Zombies versus Nazis

January 18, 2012 in Editorial

How many Zombies does it take to conquer any given empire or army? Centives decided to find out.

So what is a zombie horde? Think lots of men running towards you trying to eat your brain/arms/spleen. Unarmed but if they get to you, really its game over unless you happen to be wearing a suit of armour. Most people, as far as I know, do not wear this normally. Now obviously there have been no known zombie hordes to date combated, so here’s a best estimate. Taking the infamous battle of Isandlwana, 1,800 British troops armed with rifles were defeated by 25,000 Zulu in 1879. Or, it took thirteen men with spears to take down each Brit armed with a rifle. Not bad! But what about in modern times?

In terms of zombie hunting ability, the biggest change has to be the soldier’s rifle. As anyone who has read Max Brook’s World War Z knows, killing zombies is all about rounds per minute. How many times per minute can you shoot a zombie in the head accurately. That means no machine guns. Sorry guys, not accurate enough. It’s all about rifles.

The Brits in 1879 used the Martini-Henry rifle, with a rate of fire 12 rounds per minute, or one round every five seconds. Max Brooks recommends a rate of fire of one round per second to stop zombies (like World War Z’s battle of Hope in New Mexico). So it takes 13 zombies to stop a Brit firing at 12 rounds a minute.

So far we’ve been looking at zombies versus soldiers in a pitched battle. But what if we scale this up. Really scaled it up. What if we looked at a global scale?

We’re taking the 13 zombies : 1 soldier ratio as a standard figure when the soldier can fire 12 rounds per minute. We’re then adjusting this figure to account for rates of fire of a standard infantryman in different armies. E.g. a Napoleonic Frenchman can fire 3 rounds per minute, and so can stop 7.8 zombies. Then, we’re taking that army and asking what percentage of the world’s population would have to turn to zombies to defeat that army. We’re going to call this the critical Z %.

Sounds like fun!

Army

Army size

Rounds per minute

Total zombie kills (millions)

World population (billions)

Critical Z %

The First Crusade

30,000 (assuming all infantry have crossbows)

1

0.0325

0.32 (1100)

0.01*

Bad time to be fighting zombies. We recommend hiding in castles. Or luring all the zombies into a castle and then locking the door. Either way.

* Centives originally reported this figure to be 10.16%, an error of a factor of 1,000. We apologise to anyone who was misled and bought a crossbow. Our thanks to commentor Robert for pointing this out. If there’s an outbreak, follow him.

Army

Army size

Rounds per minute

Total zombie kills (millions)

World population (billions)

Critical Z %

Napoleonic French

554,500

3

1.802

1 (1804)

0.18

Ah Napoleon. No wonder you fell to the Russians

Army

Army size

Rounds per minute

Total zombie kills (millions)

World population (billions)

Critical Z %

Napoleonic British

250,000

4

1.083

1 (1804)

0.11

This is just plain disappointing Wellington

Army

Army size

Rounds per minute

Total zombie kills (millions)

World population (billions)

Critical Z %

American Army World War 1

4,743,826

15

77.09

1.86 (1918)

4.14

Uncle Sam, well done. Although, the population of the USA at the time was 100million…

Army

Army size

Rounds per minute

Total zombie kills (millions)

World population (billions)

Critical Z %

German army WW2

18,200,000

30

591.50

2.3 (1940)

25.72

Nazis versus Zombies. For the record, each Nazi is bringing down 32.5 zombies before attempting to eat his mates’ brains

Army

Army size

Rounds per minute

Total zombie kills (millions)

World population (billions)

Critical Z %

Modern Chinese People’s Liberation Army

385,821,101

60*

25,078

7 (2012)

358.26

* Of course the Chinese can shoot more rounds per minute than this, but we’re taking 60 to be the optimum head-shot-per-minute ratio from Max Brooks

Yeah. That’s right guys. If the Chinese army lined up in a firing line they could take out the entire population of the world in zombies over three times.