In the even of zombie apocalypse, would the president nuke the country ?

edited December 2012 in The Walking Dead
So back in the cold war, we all made shelter right? so in the event of a zombie apocalypse wouldnt the president ( or any other vip and government officials along with military) hole up in a shelter and try to quarantine out/in the walkers with nukes? something i wondered
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Comments

  • edited December 2012
    Probably just major citys tho if the infecion every got nation wide I don't see how it would help.
  • edited December 2012
    there aren't enough nukes on the planet to wipe out every human, let alone every zombie, so it would just be pointless
  • edited December 2012
    Well,like I said,it's highly unlikely the WD ZA was caused by a single outbreak,accidental or otherwise. Which would mean multiple outbreak points all over the country,hitting most of the major cities with at least 70% coverage in each city to make this kind of situation possible.

    Essentially,you must remember that the walkers aren't much of a threat on their own,they require overwhelming numbers to be a problem. As such,you'd need a LOT of people become zombies at the get go as even a group of zombies isn't going to survive their encounter with the first beat cop with a gun they come across. Therefore,a single outbreak producing these kinds of zombies wouldn't be able to create an army big enough to do the job.

    I mean,we've seen a guy with a crossbow kill a small group of zombies all by himself. Imagine what it'd be like to have an assault rifle or a tank. There's no way the zombies are beating that. I just watched a kid with a gun pop 2 of them in the head. You gonna actually sit there and tell me a trained soldier with grenades,a rifle,and a pistol just couldn't handle them? The only logical solution is someone was causing this to happen and helping the zombies by deliberately infecting people. Especially in the case of the tank. What,are the zombies gonna chew their way through tank armor? I doubt it.

    So,with that in mind,with multiple outbreaks all over the nation covering most of the major cities all at once,the nuclear option quickly goes off the table. It's pretty much pointless. Any survivors will be killed and the blast probably won't get all the zombies and if they can resist radiation,you've just cut off valuable territory you could've retaken. And that's assuming they didn't hit the military bases that launch the nukes first. The whole thing pretty much requires there be some shadowy organization behind the outbreaks with a motive for destroying most of the US,if they even stopped with the US. Since there's no foreign aid coming in,it's pretty safe to assume other nations were hit too. At least the first world ones.

    But to put it simply,if the government was going to use nukes,they'd have already done so. Since they haven't,it's pretty much a given the outbreaks happened all at once in multiple places and using them would be pointless.
  • edited December 2012
    It could take out zombies in the blast radius but zombies wouldn't be hurt by things like fallout or radiation.. Plus people who died from those things would just become more zombies... The cons would probably be more than the pros..
  • edited December 2012
    Irradiated zombies wandering all over the place and fallout everywhere. You don't set your house on fire because you have cockroaches.
  • edited December 2012
    Irishmile wrote: »
    It could take out zombies in the blast radius but zombies wouldn't be hurt by things like fallout or radiation.. Plus people who died from those things would just become more zombies... The cons would probably be more than the pros..

    Yeah but, when has the government really thought about what they're doing ever since Nixon?
  • edited December 2012
    If it would be like in the Walking Dead universe, it would happen all over the world at the same time that there would be masses of zombies around every cemetery and hospital and some smaller zombie groups all over the world because of accidents etc. -> Zombies are everywhere -> nukes won't help alot, even if they are without radiation. Anyway during a Walking Dead-universe like outbreak the military of most countries should be able to stop it if nobody helps the zombies I think. To talk about the question itself again: I don't think that American or European countries would do such radical things like killing everyone, that would be more the way countries like China would handle it. At least, they wouldn't do it at the beginning of the outbreak but only at the beginning there can be chances to stop it..
  • edited December 2012
    Merlynn wrote: »
    Well,like I said,it's highly unlikely the WD ZA was caused by a single outbreak,accidental or otherwise. Which would mean multiple outbreak points all over the country,hitting most of the major cities with at least 70% coverage in each city to make this kind of situation possible.

    Essentially,you must remember that the walkers aren't much of a threat on their own,they require overwhelming numbers to be a problem. As such,you'd need a LOT of people become zombies at the get go as even a group of zombies isn't going to survive their encounter with the first beat cop with a gun they come across. Therefore,a single outbreak producing these kinds of zombies wouldn't be able to create an army big enough to do the job.

    I mean,we've seen a guy with a crossbow kill a small group of zombies all by himself. Imagine what it'd be like to have an assault rifle or a tank. There's no way the zombies are beating that. I just watched a kid with a gun pop 2 of them in the head. You gonna actually sit there and tell me a trained soldier with grenades,a rifle,and a pistol just couldn't handle them? The only logical solution is someone was causing this to happen and helping the zombies by deliberately infecting people. Especially in the case of the tank. What,are the zombies gonna chew their way through tank armor? I doubt it.

    So,with that in mind,with multiple outbreaks all over the nation covering most of the major cities all at once,the nuclear option quickly goes off the table. It's pretty much pointless. Any survivors will be killed and the blast probably won't get all the zombies and if they can resist radiation,you've just cut off valuable territory you could've retaken. And that's assuming they didn't hit the military bases that launch the nukes first. The whole thing pretty much requires there be some shadowy organization behind the outbreaks with a motive for destroying most of the US,if they even stopped with the US. Since there's no foreign aid coming in,it's pretty safe to assume other nations were hit too. At least the first world ones.

    But to put it simply,if the government was going to use nukes,they'd have already done so. Since they haven't,it's pretty much a given the outbreaks happened all at once in multiple places and using them would be pointless.
    hahaha bury my topic in words :p but on the contrary, we did see a tank (which i still dont get how to the tank crews didnt make it) and an entire basecamp defending the CDC got overrun in the show in season 1. and im assuming you watched the new episode when carl goes alone and finds the new group? but carl and most of the survivors have been against the walkers for months at this point. They are trained at this point, they dont freeze up and take immediate action when taking care of walkers. Im talking in a time period between the initial outbreak and little after it, to the point that nuking cities to kill off ALOT of walkers surrounding the VIP's location is an option. Not three months after the outbreak. and does anyone know if vaccum bombs can only be deployed by aircraft? also, how do you know that the VIP's are gonna care about the other survivors? what if they dont want other survivors to come to their location? Most likely, the people who make the executive decision are not gonna want to spend more limited supplies to more people in order to re-ensure the survival of the VIP's ( this is only worst case scenario, i hope people arent like this!)
  • edited December 2012
    Panzer89 wrote: »
    Irradiated zombies wandering all over the place and fallout everywhere. You don't set your house on fire because you have cockroaches.

    haha i didnt literally mean nuke the location on top of them. just surrounding them. and i know its a different universe, but it didnt stop the umbrella corporation from nuking a major city that had huge walls surrounding it. granted, umbrella corporations was composed of alot of messed of folks but hey, they nuked it. and i assume it was done with executive decison.
  • edited December 2012
    there aren't enough nukes on the planet to wipe out every human, let alone every zombie, so it would just be pointless

    I'm pretty sure that's wrong. The U.S. has thousands of Nukes, and Russia has more, China has around the same amount. I'm pretty sure we have enough to wipe out all humans.
  • edited December 2012
    haha i didnt literally mean nuke the location on top of them. just surrounding them. and i know its a different universe, but it didnt stop the umbrella corporation from nuking a major city that had huge walls surrounding it. granted, umbrella corporations was composed of alot of messed of folks but hey, they nuked it. and i assume it was done with executive decison.

    resident evil is in a fantasy universe, and the decision was made by shady corporations that live in underground bases and always where sunglasses, you just wouldn't nuke your own country, not in a universe that is supposed to be realistic (ignoring the zombies) anyway there are plenty of other weapons that you could use before nukes and some that would be illegal to use in war but not against zombies like corrosive gasses, mines, automated sentry guns and all kinds of stuff that would kill zombies but are illegal to use against humans

    Toasty wrote: »
    I'm pretty sure that's wrong. The U.S. has thousands of Nukes, and Russia has more, China has around the same amount. I'm pretty sure we have enough to wipe out all humans.

    the nukes wouldn't wipe every human out, well targeted ones will wipe out a lot and there would be fallout, but there aren't enough to just kill everybody on the planet (earth is big)
  • edited December 2012
    the nukes wouldn't wipe every human out, well targeted ones will wipe out a lot and there would be fallout, but there aren't enough to just kill everybody on the planet (earth is big)

    I realize the Earth is big, but it's almost completely unavoidable to not die from a nuke. Chernobyl for example, pretty much everyone was wiped out. We have thousands upon thousands of nukes, if you shoot 2 nukes in the same relative area, it's pretty much guaranteed you will die from it.
  • edited December 2012
    Toasty wrote: »
    I realize the Earth is big, but it's almost completely unavoidable to not die from a nuke. Chernobyl for example, pretty much everyone was wiped out. We have thousands upon thousands of nukes, if you shoot 2 nukes in the same relative area, it's pretty much guaranteed you will die from it.

    but think about the surface area that the nuke would kill everyone then compare that to the land surface area of earth, the best you could do would be make more zombies, and considering killing zombies was the point of the nukes that renders them pointless
  • edited December 2012
    By letting off a lot of nukes what would probably happen is rather than destroy the zombies you would create a nuclear winter where all life would be wiped out...leaving the zombies stumbling about in the dark:)
  • edited December 2012
    A Zombie Apocalypse like you know in The Walking Dead and most of the films, are just not realistic.

    We can´t theorize about a situation that it´s not possible, not because the virus itself is 90% not plausible to happen but because of this:

    - The slow-dead zombies which only die by brain damage are totally not plausible. Even if they are real the ARMY and the people can kill them easily. They are slow and stupid.

    - If they are really dead (and they are) then they would not be able to walk in 2 weeks or so, because the rotting body getting worse every minute. In The Walking Dead it was months later after that apocalypse and the zombies are still the same.

    - If we count the apocalypse with infected people (like 28 days later film) and not the 'real' zombies it´s the same thing but dying by famine (in the film this happens) but by the people & ARMY too. A tank can easy kill hundreds of zombies just driving over them (they are stupid, and are just crazy humans). Same with weapons, etc...


    So. The really danger if the infection happens if that the infection is passed though the air and not by bit / blood. The real danger is a virus apocalypse, and not the attack of the zombies, which is the danger that everybody discuss on a Zombie Apocalypse, which is wrong for the reasons exposed above.
  • edited December 2012
    the nukes wouldn't wipe every human out, well targeted ones will wipe out a lot and there would be fallout, but there aren't enough to just kill everybody on the planet (earth is big)

    It's a bit Offtopic but:

    149.430.000 km2 is the size of the surface of the earth without the seas. There are about 20k atomic weapons on earth. The Hiroshima bomb burned everything in an area of about 3,5km2 but this was only an atomic bomb.
    If you only calculate these facts it seems like all our bombs can't destroy the whole earth but today a lot of these atomic weapons are hydrogen bombs or even moderner ones. (primitive Hydrogen bombs are about 830times stronger than atomic bombs but the UDSSR has already tested a Hydrogen bomb which was 6000times stronger than Hiroshima in 1961 -> So it is sure that there exist even stronger ones in USA and Russia today). Also the extreme destructive power of these bombs isn't in this calculation. One Hydrogen bomb produce about 8 tons of radioactive material because of the explosion. Moreover in this calculation they also count lands like Greenland and Antarctica. The places in which people can really live isn't that big. So we have definitely enough bombs on the earth to destroy every single human and maybe even to kill every single mammalian. I know that you guys in America are one of the 3 countries of the world which don't use the metric system but I was to lazy to translate it and I think you can also imagine with that numbers how destructive the bombs which we already own are.

    @CTCCoco

    Of course you are right that this can't happen in that way. I think and hope that most people know that but sometimes it's just "relaxing" to talk about a different world which doesn't exist. It's the same like some people are fans of fictive worlds like Middle Earth of Lord of the Rings. So nobody should take such discussions very serious. ;)
    Yeah the generall danger of a disease which can drastic decimate the human race increase with the amount of people on earth every day. One day medicin will be slower than the disease but most probably it won't be a zombie-like thing yeah.
  • edited December 2012
    Sodawasser wrote: »
    It's a bit Offtopic but:

    149.430.000 km2 is the size of the surface of the earth without the seas. There are about 20k atomic weapons on earth. The Hiroshima bomb burned everything in an area of about 3,5km2 but this was only an atomic bomb.
    If you only calculate these facts it seems like all our bombs can't destroy the whole earth but today a lot of these atomic weapons are hydrogen bombs or even moderner ones. (primitive Hydrogen bombs are about 830times stronger than atomic bombs but the UDSSR has already tested a Hydrogen bomb which was 6000times stronger than Hiroshima in 1961 -> So it is sure that there exist even stronger ones in USA and Russia today). Also the extreme destructive power of these bombs isn't in this calculation. One Hydrogen bomb produce about 8 tons of radioactive material because of the explosion. Moreover in this calculation they also count lands like Greenland and Antarctica. The places in which people can really live isn't that big. So we have definitely enough bombs on the earth to destroy every single human and maybe even to kill every single mammalian. I know that you guys in America are one of the 3 countries of the world which don't use the metric system but I was to lazy to translate it and I think you can also imagine with that numbers how destructive the bombs which we already own are.

    if you divide 149,430,000 km2 with 35 km2 you would need 4,269,428 Hiroshima sized nukes to get all of the land on earth
  • edited December 2012
    haha i didnt literally mean nuke the location on top of them. just surrounding them. and i know its a different universe, but it didnt stop the umbrella corporation from nuking a major city that had huge walls surrounding it. granted, umbrella corporations was composed of alot of messed of folks but hey, they nuked it. and i assume it was done with executive decison.

    You don't "surround" something with nukes. Again, I wouldn't set fire to all my neighbors houses just because I have roaches. Seriously, what the hell would that accomplish?
  • edited December 2012
    there aren't enough nukes on the planet to wipe out every human, let alone every zombie, so it would just be pointless

    Think about how easy it would be to get almost every human in the world in one spot. Now consider how stupid these zombies are. They'll crowd an area just because they heard a noise. It'll be real easy to get them all into one place, just get some helicopters. That's how the horde formed in the show.

    There's no question that all the zombies near ground zero would be instantly vaporized and a lot of them will be blown away, possibly dismembering their heads and ending them, but what if they survive and gain some kind of superpower because of the radiation? What if they become radio active and their bites transform people into super zombies? What if someone get's accidentally bitten by one of these radio active zombie heads being idle in a forest?

    It'll require some testing and thought, but I believe the president would nuke America.
  • edited December 2012
    there aren't enough nukes on the planet to wipe out every human, let alone every zombie, so it would just be pointless

    What world do you live in where there are no Minuteman-III multi-BUS delivery systems packing 750 Megatons of warhead per missile?

    ...and that's just US-side.

    There are plenty of nukes to wipe out all life on earth...if the blasts don't get you, the radiation will, followed by the nuclear-winter fallout.

    Between nukes, MOABs, viral, biological and chemical payloads...yeah, we could kill ourselves off with ease.
    if you divide 149,430,000 km2 with 35 km2 you would need 4,269,428 Hiroshima sized nukes to get all of the land on earth

    Hiroshima and Nagasaki were measured in KILO-tons. That's thousands of tons of TNT. Today's nuclear arsenal is measured in MEGA-tons per warhead. That's MILLIONS of tons of TNT equivalent.

    We are literally talking about blast craters approaching five miles. That's just the vaporization threshold.

    While we can not physically destroy the Earth, we can certainly cause our own extinction.

    On a side note, nuclear detonations have to be one of the most beautiful things on the planet.
  • edited December 2012
    there aren't enough nukes on the planet to wipe out every human, let alone every zombie, so it would just be pointless

    Oh yes there are. There are tens of thousands of nuclear missiles currently active, mostly held by the US and Russia but many, many outside of those countries too, and more being made every day. We've massed enough of a nuclear arsenal to wipe out all life on Earth if we wanted to do so. Except the deep oceans, but without a doubt all land animals and coastal sea animals.
  • edited December 2012
    there are enough nuclear bunkers to stop the human race from (technically) being extinct, but its the point that the radiation wouldn't kill the zombies just humans is why it would be pointless and why you would need to nuke basicaly all of the land to get the zombies, as has been said its like burning down your house to fix a bug infestation
  • edited December 2012
    but think about the surface area that the nuke would kill everyone then compare that to the land surface area of earth, the best you could do would be make more zombies, and considering killing zombies was the point of the nukes that renders them pointless


    What exactly makes you think that zombies would be made from the explosion of nukes, and what makes you think they would be able to avoid being destroyed by the radiation? Just because they were made from it (theoretically), then that doesn't mean they would be immune to it. Because the very high initial levels of radiation would prevent anything from coming back because it would fry our brains (needed in the zombie world). Plus if there was an apocalypse, I doubt they would nuke the country immediately. They would probably capture a zombie, find out what could kill it without killing humans, mass produce that, and make it into a bomb, that sends out waves of the stuff, without damaging things. Which is very possible, like radiation for example. But only a specific kind.
  • edited December 2012
    resident evil is in a fantasy universe, and the decision was made by shady corporations that live in underground bases and always where sunglasses

    hahahaha so true about the sunglasses part, not to mention the mutation stuff made me not wanna watch it anymore. Who says the government isnt shady though? o.o dun dun dun..
  • edited December 2012
    Panzer89 wrote: »
    You don't "surround" something with nukes. Again, I wouldn't set fire to all my neighbors houses just because I have roaches. Seriously, what the hell would that accomplish?

    why not? radiation keeps dangerous folks away and maybe kill a high percentage of walkers slammed by the blast. and calm down man haha, this is just a discussion formed from curiosity, not an argument. This goes for other people too.
  • edited December 2012
    robuk wrote: »
    By letting off a lot of nukes what would probably happen is rather than destroy the zombies you would create a nuclear winter where all life would be wiped out...leaving the zombies stumbling about in the dark:)

    very good point!
  • edited December 2012
    Toasty wrote: »
    What exactly makes you think that zombies would be made from the explosion of nukes, and what makes you think they would be able to avoid being destroyed by the radiation? Just because they were made from it (theoretically), then that doesn't mean they would be immune to it. Because the very high initial levels of radiation would prevent anything from coming back because it would fry our brains (needed in the zombie world).

    I think stalking head was saying that it would create more zombies by killing living people from radiation. Though, the thought of radiation "frying our brain" has crossed my mind which makes me think if the use of nuclear weapons would be useful.
  • edited December 2012
    I think stalking head was saying that it would create more zombies by killing living people from radiation. Though, the thought of radiation "frying our brain" has crossed my mind which makes me think if the use of nuclear weapons would be useful.

    That is true. And with the frying the brains thing it does more harm than use because it would pretty much kill everyone to get any use out of it.
  • edited December 2012
    why not? radiation keeps dangerous folks away and maybe kill a high percentage of walkers slammed by the blast. and calm down man haha, this is just a discussion formed from curiosity, not an argument. This goes for other people too.

    I take the thought of using nuclear weapons VERY seriously as it's not a trivial matter and I discuss it with others in the same fashion. They are very scary, very destructive, and very real things. Detonating a nuclear device in any populace should always be used as a last resort and should NEVER be an option to use on domestic soil no matter how bad the threat and yes that includes zombies.

    Also the edit post function exists you should probably use it. Quadruple posting is just bad forum etiquette.
  • edited December 2012
    First of all, in Walking Dead, the government is gone and helpless, so there would never be a nuclear strike. Second, I think it's the stupidest idea ever to use something so catastrophic and with such long lasting effects as an anti-personnel weapon.

    That said, yes. It would be their first idea.
  • edited December 2012
    I think stalking head was saying that it would create more zombies by killing living people from radiation. Though, the thought of radiation "frying our brain" has crossed my mind which makes me think if the use of nuclear weapons would be useful.

    yeah thanks, and also from what i have heard about the way (lower than instantly fatal) radiation kills people is by damaging the cells and it is usually the weaker cells like the ones in our intestines that break down and kills people and also people would be breathing in the radiation and that would destroy their lungs.

    then once people have died and become zombies the zombie magic that stops their brains from rotting along with the rest of the body would kick in and they would roam the irradiated earth :)
  • edited December 2012
    Panzer89 wrote: »
    I take the thought of using nuclear weapons VERY seriously as it's not a trivial matter and I discuss it with others in the same fashion. They are very scary, very destructive, and very real things. Detonating a nuclear device in any populace should always be used as a last resort and should NEVER be an option to use on domestic soil no matter how bad the threat and yes that includes zombies.

    Also the edit post function exists you should probably use it. Quadruple posting is just bad forum etiquette.

    Never said they were toys either. I do realize the sheer force and destruction Of nuclear weapons possess. And okie dokey then, pardon my forum etiquette.
  • edited December 2012
    then once people have died and become zombies the zombie magic that stops their brains from rotting along with the rest of the body would kick in and they would roam the irradiated earth :)

    Brains never stop decaying, nothing in your body stops decaying, so there is no zombie magic. Lol
  • edited December 2012
    ...I'll never stop wondering how in the Hell the military couldn't beat the zombies.
    Now, On topic. Yes. I believe the best solution would be to just nuke out the world. (Here an answer comes from a dude who doesn't know shit about nukes)
  • edited December 2012
    Napalm use for highly populated areas would be highly effective. Nukes are for dummies.
  • edited December 2012
    Toasty wrote: »
    Brains never stop decaying, nothing in your body stops decaying, so there is no zombie magic. Lol

    so why aren't their brains dripping out of their ears and nose, the brain has to be intact for a zombie to "live" the brain should rot and decay along with the rest of the body.

    The brain doesn't rot or decay in a zombie = zombie magic stops the brain from rotting and decaying
  • edited December 2012
    so why aren't their brains dripping out of their ears and nose, the brain has to be intact for a zombie to "live" the brain should rot and decay along with the rest of the body.

    The brain doesn't rot or decay in a zombie = zombie magic stops the brain from rotting and decaying

    well, in the walking dead tv series, the doctor notes that they do decay and hunger. but at a much much slower rate.
  • edited December 2012
    Maaaaaagic!
  • edited December 2012
    so why aren't their brains dripping out of their ears and nose, the brain has to be intact for a zombie to "live" the brain should rot and decay along with the rest of the body.

    The brain doesn't rot or decay in a zombie = zombie magic stops the brain from rotting and decaying

    There isn't zombie magic, and they wouldn't drip out of the ears and nose.. because it doesn't turn to liquid. It just decays as in "being eatin away by bacteria and stuff."
  • edited December 2012
    You missed the point of that. If the brain decays, as you say, there's nothing sustaining the zombie according to the rules of the lore. Zombies function off of the brain. If you destroy that, they die. If it's already destroyed, then the premise makes no sense.

    That's why we're saying there's magic.
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