A lot of people seem to think that the military will just sweep in and save the day like the lone ranger or some crap . Well I have some bad news for you folks the military will have their hands full trying to deal with a mountain of problems and will be streched thin . When the shit hits the fan alot of people will be fleeing from their jobs to try and protect their families and friends . This will mean that there will be a lot of facilities that will simply be abandoned , like power plants , military bases , chemical storage facilities , prisons and various other places that need constant human supervision .

Power plants are one of the most important pillars for building an advanced society . Without power all our fancy technology goes right out the window and we are suddenly back in the dark ages . Without power we can’t run our factories , use our communications or do any of a billion other things that so many people take for granted these days . If we were to lose power during an outbreak things would become so much worse because a lot of survivors would no longer be able to get reliable info on where to go and where to avoid . Most of the power plants would simply shut down after being abandoned for a couple of days , but some of them would turn into ticking time bombs just waiting to go off . The most immediate threat will be the nuclear reactors . When they have a melt down the radiation will kill everything around the reactor for miles around and render the land unusable for decades . The next up on the list will be the dams . When the dams burst , and it is a matter of when not if , they will wipe out everything down stream of them , including whole towns .

When things start going to crap do you honestly think that a soldier will abandon his family to go protect somebody on the other side of the country . You will likely see large numbers of soldiers going AWOL to try and find and protect their families . This will leave holes in just about every military unit and hamper their ability to function properly . There will also likely be more than a few soldiers that will defy orders to protect the bases because they will not be able to stand back and watch as their home towns are over run by the zombie horde .

There are a crap load of chemical factories and storage facilities scattered across the country . When the power goes down and people start fleeing to find their families , these facilities will be left completely abandoned . Most of these facilities store their chemicals at super cool tempatures and when the power goes down it will only be a matter of time before these places start to lose containment . When that happens there will be clouds of poisionus chemicals blanketing portions of the country , killing everything that is unlucky enough to get caught in them .

When the world goes to crap alot of the prisoners might either escape due to a lack of power being able to run the security systems of the prison or because the guards let them out so that they won’t starve in their cells or so that they won’t get trapped in the prison with any zombies . Now won’t that be fun . Thousands of cons getting out of prison and jail all at the same time . Now we would have a whole new problem . We would have to survive the zombies , other survivors , toxic clouds of chemicals and radiation and hundreds of thousands of violent cons that have free reign to do whatever the hell they feel like doing .

One last thing to add to the list of joys we would have to contend with would be the polluted water supplies . One of the facilities that will be abandoned are the sewage treatment plants . When the plants don’t have anyone there to operate them they will just store the waste , but if to much water gets into the storage reservoirs the sewage will be flushed into the surrounding streams and lakes . That means that every time you decided to try and drink from a stream or lake that you could end up drinking poisoned water that will cause you to get sick and die . MMM natural sping water it tastes like . . . . turds .. and piss .

So I don’t believe that the military will just be running around wiping out the zombies like they are cardboard cut outs , because they are going to have their hands full dealing with one catstrophe after another , while trying to prevent any other future catstrophes . So while the military isn’t going to be ineffective I do believe they are going to be more than a little preoccupied to face the zombies with their full military force . So it will likely still be every man for himself .

I think one of the larger problems here is, yeah, it’s great to have a zombie action plan, but when it comes down to it: can you really pull it off?

that is why we practice. we have some time so we need to use it!!!

One of the posts talks about quarantine, I think after a few days people will get pretty nervous about anyone with injuries, so there will probably be quarantine by default, if you know what I mean. There will be evidence of cause and effect, people will know that a zombie inflicted injury means you become a zombie because they or those they trust will have seen and told others. This is the way humans work, especially in a crisis.

I can seem people getting thrown out of secured areas because of scratches, people get mighty jumpy when their lives are on the line. This sort of thing used to happen during historical plague outbreaks. Towns would get sealed from “outsiders” and if anyone thought you might be diseased, out you went into the wilds. Of course that just meant the plagues spread better, but I digress.

The adjustment to a post z apocalypse is probably the easy part, surviving the initial outbreak the hardest. Things like food supplies, fuel, medical supplies etc will diminish over time – the big problem will be fuel, get water in gasoline stores and you got problems.

Yes, being ex-military I think at least armed groups of soldiers would figure out what was going on and do some serious culling pretty quickly. Probably set up secure compounds as well, depending on how far into chaos we fall, which in turn is determined by how quickly the “powers that be” figure out that one, there is a problem and two how to deal with it.

The serious modifier of outcomes though is from the time of initial outbreak to the time of “realisation”; figuring out what the problem is and what the solution is. If if the infection transmission is as effective as one bite one zombie – 10zeds could make 10 new zeds in seconds, that could equate to 1zed creating 60zeds per minute in a best case senario, this would then be exponential. Plug that into your excel spreadsheet and then reaction time by the government is explained.

The only really bad outlook scenario is one where the zombification carries over to animals – then, bye bye, we are done for.

The current military of most countries could put down the infection, if spotted in time. But what of those that could not? In much of Europe, obtaining a gun requires at least a fair amount of paper-work, and many don’t have one. I doubt the Russian military truly could contain an area the size of Siberia, or the Canadians control their huge forests. And what about the billions of Indians and Chinese, many of which are close together and poor? The US would likely face a whole new brand of unwanted immigrants from it’s south, not to mention the refugees who would want to hide behind the most advanced army in the world. When they closed their borders to the refugees, transportation of illegals would become immensely more valuable, and someone infected is bound to tag along now and then, resulting in recurring “uprisings”. This influx of refugees of unknown virulence could possibly collapse the big players, depending on the speed with which the zombies die out.

I believe humanity would survive, but greatly decimated. There are too many islands in Micronesia for all to get infected, that’s one. There are many very isolated, militarized, or just plain old fortified position that could last a fair while, and likely outlive the crisis. Gibraltar is pretty much a fortress, Taiwan is heavily militarized for it’s size, Greenland would likely dispose of most zombies by means of weather and distance.
I don’t think big, “open” cities could be properly controlled, even by good response squads, because the zom-vir incubation time would make it difficult to trap all zombies at once. The moment people hear the authorities commanding anyone with a scratch mark to turn themselves in for quarantine, some scratches are gonna make a run for it instead, that’s human nature. Some will succeed, that’s the thing with large populations.

Head for the hills, and stock up on canned food. Owning a copy of “Gardening for Dummies” would surely help anyone after out-lasting the zombies in a high-casualty scenario, but many farmers live in the Middle of Nowhere, or at least Far from Anywhere. With a variety of heavy machinery, tools, dogs, frequently used muscles and livestock, I suppose farmers would likely have a decent survival rate as compared to the nurses treating the first wave of victims. With surviving food production, a very large survivor population is really quite unnecessary.

the fact is that a zombie attack would not be that hard for the world to handle, if the whole world was at stake, blow up the town, and if not that, extinguish the zombies with heavily armoured soldiers, with all skin covered to prevent biting, no rocket launchers only heavy machine guns and armoured cars with turrets, get proper bull bars on the fronts of all assaulting vehicles, with bullet proof, unbreakable windows. air assaults with small bombs and extended millimetre bullets. helicopters flying around lloking for survivers, picking people up and dropping off soldiers, taking the people to safe cities.

we have the stuff to take down the zombies, the only problem is saving yourself, not extinguishing the zombies, it might cost alot of lives as everyone woul have to be killed, everyone.

Now, in response to the slow vs fast, classic vs 28′s, the problem is that depending on your mythos that you adhere to, the problems are entirely different (rigor mortis vs starvation). Frankly, I’d rather deal with running zombies that die in a month than slow walkers that will out-last you.

But what I’m “in favor” of doesn’t matter in the slightest. What matters is that when the fecal matters hits the air oscillator, you remain calm, have a plan and stick to it to the best of your ability.

In response to Dr Detroit, it doesn’t matter that we don’t necessarily know HOW to do a lot of things (survive without electricity, grow a garden, etc). What matters is that you know ABOUT these things. Realizing that you might want to grow something is a lot smarter than never trying. At least knowing THAT things grow will allow you the forethought to put some seeds in the ground and water them on a semi-regular basis. The HOW comes in later with seasons and soil and pests etc, but simply knowing sbout these things may be enough to survive.

My biggest fear is really the fact that in situations like these, the food supplies will evaporate quickly and then people panic once again (almost as bad as Z-day) when they realize they have no food. Then every game animal within 100 miles will be dead as a door nail, poached so one person can eat a steak before he dies. Any plant worth eating berries or leaves? Gone, uprooted by some backward executive still trying to think outside the box.

If you want to survive long enough to see if the Nat Geo’s or History Channel’s predictions are correct? Learn to grow a garden, save some seeds, try fasting once a month to allow your body to recognize the pangs of hunger. Exercise and stay in good health. Being healthy and fit when Z-day comes could very well be the best survival choice you could make!

Stay alert. Stay alive.