- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Still very OOC:
Hydrogen zeppelin plus gratuitous incendiary bullets on board for no reason, possibly plus rifles that may be prone to accidental discharges, sounds like it's about their speed.
Others have touched on this point, but first, there were clearly some rather bloody wars fought against the larger survivor enclaves, which would have had the usual ratio of WIA to KIA. And also, you'd see a lot of people hurt by things other than zombie infections. You have soldiers whose knees are blown out from marching thousands of miles with heavy kit and minimal mechanized support. You have soldiers who caught a disease on campaign and suffered long-term consequences. You have soldiers who were a little too old for this shit and suffered a succession of health problems that eventually invalided them out of the service and left them ruined for most postwar work. You have soldiers, so very many, whose problems are mainly psychiatric.
And on top of that, with the sheer scale of this army, there's a lot of largely unharmed veterans who still need things. Things like a GI Bill are expensive, but can save you a lot of trouble with your veterans after a big ugly war. The junta is a fucked up government, but even they have some conception of doing right by the guys with the guns.
So there's plenty for a VA to do.
The only time this kind of perimeter makes sense against zombies is if:
1) The defending force is so large that it can hold a really substantial amount of ground, and could reasonably be threatened by hordes in the hundreds of thousands from multiple directions at the same time, in which case you really have multiple battles going on in parallel because of the distances involved and you've moved beyond tactics into the realm of operations, or
2) The defending force is small and in 'irregular' terrain it cannot plausibly retreat through, but where it might hope to hold out and do some good or await reinforcement, but where because of the nature of the terrain it is utterly unpredictable where the most zombies will be coming from next.
The Battle of Hope is neither of these situations. Here, when it's clear that the zombie line is overlapping your rifle line to the point where flanking units can't hold them back, the correct solution is to turn 180 degrees and power-walk a couple of miles, then use the distance thus gained to resume the battle.
They were not a very well conceived aircraft at the time of their creation. They have aged particularly poorly.
More generally, if Max Brooks wanted a full-bore arsenal assault pulverizing a zombie horde to work, he'd have written the Battle of Yonkers as a victory. This book was always about how modernity is weak and decadent (and that includes modern weapons) and how MANLY RIFLEMEN are the key to victory in warfare (and the more deliberately archaic their kit is, the better).
Um, I think you've kind of lost track of the premise of the thread, or are trying to reject the premises the author has written into the thread's narrative of IC history and win a debate with them. It's really not very becoming.
In this Let's Read's continuity, the tactics don't magically work, they're objectively worse than doing things correctly would be, and the US's soldiers suffer for it. Which chains into the speculations you've made.
Except the snipers aboard the damn zeppelin, because apparently the Yanks like to operate that way.
Hydrogen zeppelin plus gratuitous incendiary bullets on board for no reason, possibly plus rifles that may be prone to accidental discharges, sounds like it's about their speed.
Well.
Others have touched on this point, but first, there were clearly some rather bloody wars fought against the larger survivor enclaves, which would have had the usual ratio of WIA to KIA. And also, you'd see a lot of people hurt by things other than zombie infections. You have soldiers whose knees are blown out from marching thousands of miles with heavy kit and minimal mechanized support. You have soldiers who caught a disease on campaign and suffered long-term consequences. You have soldiers who were a little too old for this shit and suffered a succession of health problems that eventually invalided them out of the service and left them ruined for most postwar work. You have soldiers, so very many, whose problems are mainly psychiatric.
And on top of that, with the sheer scale of this army, there's a lot of largely unharmed veterans who still need things. Things like a GI Bill are expensive, but can save you a lot of trouble with your veterans after a big ugly war. The junta is a fucked up government, but even they have some conception of doing right by the guys with the guns.
So there's plenty for a VA to do.
Yeah. Importantly, the main thing keeping zombies off you is the volume of rifle fire you put out. As your troops rearrange to form a square, three quarters of them must stop shooting and reposition. This virtually guarantees that if there is still pressure on your front, that pressure will now be sufficient to overwhelm the square's front.
The only time this kind of perimeter makes sense against zombies is if:
1) The defending force is so large that it can hold a really substantial amount of ground, and could reasonably be threatened by hordes in the hundreds of thousands from multiple directions at the same time, in which case you really have multiple battles going on in parallel because of the distances involved and you've moved beyond tactics into the realm of operations, or
2) The defending force is small and in 'irregular' terrain it cannot plausibly retreat through, but where it might hope to hold out and do some good or await reinforcement, but where because of the nature of the terrain it is utterly unpredictable where the most zombies will be coming from next.
The Battle of Hope is neither of these situations. Here, when it's clear that the zombie line is overlapping your rifle line to the point where flanking units can't hold them back, the correct solution is to turn 180 degrees and power-walk a couple of miles, then use the distance thus gained to resume the battle.
As others note, A-10s are not a good choice here; you'd want piston-engine or turboprop aircraft dropping napalm bombs. A-10s have neither the desired area effect nor much of anything else, and they are poorly equipped for communication and coordination with ground units. Them fucking up and strafing their own side is a realistic danger, and in fact has happened quite a few times.
They were not a very well conceived aircraft at the time of their creation. They have aged particularly poorly.
More generally, if Max Brooks wanted a full-bore arsenal assault pulverizing a zombie horde to work, he'd have written the Battle of Yonkers as a victory. This book was always about how modernity is weak and decadent (and that includes modern weapons) and how MANLY RIFLEMEN are the key to victory in warfare (and the more deliberately archaic their kit is, the better).
OOC:
Um, I think you've kind of lost track of the premise of the thread, or are trying to reject the premises the author has written into the thread's narrative of IC history and win a debate with them. It's really not very becoming.
OOC: I'd engage with this more seriously, except I get the sense that for you this is a fundamentally unserious "no actually, the book is right lol" proposition.
Uuugh, fuckin' reformer brainworms... They never stop finding ways to re-entrench.
Yeah, that checks out. Cult of the badass. Max pokes fun at it in the Zombie Survival Guide in a few places, but falls prey to it in a lot of other places.
Well you see, I don't actually want to create a self-insert, like, it does not enthuse me and the last time I tried to engage with a Let's Read like this in that way it got lame and unpleasant.
Well, in the novel's continuity, the shitty tactics magically work, mostly because they're being carried out by Good Resolute People instead of Bad Irresolute People. Thus, there is no anomalously high casualty rate to explain, retreating is simply unnecessary because you are doing things the Right Way, and so on, and so on.
In this Let's Read's continuity, the tactics don't magically work, they're objectively worse than doing things correctly would be, and the US's soldiers suffer for it. Which chains into the speculations you've made.
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