World War Z and beyond?

Now ... ad the book talks about "Finland" being a white zone, they still talk about it as a country, maybe enough Finns survived in Åland and isolated lake islands. I mean, probably a Finnish Redeker Plan would be to retreat to Åland.
What else would Finnish strategy here entail? How many Finns could've survived the War?
 
What else would Finnish strategy here entail? How many Finns could've survived the War?

Well, Finland barely has 5,4 million people, but unlike Iceland, it has a decent army. I say maybe 500,000 people survived? I don't know, any suggestions about a realsitic number of Finnish survivors?
 
It's really the latter. I know people will argue this, and I say this as someone that did enjoy World War Z, but Max Brooks isn't a great writer and has issues trying to fully explore a realistic take on WWZ and the shitshow that followed.

Plenty of people have argued this, especially the Battle of Yonkers, but I did just attribute to the fact that Max Brooks was also trying to write an entertaining story...which he did accomplish. World War Z is a fun read. But if you ever asked me if its a great book, I'd fucking laugh.

I'd largely agree. WWZ is an fun read with a lot of interesting ideas. But Max Brooks really really doesn't understand modern military technology, tactics, strategy, or pretty much anything else besides which end of the gun the bullets come out of. I mean I could get Yonkers being the result of bad tactics, insufficient information, and general panic but Brooks having everything except Infantry with rifles and melee weapons being useless was just stupid.

I wonder how the U.S. Navy fared here. Their carriers must have saw action.

Basically every country grounded their combat aircraft and the carriers largely just saw service as population centers and for air transport. In WWZ pretty much the only tool used against zombies is infantry on foot. Everything else is depicted as completely useless against zombies.
 
Could this also happen to Finland? Wasn't it implied that Finland was a White Zone in the book?

Finland was also mentioned as a White Zone, but like @PatrickMtz said, enough Finns survived because they still refer to it as a country. I think that there's enough Finns left that Finnish culture will survive.

What else would Finnish strategy here entail? How many Finns could've survived the War?

I'd guess maybe 500k to 1 mil.
 
In WWZ pretty much the only tool used against zombies is infantry on foot. Everything else is depicted as completely useless against zombies.

I think it's more like using heavy weapons is incredibly inefficient. Brooks' reasoning was that spending $1 million for a plane to drop a bomb on the zombie horde wasn't as cost effective as spending that money on an infantry platoon.
 
I think it's more like using heavy weapons is incredibly inefficient. Brooks' reasoning was that spending $1 million for a plane to drop a bomb on the zombie horde wasn't as cost effective as spending that money on an infantry platoon.

But there are options between using a million dollar bomb to blow up a dozen Z's and using infantry with crowbars to try and bash their way through a continent.

I think perhaps the most effective anti horde weapon would be these.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_Dog_(bomb)

Cheap and simple to make as possible and can be collected and reused without much trouble. Can be deployed from gun artillery, cluster bombs, specially made dispensers, rocket launchers, or just dumped out of buckets/tossed by hand from aircraft.

And in general Brooks did show he really didn't understand how modern weaponry works and it's effects. He suggests machine guns are useless because they will mostly hit torsos and limbs and only head shots are effective. This ignores both heavy machine guns whose rounds will tear apart most of a body and that a zombie which can only drag itself with it's arms is a much lesser threat then a fully mobile Z.
 
that a zombie which can only drag itself with it's arms is a much lesser threat then a fully mobile Z.

he did bring up that crippled and immobile Zs were an issue.

You can see them, no problem. easy to take out and you know you got them.

You start going through the grass or mud and one is laying there in wait and you step on it, then it's a problem.
you start going through ruins, wreckage and plain ol' overgrown foliage, you gotta watch your every move and if you step on one, that's a problem.

In Muhammad's segment, he brought up how the draggers were always an issue because if they catch you offguard, they could get a chunk out of your leg before you even noticed them.

Granted, It's zombie fiction, you always overplay how dangerous the zombies are.
 
he did bring up that crippled and immobile Zs were an issue.

You can see them, no problem. easy to take out and you know you got them.

You start going through the grass or mud and one is laying there in wait and you step on it, then it's a problem.
you start going through ruins, wreckage and plain ol' overgrown foliage, you gotta watch your every move and if you step on one, that's a problem.

In Muhammad's segment, he brought up how the draggers were always an issue because if they catch you offguard, they could get a chunk out of your leg before you even noticed them.

Granted, It's zombie fiction, you always overplay how dangerous the zombies are.

Right but if the zombies are attacking a fixed position the machine guns would make it a lot harder for a horde to overwhelm the defenses. Draggers might be a long term threat but they'll be easier to take the time to kill.
 
Right but if the zombies are attacking a fixed position the machine guns would make it a lot harder for a horde to overwhelm the defenses. Draggers might be a long term threat but they'll be easier to take the time to kill.
Part of it is that you need headshots, and you need resource-kill efficiency. I’m pretty sure he’s not saying other types of weaponry were cut out completely - just that they were used far less in favour of mass rifle formations.
 

tehskyman

Banned
Let's be real though. Soldiers can be very easily trained to go for headshots against slowly moving victims. Honestly in real life, the zombie apocalypse would have ended at Yonkers. The Americans would transmit that information to everyone else and soon the situation would be under control. Maybe 50-100 million people would die, making it the worse pandemic of the modern era, but it wouldn't be the catastrophe that it was in the books.
 
Let's be real though. Soldiers can be very easily trained to go for headshots against slowly moving victims. Honestly in real life, the zombie apocalypse would have ended at Yonkers. The Americans would transmit that information to everyone else and soon the situation would be under control. Maybe 50-100 million people would die, making it the worse pandemic of the modern era, but it wouldn't be the catastrophe that it was in the books.
Why would it be the Americans? why not the Russians, or Eueropeans, or even some nation in Middle East or South America? Maybe they could use normal armies, without using too much techonology
A
 

tehskyman

Banned
Why would it be the Americans? why not the Russians, or Eueropeans, or even some nation in Middle East or South America? Maybe they could use normal armies, without using too much techonology
A

True, it should have been the Chinese Army, seeing as they encountered the zombies first. Actually that poses a good question. If the Chinese had been spending the better part of 6 months cleaning up zombies, how hadn't they known by that point that a headshot kills the thing? How come the Americans hadn't either?

Spec ops had the entire winter before the great panic killing zombies and they learned nothing?
 
True, it should have been the Chinese Army, seeing as they encountered the zombies first. Actually that poses a good question. If the Chinese had been spending the better part of 6 months cleaning up zombies, how hadn't they known by that point that a headshot kills the thing? How come the Americans hadn't either?

Spec ops had the entire winter before the great panic killing zombies and they learned nothing?

World War Z is based on the idea that a virus transmitted by biting somehow becomes a pandemic and that a foe with no weapons, tactics, or tools other then a frontal charge would overwhelm every army on planet Earth.
 
Wasn't it rumored in-universe that the Solanum Virus was biologically-engineered?

I am fairly sure a character talks about zombies being locked in a room then coming back five years later and you'll still find them in there ready to eat you. Not to mention freezing and then thawing out a-ok. Magic.
 
It's worth noting that "high-tech army gets beaten by a poorly armed opponent" has been a pretty common trope in Sci-Fi since the Vietnam war. WWZ in particular came out in the middle of the Afghanistan/Iraq occupations when the US military was once again struggling to overcome a insurgency.
 
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