How serious would a threat need to be for bombing

Question

America 2018,

The country has been infected with a parasitic virus that causes two kinds of zombie;

• Slow but smart zombies where the parasitic virus has not grown to full size. They are slow because blood flow to the limbs is lowered to decrease clotting at the cost of speed.

• Then there are fast zombies. The parasite is larger and in adolescence compressing memory and risk/reward areas of the brain

  • The high blood flow to the eyes cause the eyes to burst resulting in blindness.
  • The senses of smell, scent and hearing are heightened.
  • Increases in testosterone and adrenaline allow for higher speed.
  • Blood flow is also increased in the limbs allowing for easier movement at the cost of heavier bleeding.

As the parasite grows, the host loses more and more senses while the retaining senses grow stronger. The Parasite allows for infected to use echolocation. If you think this cannot be done https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation

When fully grown only the sense of hearing retains and growths start to emerge from the torso, head, arms which release the virus into the air where it dies after 1-3 minutes.

Notes added for the comments;

• They are alive, They can get sick, They can bleed to death. Anything that can kill a person can kill a zombie.
• They can not feel pain and lack a sense of risk, restraint and fear
  -They hunt In packs.
• If they cannot find a pack they Find be considered prey by packs
• Packs do not attack other Packs based on instinct but they will rarely ignore this instinct.
• The reason this instinct works is the same reason chimps won't attack chimps of the same troop, but will attack chimps of other troops.
• Infected that have growths consider everything prey including other infected and even packs.
• They evolve through the stages of life depending on the amount of food they get.
• They do reproduce

This is the Virus, What I'm asking is how serious would it have to be in order to call for a bombing of entire areas by the American government. When I say serious I mean number of infected, number of survivors in the area, the downside of the media, etc.

Answer 1

Never. Your zombies will kill themselves.

Slow zombies are likely to be considered prey by your fast zombies once the other food sources have run out. Even a large pack of slow zombies are unlikely to be able to withstand the attack from a smaller pack of fast zombies. You state that packs don't attack each other - so what happens when they meet each other? Do they walk away, or join together? If one pack is hungrier than the other, do they fight?

But let's ignore everything in my previous paragraph for a moment.

Your fast zombies will kill themselves by running into things because they are blind. Navigation by smell and hearing can only lead you so far, especially if something that can normally kill a human will kill the zombie. They'll run into walls, off bridges, into deep water (and drown) and kill themselves all out before it becomes a problem.

Assuming my logic on the fast zombies is sound, the slow zombies are now free targets for the army to come in and mop up.

In other words, you will never bomb entire areas. If the area was bombed, you lose whatever resources/facilities you had there in the first place. If it were 100% infected, then the government would only have to wait until the above scenario happens, which allows them to go in, clean up, and regain control of the area. If the area is not very infected at all, the government can still go in, clean up, and maintain control of the area.

Answer 2

I agree with Aify: Never. Because your zombies pose no real threat.

As stated here, a 'classic' zombie apocolypse is bound to fail. An easy example to provide for this is the following question (I've read once in the webz):

You are at home. The house is surrounded by 15 hostiles, intending to kill you. Do you want them to be zombies or human beeings?

What you basically did on top of that is to take the major perk of zombies away, giving them the frailty of the human body.

So even if they don't eradicate themselves, it would be far too easy just to shoot them down with modern firearms - given their low tendency to hide, against machineguns fear and hiding is a reasonable reaction. Not including tanks, helicopters (they can never reach you).

You haven't given much info about the 'plague' aspect of your parasite. Is it airborne, incubation time, curability, possible manners of protection and so on.

You could crank up the 'plague' aspect, making the virus the main threat. But what purpose do the zombies serve then?

Or you need to balance the obvious weaknesses of you walkers with some really threathing abilites, which could include (just brainstorming, dont use all at once) :

• sonic screams, paralyzing people in a wide area when the whole pack screams.
• hive mind, controlling the zombies in a tactical brilliant manner.
• The incubation period heightens the intelligence to frightening levels until they burn out, making the superintelligent for a short period of time. ...