Zombie CSU (49 page)

Expert Witness

I asked Witzgall to discuss what the military could bring to the fight that could turn the tide even against a horde of zombies. “It all depends on what collateral damage I have to be worried about,” he says. “We know bullets work to the head; but so would shrapnel tearing a zombie’s head and limbs off or blasting him into a thousand little pieces. If I did not care about leaving a building standing (but could not nuke ’em) I would use a Napalm air strike and incinerate the zombies. Failing air strikes, an artillery strike would do just as well. I would send in tanks (with flame throwers) and the infantry as mop up.”

Captain Dick Taylor, U.S. Army (retired), agrees: “It would take a lot of zombies to overwhelm the military. We could send in a tank division and simply roll over them. It’s not like we would be taking return fire. All we would need to do is make enough noise to attract the zombies and then they’re ours.”

What kinds of tanks would we use? “Let’s start with the Mobile Gun System,” advises Taylor. “That’s an armored fighting vehicle rolling on eight-wheeles and mounting a 105 mm tank gun. This is a thinner vehicle, just shy of nine feet wide, which means that it’s better for urban deployment. You could use noise or whatever to lure a bunch of zombies into a side street and then sic a Stryker on them. Between the fire capability and the weight of it just rolling over them, you’d damn soon clear the street with absolutely no risk to the personnel inside. Zombies are not going to chew through 14.5 mm armor.”

Taylor is enthusiastic about the Stryker’s stopping power. “Well, the 105 mm gun is a great crowd pleaser. Since you’re not taking fire you can let the hostiles close to point blank, though afterward you’d better have a hose crew with a strong stomach. Then you have the M2 Browning .50 machine gun. These fifty-cals kick out 500 belt-fed rounds per minute at 3,050 feet-per-second and they’re effective at up to 1,800 yards. Guns like that don’t care about headshots: they’ll chop the zombies into pieces. Pieces aren’t a threat.” He adds, “If you’re out of 105’s then the Stryker has an Mk 19 Grenade Launcher belt-fed automatic 40mm grenade launcher, which has a sustained firing rate of 40 rounds per minute. That’ll put grenades into a crowd of zombies at a range of 2,200 meters. Though if you want to do pinpoint shooting you’re good at 1,500 meters. That’s close to a mile. If you need to create a real hell zone, the Mk 19 is man-portable, which lets a team take it to a secure firing position separate from the vehicle.”

The Stryker is just one tool of modern military combat. Another equally effective weapon in the war against zombies would be the attack helicopter. “If you’ve ever seen attack helicopters really open up then you understand what putting the fear of God into your enemy is really like,” says Taylor. “It’ll just park there above the zombies’ heads and then hose them with an M197 Gatling gun capable of a cyclic rate of fire of 730 rounds per minute. And, if things get tight, it can open up with Hydra 70mm rockets. All of our helos carry more firepower than you’d think. Even the old AH-1 Cobra’s have a couple of 7.62mm multi-barrel Miniguns that’ll chop up a whole crowd of zombies without risking a single casualty. If the Army gets called to war against the zombies, then the zombies had better wake up and find religion.”

“If the zombie’s body is desiccated,” mused Rick A. Shay, owner/moderator of the Combat-Handguns Yahoo! Group, “I’d choose a weapon with a heavy projectile—like a 12-gauge shotgun slug. An impact by such would have the greatest physical footprint as it goes through the man-sized target, transferring its momentum to all it touches, and destroying anything in its direct path. If the zombie’s body is moisture laden, then a more-or-less standard hunting bullet like a .30 caliber Hornady V-Max would do. Fast delivery of kinetic energy would be the best bet in that case. The projectile would lose its energy to the target in as fast a manner as possible, taking out any and all bones and connective tissue it may encounter.”

Gun safety range owner Karl Rehn cites NRA safety and is less optimistic about head shots: “Headshots with a pistol? Only effective if you can hit a 2” × 4” box (eye socket zone). Maybe 10% of pistol shooters can do that given unlimited time at a stationary target past 3 yards. Typical pistol distances are 0–15 yards. Maybe 3% of pistol shooters can do it in any realistic time frame against a moving target. Basically only SWAT team guys and competition shooters in the top 25% nationally and even then only at distances less than 10 yards.” His advice: train. A lot.

Armed for War
—photo by Jonathan Maberry

“Zombies may not feel pain but they are not indestructible. In the end technology will overcome savagery.”

But this doesn’t mean that everyone should start packing a piece just in case Romero turns out to have been a prophet rather than a filmmaker. Rehn insists that everyone who goes near a gun should memorize the NRA rules for gun handling: “ALWAYS keep the muzzle in a safe direction. ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot. ALWAYS keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.” He adds, “Rule #3 really doesn’t matter if you obey rules 1 and 2. The key is the word ‘ALWAYS’ which is where most people screw up. Gun safety is not hard. It just requires consistent discipline and just enough fear of the consequences of a gun accident that you never get complacent. ‘Experts’ and cops are the worst about making gun safety errors. I put ‘experts’ in quotes because most gun owners that believe themselves ‘experts’ are not. Reading lots of gun magazines and being a mediocre shooter that owns a lot of guns does not equate to expertise.”

The Zombie Factor

Guns have been a favorite weapon against zombies since
Night of the Living Dead
, but as we’ve learned from neurologist Dr. Peter Lukacs, it isn’t just any shot to the head that will drop a zombie; and we’ve learned from gun experts that good shooting is more than just a matter of pulling a trigger.

Gun expert Constance Link insists that it isn’t how powerful the gun is, but where you place your round: “Stopping a perp or a game animal is like buying real estate. Three things matter above all else, location, location and location. Where you put the bullet is paramount. No amount of power will work if you miss a vital area or miss entirely.”

J
UST THE
F
ACTS

Shock the Zombie

Tasers are a type of nonlethal weapon that administer an electric shock strong enough to disrupt superficial muscle functions. Since zombies, no matter how they are created, rely on a whole or partly functioning central nervous system, the Taser will drop them in their tracks.