Talk:World War Z/Archive 1

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_War_Z&oldid=114962441
If you look, there is more information about the book, than here.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.69.29.18 (talk) 06:14, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Information lost 

message: This article is plagued with a plot that is far too long and one that is written too much in an in-universe context (WP:WAF).  The largest problem is the Geopolitics section: it contains absolutely way too much detail about the exact fates of each country.  WP:NOT#IINFO allows for a "plot summary"; the geopoltiics section is essentially a blow-by-blow account of what happens.  It could easily be cut out without losing any of the article. hbdragon88 23:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I feel like it would make more sense to cut out some of the information, as it does ramble on, but leave the core. I'm going to try a trial edit - tell me what you think. --Grahamdubya 23:56, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Kudos.  It's a lot more concise than before, the level of detail for every country still feels too long.  I think I'll take a stab at it later - I'm sure it's possible to cut it down to a couple of paragraphs, describing the most fundamental changes. hbdragon88 02:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, and I know what you mean. I think the space activity section could probably be dropped altogether, but I think it would be good to include at least a sentence or two about each of the countries already mentioned. I had a lot of trouble trying to pare down Russia and Israel; maybe you'll have better luck. --Grahamdubya 06:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geopolitics section 

message: God I hate when Russia turns out to be the bad guy or is the one that does poorly. What do they mean they didn't have the equipment or whatever that resulted in them doing so poorly?
-G
:Russia is not singled out in doing poorly. It is expclicitly stated that China was not only the last country to be secured, but also had the highest casualty rate amongst it's armed forces.
Because the Russian military IS very poor. It has very low morale, and all its equipment needs an overhaul.
also russa was fighting a much more compley battle with europ to the west and china to the southBoatman666 18:02, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Russia is not "singled out" for doing poorly in this article; the book itself points out that Russia was hard-hit by the war (although China was the worst-hit of all).  Russia has good special forces and other stuff; so did the United States, and Britain.  But all of them ended up getting hammered by the living dead; why?  Brooks' narrative points out that the US's special forces "Alpha Teams" did *really* well against the undead in the first year of the zombie outbreak, during the "Great Denial"; the problem was, special forces units were simply outnumbered.  It was impossible for the "Alpha Teams" to defeat the zombies; they were a stop-gap measure to try to at least keep the zombies' numbers in check before the regular US army could be mobilized to full-scale war levels.  It wasn't because everyone was in denial; the US suffered, but was still able to form a defensive line at the Rocky Mountains (I'm not sure if Brooks was saying that the US fared particularly "bad" or "good" compared to other countries, but it does seem to have done "better" than China and Russia did.  I think he actually says Britain handled the situation better because they had castles and their "armored motorway" tactic...but then again, compared to all of these other countries the average US citizen has more access to guns and such and he does state that there were more pockets of survivors in the US than any other country, but I digress...) the point is that the *regular* Russian army was suffering from budget problems and such, and after the zombies spread so fast that the zombies could overwhelm through numbers they had a hard time of it.  One of the main Russian strategies in the Cold War was superior armor; tank dominance.  Admittedly, the Soviets had hands-down the better tank corps; NATO would have probably lost a conventional war against Soviet tank forces.  Of course, the whole point was that war against the Soviet Union would be nuclear, not conventional, so all of that investment in tanks wasn't really worth it.  Well, this is all academic speculation.  The point is, if we learned anything from the Battle of Yonkers, its that tanks are almost useless against zombies; they just don't proportionately do enough damage against them.  The US army actually stops using tanks against zombies altogether, doesn't actually make new tanks at all; they just retrofit a few for urban combat for taking back the cities from Rebels and such.  So the Russian army had a pretty good tank corps and special forces, but what the Undead were defeated by in the US was massive amounts of well-equipped standard infantry.  The Russian economy already wasn't doing good, and in the book they were simply left to fight the zombies with inadequate weapons.  Of course, just like Napoleon and Hitler, the Russian winter turned out to be Russia's biggest weapon as that ended up freezing most of the zombies; it helps to have most of the country above the frost line.  OF COURSE, the other problem is that Russia had to face the hoardes from China and India (and Europe too) who just came in hoardes overland.  The US and Britain at least had the advantage of oceans:  of the 200 million zombies in the continental US, an estimated 25 million were refugees from Latin America that reanimated on their way north.  Considering, say, having the entire population of zombified China next door, that's not really that many zombies from other countries in the US.  --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici 23:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Why is Russia singled out in doing so poorly?

message: Id like to ask people to not put Ireland under the catagory of the United Kingdom as the Republic Of Ireland is an independant Country and is not apart of the British Isles,The Common wealth or Great Britain.The UK/Great Britain only comprmises of Wales,Scotland,England and Northern Ireland..
it is part of the British Isles its not a part of the UK Sherzo 08:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Britain's North Sea oil became one of the world's few primary oil-producing regions left because the Middle-east got almost completely wiped out.  Iran for example got nuked by Pakistan, and the fallout over the whole region is bad, not to mention they were getting millions of zombies pouring in from India to further west.  On top of this, the Saudi royal family set their oil fields on fire (who knows why) and the general implication is that the oil production of the Middle-east got totally trashed.--Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici 23:11, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ireland

message: I do not believe that the article Battle of Yonkers needs to be merged with this. There is an excellent amount of detail there, which is rather too much to put into the main article.  Objections? Reactions? --Grahamdubya 00:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The general consensus seems to be leave it as is; it has now been a week, and I am concordantly removing the merge notice from both the Battle of Yonkers and World War Z. Grahamdubya 19:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Would 'Forking' be a new article on all the battles of the war? I might start writing that... Grahamdubya 06:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  to fork means to create new sub articles to avoid main articles becoming overly long Sherzo 12:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I moved the characters section into its own article, Characters in World War Z. --Grahamdubya 19:28, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Battle of Yonkers Merge

message: I think the Phalanx article needs to be merged with the greater WWZ, as is, it stands out uselessly as it's own separate article.
20:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Support, it only really needs one paragraph. --McGeddon 20:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

text: support, it was a relatively minor thing in the book more than a paragraph is excessive for a vaccene that didn't even workBoatman666 04:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

text: support, doesn't need its own article. --JMurphy 05:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Support, for reasons above --Cjs56 19:45, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Phalanx Merge

message: I read the book this past week, but not the Survival Handbook, and have a question that remains unresolved in my mind.  I don't know if it belongs in the primary article or not, so post it here:
Why don't the zombies get dehydrated?  
Yes, I realize that some suspension of disbelief is necessary whenever one speaks of zombies, and I'm certainly willing to meet you halfway. George Romero's zombies never hung around nearly as long as the Z's, and the 28 Days Later 'zombies' were still essentially alive...
I'm willing to accept some postdeath activities on the part of our deceased friends, but feel that they should(to the greatest degree possible) comport themselves according to the rules of physics - a Zomboid in the desert is going to get dried up!71.42.82.201 19:29, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The actual science of the zombies is covered in fairly explicit detail in the survival guide. I can't remember the exact rationale, but I do know that deserts were the most conducive for zombies simply because the rate of decay was much, much lower in such an arid environment (as opposed to jungles, where the humidity sped up the decomposition process). EVula 19:39, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

text: For your complaints on the senses, he wrote in the ZSG (which this was based off of) that it was a known mystery of zombies already, that even with their five normal senses compromised (like eyes rotting out) they could still hunt after a nearby human. He didn't provide an explanation, just that it was one of those mysteries in it all. I think it's a fairly minor one compared to the mystery of how the virus makes the brain into a source of perpetual energy without being fed any kind of fuel, but it's necessary for the primary conceit of zombies to work, so I just accept it and move on. Nerrin 19:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For that matter, as the girl in the Canadian wilderness park openly laments:  why the heck don't zombies' cells physically rupture when they are frozen?  Normal cells "pop" when water freezes to ice inside of them.  This is why cryogenically freezing someone is for the moment impossible.  Zombies should be *killed* be freezing them.  Even characters in the book say that according to all scientific logic, zombies should be destroyed by freezing.  But they don't.  It's just one of the mysteries of the zombie plague.  --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici 23:15, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Zombie Dehydration

message: Substituted at 21:02, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment