Ok, this is specific, but how bout alternate ancient history with zombies?

Alci

I love World War Z - great detail, great action.
But I would like to read some good books with a zombie plague in the past - especially the ancient world. Alexander or Caesar vs zombies! That would be cool as.
I saw one book - Empire of the Dead, I think. Anybody read that? Or know of any others out there?

Armour is perfect against zombies.

Would cavalry horses let you charge them though? Too scary?

So many cool questions that could be explored.

Alci
 

Alci

Ok, so I did some more searching, and I found 2. The Roman one - gets some pretty good reviews. The Greek one isn't out yet - looks like soon, they are doing an Indiegogo to do a print run, just about finished, so I guess it will be out then.
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I'm surprised there aren't more, unless my bad searching just isn't find them haha
Or maybe it is just me (and these two guys) who think alt history with zombies is cool??? Come on!
 

Alci

lordapocalipsis said:
The Zombies could be cause of the fall of many old empires
Click to expand...
Yes that's right!
What if Alexander went into Persia to clear up the zombies horde there? What if Britain was full of zombies when Caesar landed?
So many ideas!

I looked at the Greek book - it is about battle of Marathon. That is cool! Phalanx vs zombies! Imagine 300 vs Walking Dead!
 
FriendlyGhost

FriendlyGhost

Here's a couple from Amazon:

History Is Dead: A Zombie Anthology - edited by Kim Paffenroth
...the living dead have walked among us since the dawn of time. In this collection of gruesome tales from throughout the ages, the ravenous undead shamble through bloody battlefields, plague-ridden cities, genteel country estates, and dusty frontier towns. They emerge from foggy cemeteries, frozen barrows, loamy bogs, cursed mines, and gore-spattered operating rooms to prey on the living. But these zombies don't just eat people. They help painters and writers save their faltering careers. They unwittingly push humankind on the quest for fire...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Dead-Anthology-Scott-Johnson/dp/0978970799

De Bello Lemures, Or The Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica - by Thomas Brookside
A recovered Latin text tells the story of a struggle between Roman legionaries and the undead in 185 AD.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bello-Lemures-Against-Zombies-Armorica-ebook/dp/B002U829N6

A couple of blog entries too:
http://www.reallycoolblog.com/the-army-of-republican-rome-vs-the-zombie-hordes/
https://www.quora.com/How-would-Genghis-Khan-tackle-a-zombie-invasion?
 
oshron

oshron

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, for one--it even gives some details as opposed to just "there's zombies now, deal with it", the gist being that the zombie virus originated in the Far East and was accidentally introduced to Britain (and presumably other regions) about a century before the story takes place and details how the surviving humans have adapted to it, fortifying country estates and the like. The Zombie Survival Guide has a section about historical zombie outbreaks, attributing a number of historical events to them, including the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony. stepping away from the written word, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare is all about a zombie outbreak taking place at the tail-end of the Old West era (1911 to be specific) and changes the already fucked-up setting of New Austin (which in the vanilla game is full of bandits, man-eating wolves, coyotes, and cougars, people feigning distress so they can steal your horse, and backwoods cannibals) to a completely apocalyptic hellscape where even the animals have become undead.

getting a bit more out-there, Call of Duty's Zombie mode is given some backstory in the final DLC pack for Black Ops II where the apparent origins of the zombies (created by ununpentium, or Element 115, rather than a virus or explicit magic) have seemingly been around since the Middle Ages and an Imperial German excavation unleashed them on the world near the end of World War I, though the timeline for that is confusing, and iirc deals heavily with parallel TLs
 
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Alci

This is great! Plenty for me to read!

Ok, so going back to ancient times - which weapon systems are best versus the undead? Would you prefer to be a Roman with pilum and gladius, or a hoplite with spear and hoplon?
Me, I prefer to be in the phalanx if I can be with other people, but in Roman gear if I have to be by myself!
Or maybe on a horse - just ride out of there!
 
oshron

oshron

Alci said:
This is great! Plenty for me to read!

Ok, so going back to ancient times - which weapon systems are best versus the undead? Would you prefer to be a Roman with pilum and gladius, or a hoplite with spear and hoplon?
Me, I prefer to be in the phalanx if I can be with other people, but in Roman gear if I have to be by myself!
Or maybe on a horse - just ride out of there!
Click to expand...
well you'd need to set parameters for exactly how zombies function first. if you go with the standard destroy-the-brain method of countering zombies, then whatever weapon is best for doing that is what would be most effective.

for the record, i seem to remember reading that alot of Scythian arrows have found right between the eyes of their victims, so that might be a starting point
 

Alci

I agree, one on one any weapon would do.

I am thinking about mass battles, with thousands of zombies attacking somebody else like the Romans or the Celts or the Carthaginians or Greeks. Then which system works best against such a mass?

Carthaginian elephants, for example, could be very effective - if they could stand the smell. Scythian cataphracts could do a lot, too, you would think, while the light cavalry rides up and down the sides, shooting them in the heads.
 

Balaur

I'd adopt a Macedonian system, with massed pikemen. However, I'd have them hold the pikes a head level like 17th century pikemen, not at stomach level like the Macedonians/Swiss. I'd also get rid of the pelta/aspis, in favour of the pikemen going unshielded, with a front rank armed Persian style with large wicker shield and short swords, spears and axes. Armour would consist of relatively thick clothes covering as much of the body as possible, rather than metal/quilted linen/boiled leather over the most vulnerable parts and the rest unprotected like the actual ancients used.
 
FriendlyGhost

FriendlyGhost

Burning should be good - so some sort of physical barrier (earthwork, wall, pikemen, whatever) to hold the attacking hordes back, then burning oil, greek fire, fire arrows, etc?
 

Alci

I like both of these!

Macedonian phalanx is good - a nice big hedgerow of saris says points for the zombies to run into - they don't duck, right? And copying front rank from Persian sparabara is good thinking, because if they get through the pikes, the men are in big trouble. What if some are crawling forward?

Greek fire is good too! Especially with a barrier to slow them down first. The Greeks at Marathon built a barricade of tree trunks on the hill before they ended up coming down and attacking the Persians, didn't they? That's when they could have used Fire. Except Greek fire was later.

Syracuse would have good inventions - mirrors to set zombies on fire as they approach, and claws to pick them up and drop them
 
oshron

oshron

the problem is that Archimedes' death ray almost certainly wouldn't work against zombies. i suggest checking out the Myth Busters' experiments on it.
 

Alci

Ok, I have seen that episode now. Man, that was disappointing. I wanted flames! It would be cool to have this slow ray that slowly sets the dead on fire as they advance, until they collapse into charred husks.
I like the Mythbuster zombie special, too.
 

Alci

Ok, I am not so good with writing reviews (maybe I should just practice) so I don't want to write a review and spoil this.
Instead I will copy in this review I like - 'what he said'!

5 out of 5 starsExciting and terrifying!
ByFred E. Rayon June 28, 2017
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
I truly enjoyed Freaks and Greeks! It's quite rare to find something so entertaining and informative at the same time. While the story line includes what might seem a way-out premise, with ancient warriors facing a zombie plague, that sole fantasy element is so well tied into factual reality that never once does it seem strained. You can virtually see, hear, and (most of all) smell those terrifying creatures, experiencing the gut-level horror and disgust they inspire right along with the book's human cast. And the author certainly knows his Herodotus and Nepos, drawing on those and other sources to inject a vast store of excellent historical information into his tale. Yet he does this so cleverly that what might otherwise be pedantic melds seamlessly in service of what is in the end simply a great, ripping yarn. There's also a lot of heart here, with characters drawn from history and the writer's imagination alike that ring true in their dialogue and actions to reveal deep, multiple dimensions. They make you care about them for better or worse at an emotional level - at least that's what happened to me, with feelings often welling up unbidden as I read.

I want to make particular mention here of the book's action sequences. These are quite marvelous set pieces that give the reader a visceral feel for the strange mixture of surrounding chaos and individual focus that must have characterized this (or any other) era's battles for a sane person caught up in their inherent madness. As a writer myself of military history in this period (late 6th - early 5th century BC) and an avid consumer of its literature, both academic and fictional, I can honestly say that I've never come across anything more simultaneously thrilling and terrifying in the brutally realistic depiction of men in the grip of mortal combat. And that comes in spite of contributions from flesh-eating zombies! So skillfully has the author woven those undead monstrosities into events that it's actually hard to believe they never existed.

Bottom line: If you like either brilliantly written ancient history or truly imaginative dark fiction, then this is the book for you! And you should also check out Timothy Bowden's previous novel, Undead Kelly, which is equally well crafted.
 

Deleted member 103950

Not Ancient history, but a decent take on the "period drama Zombie Apocalypse" is Wildstorms "Victorian Undead".
 
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