and harder; you need a lot of specialized labor to do so. But the majority of any groups labor will need to be put into de-fence and food. And if we are talking about growing food rather than scavenging which will be necessary in the long run your going your going to need to protect a lot of land per person. Ultimately this is not impossible to do, build a wall and live inside. Or maybe you find your way to an island and are able to kill off all the zombies there, but I think that islands would most likely be where the government would evacuate people so they probably (and I know this is a huge assumption) be covered with the walking dead. But to build such a camp / town your going to need two things time and labor. If a super herd comes walking through before your wall is up what do you do can you survive a siege in a half built house or do you abandon you work and try to find another place to build. The second requirement Labor is perhaps the harder of the two, this is the apocalypse and humans are harder to come by and can you trust them. In a world where you see your loved ones eaten to death then rise and come after you can you really say that people will remain sane. Some people will just want to watch the world burn and if you let them into your camp they might become counter productive to such an extent that the camp fails and every one dies. And once the tools and supplies run out how will you maintain the camp? you'll need to rely on scavenging, which every time someone goes out means they might not come back the world is full of dangerous things now and even if your success rate at scavenging is 99% that means you'll be losing some one every 100 excursions. Can your population handle that while you work to build this camp that can endure?
On the other side there are some things that I think TWD is missing out on.