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

[Typicaljacob]

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

[furydeath]

Probably just major citys tho if the infecion every got nation wide I don't see how it would help.

[thestalkinghead]

there aren't enough nukes on the planet to wipe out every human, let alone every zombie, so it would just be pointless

[Merlynn]

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.

[Irishmile]

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..

[Panzer89]

Irradiated zombies wandering all over the place and fallout everywhere. You don't set your house on fire because you have cockroaches.

[HiggsBoson2142]

Originally Posted by Irishmile

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?

[Sodawasser]

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..

[Typicaljacob]

Originally Posted by Merlynn

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 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!)

[Typicaljacob]

Originally Posted by Panzer89

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.

[Toasty]

Originally Posted by thestalkinghead

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.

[thestalkinghead]

Originally Posted by Typicaljacob

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

Originally Posted by Toasty

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)

[Toasty]

Originally Posted by thestalkinghead

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.

[thestalkinghead]

Originally Posted by Toasty

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

[robuk]

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

[CTCCoco]

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.

[Sodawasser]

Originally Posted by thestalkinghead

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.

[thestalkinghead]

Originally Posted by Sodawasser

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

[Panzer89]

Originally Posted by Typicaljacob

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?

[DanJ555]

Originally Posted by thestalkinghead

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.