Given a number of constraints plus a number of parameters, they wrote programs that optimized for a particular goal. For example, they might use medical data as constraints. Age, gender, smoking and alcohol use might be the parameters to vary. Their output might be insurance premiums that maximized the company’s profit while keeping their rates in line with competitors.
It was not too far a stretch to apply their knowledge to taking terrain as constraints and horde movement as parameters. Their results would be optimized targeting plans for thinning operations.
As you know, the hordes were too big for men with rifles to make a dent. Heavier ordinance had to be used. For bombs and missiles to be used most effectively, the ghouls have to be packed together. Wounding does not help. Only a completely shredded body or decapitated head is any use.
So far, thinning operations tended to take place at the banks of rivers and lakes because they effectively slow a horde’s progress until the creatures start squeezing over bridges or other crossings. The problem is there aren’t enough rivers and lakes to allow the military to hit the hordes frequently enough. Going back to the Munz, Hudea, Imad and Smith zombie apocalypse paper:
“Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time.”
It was imperative that more terrain features be leveraged as choke points. More choke points mean attacking more frequently satisfying every aspect of Munz et al.
Identifying less obvious choke points required fine grain modeling of horde movement and terrain. Because of these programmers’ work, thinning operations took place more frequently and efficiently. It was a numbers game we had no choice but to win.
To get their analysis system running I had to script data wrangling code and create a job input and scheduling mechanism. Their code was up and running, producing results by early the next morning. Their input data still included handmade estimates of horde size and position however. Processes that include hand-made data can’t be scaled to massive levels. I would be writing the code to analyze satellite pictures directly, both daytime and nighttime, to provide size, speed and direction data without human input.
The country’s scientific eggheads may have begun redeeming themselves today. Survivors down in the Gulf region include experts in oil-spill remediation techniques. They knew how to grow oil-eating microbes, even ones that work at the low temperatures found in the deep ocean. They wondered what they could trick the bacteria into doing on undead matter.
They brought their idea to their Administrative Zone who made it possible for their research to take place. The research, after a few experiments, showed enough promise to make today’s radio broadcast. Either the report was true or it was propaganda to pump a little sunshine out to a demoralized and shrinking populace. In either case, the idea seemed plausible.
At the end of a thinning operation, after fresh wounds had been inflicted on the undead, an aerosol of the modified bacteria would be released. Landing on newly exposed dead meat, the bugs were supposed to speed up rotting even in temperatures down into the 30’s.
The environmental impact of the spray was not known yet. That living test people didn’t die immediately on exposure was good enough for wartime use.
Here “up north” we were already below freezing so the new development couldn’t help us. But, assuming the report were true and the bugs could be grown in large quantities so there would be enough to go around, it would mean an early spring of sorts in northern latitudes.
That evening Lieutenant Mancheski’s personal radio beeped.
“Six this is two, over.”
“Go ahead two.”
“LT there are two Zekes stumbling towards the back of the house. Permission to engage?”
“Affirmative two. Taken them down.”
“Hooah six,” heard, understood and acknowledged. A moment later:
“Six this is two. Zekes down sir.”
“Very well. Six out.”
On Friday (Day 37), I started work on the image processing software needed to measure horde size, speed, and direction from satellite images. This was not very hard to do slowly. The idea is this: establish a baseline of what an area looked like before a horde arrived. The baseline allowed the software to filter out changes due to wind blowing trees, shifting shadows and the like. Then as the horde arrived, compare the new pictures to the baseline. Based upon differences exceeding a certain threshold, a tiny spot on the ground was covered by zombies or not. A slightly more subtle step was figuring out the contour of the horde itself. Then, counting up the number of occupied picture elements (pixels) and subtracting from the total inside the contour gave a pretty good estimate of the horde’s number. Finally, monitoring the progress of the contour itself gave physical size, speed and direction with even finer data being available to pinpoint what parts of a horde were more densely packed that others.
To make this algorithm run fast so that larger and larger swaths of ground could be analyzed was harder. To do it, I converted standard computing code into massively parallel programs that ran on the small supercomputer I had. Supercomputers aren’t called super for nothing. Even my small supercomputer ate this kind of processing for breakfast. After a full day at it, my code could process pictures far faster than the optimization code could figure out where to attack. I added traditional servers built from old parts lying around to help in equalizing the system so that no cycles went to waste.
After a few hours gaining experience with the system’s performance, whoever was in charge of such things authorized Christmas Tree to receive satellite data from other Administrative Zones.
Camp Christmas Tree had shifted quietly from being tactically important to strategically important.
Spotting hordes at night proved straightforward. Taking deeper statistics from baseline images and comparing these to the current feeds, meant cold zombies.
Day and night now, the military had fine-grained data on horde location, speed, direction, size and density. Thinning operations could be conducted around the clock using just the right resources for each unique set of conditions.
Ruth Ann and I took a good look at the Chicago B horde and a few others around the country. At more than three million strong, Chicago B was terrifying. We’re not religious. Just the same we prayed Chicago B would stay away from us.
Chicago B wasn’t the largest horde around. Ruth Ann and I saw a comprehensive picture of what was going on around the country that probably no one else outside the top brass would see until historians got access to the same data.
“Well, now we know how much filtering goes on in the radio updated,” Ruth Ann said. “We aren’t being told anything about how bad things are around the major cities.”
Information was being very limited indeed.
It was a good day’s work and my basement data center was humming.
In a symbolic but meaningful gesture, the workers here today cored out a hole in the frozen ground and planted a thirty-foot pole. On it flew the Star Spangled Banner. Having read our story this far you would be correct if you assumed that before all this I would not have given two shits about flying a flag, especially on my lawn.
Now though I almost cried when I came up for air from programming. Ruth Ann and I hugged each other tightly as we watched the flag wave in the wind. I was driven to tears. Was it love of country or indignation at the destruction being wrought upon it? I don’t know. I felt good to see the symbol.
Given what contribution Christmas Tree was making to the war effort, to me the flag shouted, “You can walk but you can’t hide. You have come after us long enough. Now we’re coming after you.”
Several times during the day Bill Mancheski’s radio beeped to announce walkers, in ones and twos approaching the back of the house. I was with the Lieutenant when one call came. I motioned to him that I’d like to say something before he replied on the radio.
“Can you ask them what dire
ction the Zekes are coming from when the see one approaching the house?”
“Three, this is six.”
“Whenever a Zeke approaches the house please say from which direction they are coming and to which direction they are going. Pass it on. Hooah?”
I heard four mike clicks, one for each soldier on the roof.
“Three, say directions for the Zekes so far.”
“The ones we have put down today have come no direction in particular. They all appeared to be heading towards the back of the house.”
I motioned to Bill again my desire to speak.
“Hold three.”
“Can you ask them to let them get close to the house before dropping them? They are all heading to the back of the house. Let’s see where at the back of the house.”
“All, this is six. We want to see where they are heading specifically. Let Zeke get close and report.”
There was no doubt about it any longer. On Saturday (Day 38), anyone looking at the progress of the TC and CB hordes walking Wisconsin could see they were going to merge around Mauston by tomorrow. So much for the power of prayer.
“What’s going to happen when they merge?” Ruth Ann began.
“I don’t think they are going to have a rumble like the Sharks and the Jets,” I said while trying to think of something more likely. “The one from Illinois is now about three times larger than the one from Minnesota. I think just the momentum of the Chicago horde alone will drag the smaller horde back north. Towards us.”
“Looks like Christmas Tree will be in the center of another stampede,” Bill Mancheski added. “We have about a week to get ready.”
“Maybe it’s time to get out of here?” said Ruth Ann.
“What? Bill just got here. Lambeau just invested a ton of resources in us.”
“Doug, you’re talking like we’re some startup that just got funded. This is our lives we’re talking about. We should be thinking about leaving. Hell, we should be leaving, period.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much hon. We survived a horde once and now we’re even better off than before. Tell her Bill.”
“I’m sorry Doug. I go where they tell me.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere. Lambeau needs our results right now. The whole country needs our results. There’s more code I have to write. I can’t write code while I’m packing up, flying to Lambeau and unpacking. Shit, half the equipment wouldn’t make the trip and turn on again. Where do we get replacement parts? It would at least a day maybe two to get running again if we even can get running again,” I was pretty adamant.
“You’re playing with our lives now Doug.”
“Hon, I have been since the day we got married. Besides, you should trust me. I work for the government.” My joke did not go over well.
Later in the day I saw a new configuration file come down from Lambeau for the thinning optimizer. I had to restart the system to incorporate the new settings. By email from one of my people, I got the low down on the new download.
“We added modeling for aerial dropped land mines. Mauston is perfect for them.”
I checked the maps. They were right. East of Mauston is a waterway. West of Mauston is the some of the most uneven terrain in all of Wisconsin, the hills and bluffs of the Driftless Area formed more than 500,000 years ago. In between was a flat plain through which CB would be soon shuffling.
I wrote back:
“How much area are they thinking of mining?”
I got back:
“All of it.”
Ah, well. Land mines make a lot of sense but they hadn’t been used in the U.S. up until now. They are known throughout the world as the gift that keeps on giving. Once that area was mined, it was likely it would remain a no man’s land for decades. Once again, whom am I kidding? The land is a no man’s land already.
In addition, the U.S. had resisted treaties for years banning land mines. We had more mines than anyone else. The higher ups figured if we have them, might as well use them.
Within a half an hour our analysis system confirmed the area was great for a thinning operation when the new weapon system, aerial mines, was added to the palette.
In another hour, the satellite feed captured formations of planes over the area. In another hour after that, helicopters crisscrossed the plain south of Mauston, north of Wisconsin Dells.
Aerial mines are anti-personnel weapons. They are intended to maim not necessarily kill. It was unlikely that the weapons would destroy many brainstems but it would make several tightly packed zombies immobile per mine detonated. A zombie with no legs is still dangerous. However, it is a danger confined to a fixed and known area. The accountants of destruction could calculate then to take them out or just let them rot where they lay.
It was just as well that the CB horde was many hours away from the field. There were so many mines that the planning system needed new baseline images to account for the change in color of the land.
On the radio, our troops were said to be on the move again in Door County and Puerto Rico. Sealing underground tunnels brought a dramatic decrease in recurrences of outbreak.
The day’s bad news was that it was now demonstrated fact that the ghouls continued functioning underwater. No horde had wandered en mass into a large body of water like the Atlantic or even the Great Lakes. Attacks being recorded now in disinfected areas of Door County and Puerto Rico were sporadic and easily put down if they were spotted quickly. The key was spotting them quickly as they came up out of the water. Coastlines are too long to station troops that were needed elsewhere. Civilian “Coastal Defense Forces” were being organized. Their effectiveness was uneven, especially at night.
I could help with that.
I fished out some old articles on using the Raspberry Pi for stereo vision off my NAS. I grabbed two webcams and attached them to one Pi. I pointed them roughly in the same direction toed in a little bit. After confirming I had pictures from both and I started writing code.
The first part of the code was essentially the same as I had written the day before. Some swath of coastline such as a beach, for example, should have no one on it, that’s key. Baseline images told the code where to filter out any windblown grasses and continuous motion like waves. If something is spotted moving, the two eyes are compared and with some judicious use of trigonometry the angle and distance to the object could be accurately determined (once distances had been calibrated during setup). I demonstrated this to Bill Mancheski and Sgt. Orderly by having the system place a crosshair over a third soldier automatically as he wandered around outside.
Both Bill and I had a conference with Frank and others at Lambeau to explain what I built and how it could be used. I reminded Frank he had access to process control engineers that could easily write code to take the crosshair data I generated and control servos to aim and fire a weapon. Even if it didn’t fire a weapon it could send a warning message that something was moving where it shouldn’t be (if some type of ad hoc wireless network were available).
Prior to the war, this type of contraption would set the government back a hundred grand from a defense contractor. Now, apart from the weapon, we could build them for under three hundred bucks in parts: computer, cameras, servos, stands, recharger and batteries all for a price less than an afternoon’s bar bill from the defense industry.
The system had no failsafe in it though. Once it was set, there was no way to walk in front of one without being shot. This was an acceptable flaw for the time being and could be corrected over time.
A Blackhawk came later that day to drop supplies and take most of my Pi’s back to Lambeau while they figured out where to find more. Pi’s had been created in England to help children around the world learn about technology. I had purchased them to give to middle school children here in town. They would be used to help children after all. Help them avoid being eaten.
I ended the radio conference with Lambeau by adding that it would be a trivial change to connect the output of the Pi�
��s to M18 Claymore directional antipersonnel mines. These mines can blast ball bearings over two hundred feet without hurting what is behind them. I suggested they mount the mines at head height on telephone poles or similarly sized trees. I told them to set the Pi up on the “far” side with cameras out on stalks. My guys up in Door County could modify the code to fire the Claymore when a certain sized movement was spotted so groups of zombies could be killed instead of the first one that wandered by.
My thinking was that this sort of device could be parachuted into small camps to help in their defense or used by troops for delaying actions.
Lambeau was excited by my development. I told them it was all included as part of my service.
The work I supposed to do for the day was interrupted when I saw unusual behavior on my servers running the optimization code.
What was it a couple of days at most these things were running? I found the anomaly in the form of a massive Minecraft server that appeared to have several hundred users when I shut it down.
I had a second conference with just Frank and told him which of my people left behind his digital fingerprints. Fortunately, it was a junior engineer. He assured me the person would be disciplined. I don’t know what Frank did but I never had a problem with my servers again.
We also had enough zombies approach the back of the house to know where they were going, or wanted to go. Every single one approached the back and stopped near the natural gas end of the fuel cell system. When they got up against the protective fence some banged on it, others entered statue mode. Sometimes the statues would stop behind the fuel cell container where the soldiers could not get a clear shot. They had to yell and make a commotion to get the statues to wake up, walk a few feet over so they could be shot.
I reported this to Frank in our last conversation of the day.
Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel Page 14