Zombie CSU (42 page)

Krimmel also commented on how SERT might handle a more contained situation. In our zombie scenario we’ve seen an infected person wearing doctor scrubs walking away from a medical research center. Naturally this building, being part of the crime scene, would be searched. If the zombie infection started there, then the entire building and all of its occupants would become part of a different kind of crime scene, and the tactical teams would be called in.

“Upon arrival,” Krimmel says, “we would set a perimeter of SERT officers with M-4s and K-9 units and put out as many snipers as available. While this was going on, we would attempt to find out in detail what has occurred, who may be involved, how many suspects and their descriptions, what type of weapons they may be armed with, do they have hostages, backgrounds on the hostages, who might have a grudge against the business owner, what kind of hazardous materials may be stored inside, if they have security cameras inside, can we view the cameras via the Internet, and I would find the maintenance man for the building and keep him with me. Nobody will know the building better than him. We would make arrangements to have EMS treat and evacuate the injured to local hospitals. We would have fire apparatus sent to standby. At some point, we would start making attempts at communication with the occupants, find out what they want and advise them to surrender. If communication failed, eventually we would make entry in an attempt to arrest the occupants and rescue any civilians. While making entry would certainly be a last resort, we certainly would not wait too long. Waiting too long would endanger any injured civilians and possibly give the suspects a chance to fortify their position, endangering the SERT officers further. Upon entry, we would probably utilize K-9 to quickly locate any hostiles and then take necessary steps to take them into custody. Should this turn into a zombie situation, I would have to make arrangements to safely house the injured in case they turn into zombies. I would call the CDC for guidance as well as the FBI and the rest of the alphabet agencies.”

I asked my experts to comment on the movie set piece of cops being overwhelmed. “The biggest thing to remember here,” says Krimmel, “is we train to tactically retreat when necessary. Obviously, the whole concept of retreat is looked down on by people who have no concept how to win a fight. We look at retreat as a necessary element of eventual victory (or live to fight another day). In the event an element of the SERT team was overwhelmed or even a single member was injured, they would notify command of their situation. Any injured members would be evacuated ASAP with available non-injured members providing cover fire. On every single mission we take, we have a Rescue Team on standby. That team is usually staffed by SERT officers and TEMS (tactical emergency medical services). We have a combination of sworn police TEMS and select members of local rescue squads. The rescue team’s sole function is to go to a SERT element that is in trouble and assist as needed, particularly with respect to injured officers. We train ‘officer down’ rescues on a regular basis, using shields, armored vehicles, and natural cover to effect the rescues. Upon activation of the rescue team, the original mission (hostage rescue, high risk warrant) takes a secondary role to the mission of providing safety to the SERT element that is in trouble.”

Witzgall has an equally high opinion of what the modern military would do when faced with this same kind of problem. He says, “A contemporary infantry squad (12 men) can deliver or has on call more munitions than a WWII infantry company (200 men). Unless ordered to DIP (Die in Place) being overrun is not very likely. An infantry unit will break contact before that is allowed to happen. As for the headshots they always talk about in zombie films…. If ya put enough rounds down range (as only our military can) head hits will most certainly happen. Also, you may only kill a zombie with headshots, but I would like to see him walk with his legs blown off.

“And as for panic and run scenarios,” he adds, “well-trained soldiers rarely break down and run. Some will fall back without orders, only to regroup and attack. Units are trained to hold or move off a defensive point then counter attack. It is a type of self-discipline that can hardly be explained. As the old saying goes: Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquering of fear. And in that, there is true valor!”

What would make soldiers—or police, for that matter—fight so fiercely against such frightening opponents? And what about the emotional component—after all zombies were once ordinary people, not terrorists of a foreign government. Would this take the heart out of the men holding the line? “This really depends on the circumstances,” Witzgall admits. “Killing something that is trying to eat me leaves little room for discussion. Still, what if the Zombie was someone you knew or loved. That will be pretty tough going! Most SWAT/Military types deal with killing someone in their own way. It is not something we talk to outsiders about, fearing condemnation. A question that is often asked (to me) is why do we fight, especially if killing a person is so difficult to deal with. The answer is that we fight for our teammates to our left and to our right—and we fight for our friends and families so they will not have to.”

And in a zombie war, the soldiers would fight so that their friends and their families—and their fellow soldiers on the line—don’t fall victim to the infection itself. That kind of determination is more likely to strengthen resolve rather than cause a soldier to drop his or her gun and flee.

“We often train officers to shoot center mass,” says Sgt. Krimmel, “because it is the easiest thing to hit in a high stress situation. But…we have taught ‘body armor drills’ for years in fire arms training. Basically the drill simulates shots to the body that have been ineffective (due to body armor, or in this case zombies). The officer then transitions his shooting to the head.
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We train the officers to continue firing until the threat has stopped. One thing I am a big proponent of is the concept that cops carry handguns because they are convenient (easily carried on the belt, always there), not because they are the best weapon in a fight. Handguns rarely stop a suspect with a single shot, and typically take a couple. A suspect can still hurt you while being shot. Shotguns and rifles on the other hand, cause tremendous, immediate damage to humans, typically breaking bones and causing sudden, massive blood loss. I train our officers to always take a long gun if they think a fight may be coming. A firearms writer and former cop I admire, Clint Smith, has said, the handgun should be used to fight your way to your long gun. I agree.”

He adds, “In order to kill a carbon based life form with a firearm, you basically have to disrupt the function of the heart, lungs, or brain. Assuming the premise that the zombie will only be killed by a head shot, a shot to the chest could potentially cause enough blood loss (hydraulic failure) to at least slow a creature down. A 12-gauge shotgun loaded with 00 buckshot (standard police load) fires 9 .33 caliber pellets at once. The tissue damage and resulting blood loss at close range is devastating. It should have enough energy to enter the chest and exit the rear of the suspect. There is potential damage to the heart, lungs, and spinal cord with such a shot. A 5.56 mm tactical, bonded round fire from an M-4 or police assault rifle will have similar effect on a human torso. Besides head shots, we also train officers to take shots at the groins and upper thighs of dangerous suspects to hit the femoral arteries or break leg bones to stop movement of the suspect. A close shot to the arms with a shotgun or M-4 should incapacitate said arm simply through broken bones and/or tissue and blood loss.”

The bottom line is that in a one-to-one confrontation or in a pitched battle the officers of the law and the military would be able to hold the line.

If it started as a plague and spread, we’d take a lot of losses; but once the enemy was identified and the information relayed to the proper authorities (and, as discussed in Chapter 3 this would happen very quickly), then the response from law and military would be immediate and it would be formidable. Cops have radios and computers for communication and information sharing; they have high-tech weapons and body armor; they have armored vehicles; and they have the training and discipline to hold the line.

On the other hand if
all
the recent dead rose at once without requiring a bite to start things off, well sure, we’d be toast. But as we’ve already established, that’s the least likely scenario. It’s the plague we have to worry about, and when serums and inoculations fail, a barrage of well-aimed bullets seems to be a pretty good backup plan.

J
UST THE
F
ACTS

Deadly Force

The use-of-force continuum is a set of guidelines established by the U.S. Department of Justice to help officers respond to the flexible nature of street encounters. The idea is to maintain control over the situation while insuring the safety of the officer, the safety of civilians (witnesses, bystanders, family members, victims, etc.) and, whenever possible, the safety of the suspect. But the suspect’s safety comes last, and in need the officer can escalate all the way to lethal response.

The Department of Justice describes it this way: “When the use of force is reasonable and necessary, officers should, to the extent possible, use an escalating scale of options and not employ more forceful means unless it is determined that a lower level of force would not be, or has not been, adequate. The levels of force that generally should be included in the agency’s continuum of force include: verbal commands, use of hands, chemical agents, baton or other impact weapon, canine, less-than-lethal projectiles, and deadly force.”
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In confrontations police always start low on the force continuum ladder, attempting verbal commands first; and most often this works because rational people know that resisting arrest seldom ends happily. Noncompliance with verbal commands, however, is more common than patrol officers would prefer, and when that stratagem fails, the officer moves another step up the force continuum. This is something all police officers are trained to do, and they do it automatically.

Zombies aren’t the only ones who bite; irrational (and sometimes even rational but pissed-off) humans do it, too. Long before AIDS and other communicable diseases elevated health concerns, cops were employing skills to prevent being bitten. It’s disgusting, it hurts, and the human mouth is filthy.

There are a number of techniques, both unarmed and using the tools all officers carry, to deter and control someone who has gotten a little “bitey.” As we’ve discussed, control techniques such as takedowns and joint locking are useful in most cases. Joint locks and attacks to pressure-sensitive spots (nerve clusters, etc.) will not, of course, work on zombies since the living dead feel no pain and will struggle even with a sprained or broken arm. And a lot of experienced officers will tell you that a crack addict or a hysterical and irrational person will sometimes continue to fight even in the presence of great pain or injury. The lack of response to pain compliance doesn’t startle officers into vulnerable immobility as is sometimes shown in fiction. All this means is that there is a clear and present need to go at least one more step up the force continuum.

Chemical weapons like Mace and OC spray
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are often employed. Zombie experts have widely suggested that zombies, though unthinking, rely heavily on sight, smell, and hearing for tracking their prey. Mace (tear gas) or OC spray will significantly blur vision and interfere with the sense of smell. This would allow the officer to cuff the zombie.

Or would it? According to Detective McKinney, pepper spray wouldn’t be his weapon of choice against a zombie. “Pepper spray works because it severely irritates the eyes. As such, it is what is known as a pain-compliance tool. If your zombies are reanimated corpses, then a mere eye irritant will not bother them or slow them down in the slightest. It’s a clear liquid that does not totally occlude a person’s sight, but rather irritates the eyes to the point that the person can’t help but close them (while writhing on the ground in pain). A corpse, I don’t think, would react at all to the pepper spray.”

And so we take another step up the force continuum.

If the zombie was too wild, or if there were multiple zombies, then the use of batons would be a common next step. When an officer takes a baton to a suspect’s knee, that knee is going to bend. A leg that is suddenly and forcefully bent removes the structural support for the body’s mass, and gravity yanks it down. Gravity is a constant, and lacking support any object will fall at approximately 10 meters per second. This value (known as the acceleration of gravity) is the same for all free-falling objects regardless of how long they have been falling, or whether they were initially dropped from rest or thrown up into the air. Even a zombie will hit the deck.