This came up in a discussion on the entertainment board about the book World War Z, so spoiler alert.




In any case, at the Battle of Yonkers in the book they faced 8-10 million zombies. I asked why they didn't just drive over them with tanks. My physics question is how many zombies would it take to stop a tank? Assuming that the tank is a Abrams.

Also, if you have two or more tanks driving side by side does that help?


/nerd



im off to get Hebert's. hope to see what yall can come up with when i get back.

it depends on how high the pile of bodies of zombies gets that the can stop the tank. Oh and a sherman would take about 2-3 million less. DUH

I would think even an Abrams would get stuck in the mudd. Now imagine the mudd being a piss load of zombies.

what Brennus said. I'd say after several hundred they would pile up and eventually stop the tank.

Need a flamethrower attached to the front to burn the *****es.

Is there an assumption then that the zombies are continually advancing towards the tank? If not, then why would they pile up? Couldn't the tank simply wander somewhat aimlessly squishing them as it goes?

working on a quick calculation - gimme 10

what if the zombies were on a conveyor?

sounds like an epic iphong app waiting to happen

I'm thinking the tank could continue for as long as it had fuel.

Tanks vs. Zombies, iphong app.

assuming mass of m1 tank, and its typical acceleration to 20 mph - the force of the tank is 558525 lbf.

1 zombie has a mass of ~175 lbm w/ a friction constant of ~0.5 (guessed). Using the force calculation, you would need around 34690 lbm to cause the tank to come to equilibrium (assuming no acceleration @ 20 mph) - that equated to around 200 zombies.

No matter how you stack the zombies, you would need around 17 tons which is about the size of ~8 elephants.

That was a very rough calculation - assumed the tank was frictionless also since it has pretty good traction.

[This message has been edited by TKEAg04 (edited 11/5/2010 12:06p).]

You know tanks will just drive over stuff and squish the living **** out of it, right?

I don't know what the actual physics phrase is for that, but I'm pretty sure that's what would happen.

Are the zombies supposed to just stack themselves?

if I had a tank and a supply of zombies, I would probably drink a few miller chills then stack up my zombies to see how many I could drive over

But how many zombies could one jump over in a tank off a ramp!???!!?!

It would also be fun pile em up and shoot the pile with the cannon.

hell yes

quote:

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and squish the living **** out of it, right?

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clearly there is no living part of a zombie... and that is where this gets interesting

quote:

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Is there an assumption then that the zombies are continually advancing towards the tank? If not, then why would they pile up? Couldn't the tank simply wander somewhat aimlessly squishing them as it goes?

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think of 8-10 million zombies walking down a highway, all to the same point. and no they aren't stacked.

can the tank get stuck in zombies? if it did, would you just go forward/reverse until you got unstuck?

Now a couple of these maybe:

Originally, I wrote out a really nice response, but then I thought that this was stupid.

I think getting stuck in the zombie juice is a very real, and possibly greatest threat to the tank in this scenario.

depends on the slope of the land then

So the zombies are asian???

this is as much as i can tell you

http://zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yonkers

the zombie chinaman is not the issue

I've seen an Abrams buried up to turret in mud. It takes a lot to stop one.

PHYSICS CLOWN!!!

You gotta squish the head. If you don't then you get a Crawler.

Where's the damn clown?

wtf read my post - it would take 17 tons of mass to stop a tank going 20 mph.

nm

[This message has been edited by TKEAg04 (edited 11/5/2010 2:18p).]

You are treating the 17 tons of zombies as a conjoined, incompressible solid - in reality, it would be nearly impossible to localize enough mass against the frontal area of the tank at any one time to reach that weight with the low relative density of your typical zombie horde, not to mention the hexagonal close packing required of the undead to maximize the matrix density.