It would honestly make way more sense to just do bounding overwatch than the whole static position bit and you could even do a bunch of military wank while you were at it but, idk, if that was done it would become obvious the zombies aren't actually that threatening or something so it doesn't happen.
I mean... this isn't true? In practice, they mostly stand around, maybe shamble aimlessly. Zombies don't make any active effort to 'consume all life on earth', they attack prey that comes near and spend most of their time doing literally nothing.
Hmm. Are they planning to use the vehicles for a breakout? That... might not be *totally* insane, except for the whole 'NEVER RETREAT' thing. If not, I'm wondering why they aren't on top of them or using them as a barricade.
If I had a reliable supply of kevlar, I would say 'so that the bags don't break from pointy bits of rubble/rough handling/being clawed by zombies and collapse the wall', but... given the US doesn't seem to have a reliable supply of kevlar... yeah use layered canvas or something. Possibly heavier and not quite as tough but it'll do.
That was, to be fair, after the US took such insane casualties. The majority of people died.
Yes, the doctrine described sounds like a guarantee that their units will be in one of two states: Fine or Annihilated.
Max Brooks is, perhaps, something weirder than a light infantry fetishist.
It's... I mean, against an enemy surrounding you, you don't really have many options other than a square. The zombies being slow won't make the square *less* effective. It's just that the question of 'what formation should I adopt against a numerically superior surrounding force that is still slower than us' is best answered by 'fucking don't'
Are those stories about zombie cows and zombie lions real? They sounded pretty bullshit to me.
If there's not a line saying they arrived at 6:30 AM, that's a generous estimate. 10 miles in 150 minutes is four miles per hour; the rule of thumb I hear for average human walk speed is 3 mph. If the entire unit can't jog for multiple hours without breaks, we're looking at three hours, minimum. And realistically, they would need breaks—not just because men got tired, though they would, but because of obstructions (broken-down vehicles in the road, undead stragglers, etc). Also you'd need to add extra time for a bunch of assorted organizational stuff, to make sure everyone's in their unit and nobody gets lost, but you could argue that that shouldn't count because most of that happens before the march and not during it.
God, yeah. All but the worst-organized armies dug trenches. Hell, even the Army of Flanders dug trenches, and I've seen that used as a golden standard for poorly-organized armies.
To be fair, static defenses and mobile warfare are not mutually exclusive. Look at trenches from the back end of the first World War, after almost everyone figured out how it was going to work; there were multiple layers of trench, with additional channels between them so soldiers could fall back or counterattack as necessary.
Good analogy.
Fine or Finely-Diced
I mean, yes, I guess that's true. But Brooks doesn't seem to understand what an infantry square was for. Its only purpose is that it stops the enemy from flanking you, because a square has no flank.
Ever seen reenactors?
Can't speak for every city, but it was definitely tough with the older cities - I heard about Boston secondhand, but it made me glad to only deal with a fraction of Boston's bullshit (namely: built on hills, and with old, illogical, narrow and twisty streets that could dead-end you at the worst time) when my sisters and I were a part of the efforts to contain/curb the zack populations in Syracuse (and later, Rochester) 3-4 years in. It would have been a complete shitshow if we didn't have locals who knew the nooks and alleyways, and even then...
If solanum could infect non-humans it would be a widespread and widely documented phenomenon. I mean, think about it; if big cats like lions could become zombies then so could small cats, and there are so many god damn housecats in existence across the whole world that it would be very very obvious if there are swarms of ghoulified versions of them running around. Same goes for cows, they're too populous and found everywhere for it to not be readily apparent if ghoul versions of them exist.
I can completely confirm that zombie cows are bullshit, pun intended. The virus only raises humans, which makes about as much sense as anything else about the thing. However, a zed will absolutely pick a cow clean if you let them, and provided they could catch one. I don't know about the rest of the world, and how animal life faired there. But at least in my experience, there isn't an animal alive that doesn't outright fear the zeds just as much as we do. Just about any animal will either fight or run, and cows, despite them being some of the most brain-damaged domesticated animals around, are no different. Though a simple fence is enough to keep them in, so you tend to find fields of cow skeletons just picked dry if you head out into western Kansas.
What animals are endangered and what ones are actually recovering now must be all over the place in wwz don't you think so?
Guided munitions are expensive, tube artillery is not. Equipment as simple and cheap as foot-mortars would be a massive force multiplier, especially since the enemy can't take cover and will wander directly into pre-ranged killzones. Mortar shells aren't expensive at all, and neither is most non-guided ordnance for that matter.
Those same kill-zones also work for extremely cost effective light artillery which can be fired beyond visual range, negating the danger of being overrun. You can create a chain-swarm from something like a helicopter dropping noisemakers and luring tens of thousands of zombies into a pre-ranged target area, then just fly away and start killing from beyond visual range. It requires an order of magnitude less manpower, the zombies likely won't even be able to detect the artillery from its firing position, and you don't have the risk of being eaten alive because you can just pack up and leave before a swarm gets close enough to be a danger.
Same is true for sandbags made out of burlap. vM asked why the bags were made out of kevlar, not why they used bags of rubble instead of steel or concrete.
You don't need anything more than a spoon to dig a trench, but armies waste resources on shovels. That's because using shovels saves other valuable resources, like time and energy.
Hell, you might not even need the helicopter. Explosions are awful noisy on their own.
