Walkers are finite, so how would you clear them?
I've mentioned in other threads that I don't really think zombies would be able to get to the population size we see in zombie media but moving on from that, another thought occurs to me - because there are very few survivors and so not a whole lot of people alive, that limits the number of new walkers. You could conceivably cordon off a city area, wipe out the walkers, widen the area and wipe out more until you eventually have a city cleared. And because you have cleared the most densely populated area, you aren't going to have all that many walkers at your door.
You could dig large walker pits and draw them in like lemmings and torch them. There would be numerous ways to dispose of them in very large numbers.
The point is - walkers are finite. Unlike the unending horde we see in movies and games, eventually you could get the numbers in your area down to a very manageable number and may even be able to wipe them out altogether. Then you just need to make sure you're on top of it when one of your own dies and dispose of the recently dead accordingly.
I think they realised this in The Walking Dead comic and saw that it gave too much of a sense of safety and so invented the herds. But even those herds could be led - we know they follow sound. We know Carver was looking out for them. So you could plan for those and, actually, a herd would become a wonderful boon. Think of the drop in walker population that would occur if you managed to take out a whole herd?
So in the world of The Walking Dead, if you cut to 10 or so years into the future and people got their act together, reckon there would be almost no walkers left in populated areas? If you knew that taking down a walker meant one less walker forever (which until people start repopulating in huge numbers, it does), what would your plan be? How would you plan it? Where would you start? Middle of a city? Or in the middle of nowhere so you could start safely and small? Reckon you could eventually clear a small country?
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You have to remember that each time someone dies they become a walker. This would make it difficult to clear and maintain a large section of a city or a settlement or anything unless you have something like heartbeat monitors to signal when a death has occurred, thereby preventing a potentially disastrous situation. TWD "virus" is harder to contain than the spread of infection in other games/movies/etc as per say The Last of Us because every single person can turn, making everyone fairly likely to start an infection inside the city whereas in The Last of Us there needs to be a point already for the spread to occur from. Having a city cleared could lead to having a city infested with walkers in a short time span. Also the numbers of people you would need to clear that city in the first place is huge. The number of chances for an "inside job" increases as the number of people present increases. I doubt you could clear an entire city at this point in TWD universe, but even if you could you would need an enormous amount of people to protect it, more chances for an incident. The suburbs around a city are also densely populated, so you would likely have a large amount of walkers at your door for some length of time.
How many people do you have in this hypothetical? You would need an enormous number of people to build a ditch around a city, also harking back to the probability of an incident increasing with increased population.
They are finite to a point. And infinite to a point. You can kill them all day, but as long as there is a living person then there is the potential for one more. They are only as finite as the number of people you have.
Think about the rise in walker population if you failed to take out a whole herd?
I believe they could rebuild, eventually. I don't think this process would start in a city. In fact I think cities would be the last strongholds for the zombie infestation once humanity got back on its feet. They would need a way to monitor the life, and therefor death, of people before it would ever be safe to resume living in a large populace.
Yes when someone dies they become walkers but we know how to prevent that. More importantly, they don't become 100 walkers. The numbers of living humans appears to be very small so you could kill walkers far, far faster than walkers would ever be created. Humans have shown to be remarkably adept at killing in large numbers. In most zombie media, they rarely seem to try as it seems like the horde is an unending stream.
I guess the question crops up if you realise that, actually, that stream does have an end.
PIPE BOMB.
jk.
I think is it round them up in a place or use a bomb that emits sounds(such as the pipe bomb from L4D) to kill tens of walkers. However, we have limited resources depending on where your location of base is.
You know how to prevent it, but you don't know when or where it will occur. They don't become 100 walkers. They become a walker capable of infecting 1+ people who are in turn capable of infecting more and more people.
The number of living humans appears smaller, yes, but you would need a large number of people to clear a city. Ergo a few subtle zombies could kill a large number of people, as was true with the initial onslaught of zombies in the first place. Say you have 2 people in a room sleeping, one dies and bites the other. They both reanimate and go to another room where three people are sleeping. Now you have 5 zombies. They then walk down an alley and kill the two guards on duty. Now you have 7 zombies. They then walk into another apartment-like building and infect 10 more people. Now you're sitting on 17 zombies and people don't even know they are out there. Oops. Humans are good at killing zombies when they know they are present and are prepared. You can't fight a zombie in your sleep, or very well when you're inebriated, or if you get caught up fucking in a closet.
That stream has an end, but the question must also be asked is what happens when a person who you thought had your back is all of a sudden eating your back? Does the stream end when the zombies or dead, or when the zombies have eaten everything but the bones?
PS: It's not about fighting the "endless stream" as much as it is about when you're not fighting the endless stream and not everyone can be on guard with their eyes wide open and their pistol in one hand and their machete in the other.
Why not pull a RE 2 and nuke the whole place XD nah I say find a way to round them up then blow up some geeks.
Yeah I see what you're saying and, yes, certainly accidents can happen but even that scenario relies on a person dying mysteriously from nothing and then a lot of very unprotected people who don't seem to have yet figured out what they're dealing with. Once it becomes clear how it works (dead=walker so be careful) it would take some serious carelessness for that domino effect to happen.
Thing is, walkers aren't smart. They are terrible predators when compared to many animals that exist. And sure, people do stupid things but they're a lot smarter than walkers. Generally walkers tend to kill people due to two reasons: 1) strength in numbers and 2) some act of major stupidity by someone. So in this scerario it just seems to me personally that all it would take is a little less of the latter to remove the former.
This would certainly seem like something to aim for. The thing is, the sound would draw more walkers so if you had enough explosives you could have a sound-baited walker trap that just keeps on giving. But it's dependent on supplies I guess.
As you said, accidents happen all the time. People die in my small town every day. Even more if all the health care were to up and vanish. Death would be a veiled thing. We can identify things that will kill us long before they will kill us (usually) in this would and then we can cure the vast majority of them. Not the same in this other universe. My friend was coughing a lot. Nothing too serious, just a persistent, nagging, dry cough. Eventually he said "fuck it" and went to the doctor to see what was the cause. Turns out he had cancer for months and months and never realized it. He just chalked it up to the sniffles. He is now cancer free, but the thing is he wouldn't have been able to find it nor cure it if not for health care. Say someone is fed up with it all and decides they want to move on. Perhaps someone gets the flu. Perhaps someone has a heart attack. Perhaps someone is murdered. The list is immensely long and you would never be able to account for all the possible ways a person could die nor know the signs of each death. Also it isn't about "people who don't seem to have figured out what they're dealing with" it's the fact that a person cannot be awake and ready to kill a zombie every second of every day. It's not feasible and it's not possible. It wouldn't take serious carelessness, it would take slight complacency. After you "theoretically" cleared an entire city with a huge amount of people then you would most definitely be slightly at ease, if only after 3 months, or half a year, or whatever. Eventually people would return to normalcy and something would go haywire unless you could determine someone was dead, as soon as they were dead, every time someone died.
Good luck getting people to be less dumb. There are two major things that cause war (in my opinion, for the most part) 1. People in power wanting things. Like Oil and such. And using religion as a trough for which they can gather their peoples around. 2. People believing so fiercely in their religion to kill for it. A little less of the latter you remove the former. Unfortunately these things are ingrained in us. By nature we want there to be more to life than an eventual death. By nature some of us are dumb. It only takes one person's stupidity, or one person complacency, or one unprepared for accident, etc, to make this hypothetical unravel. Humans are by far the most superior killing machines. But look at germs. They have decimated human population since the dawn of mankind. We can kill most of them, but it only takes one.
Seems a little extreme. Its not like Walkers are intelligent. I would lead them somewhere with a big sheer cliff face and fly a helicopter right over it causing all the walkers to fall off the side off the side crushing them like tin cans.
I'm not sure that germs are quite comparable to the undead. But I do see your other points and you're right - people love conflict for stupid reasons and I do think we'd go back to that but, similarly, we like to unite against a common enemy (not always a good thing) and in this case I think the walkers would get people together enough to do something about it.
So we can build a safe society and get back to the important business of killing each other.
You read issue 127, right? Because it's totally possible. All they need is to set up a huge meat grinder now.
Yeah but CrazyGeorge explosions!!!! That would be a lot less of a waste of resources, and overall probably better.
Yeah it would probably only work two or three times till we'd run out of explosions.
Edit: gah, post mistake. Ignore. Stop looking. Ignore!
I can see you reading.
Googling it, I don't think I have. I left the comics after the last issue of All Out War and I have a feeling 127 is the issue after that. What did I miss?
That's right. They use a horn and horses to move the biggest herd shown anywhere and control them (with Eugene's lead). It's pretty much exactly what you describe and has really changed "safe-zones".
YES
That's a good idea. Yes, add a large meat grinder to that and you've got real progress!