Chapter 34-1 It Only Takes One

[Witch_Doctor]

Cabbage Patch and LiamKerrington, you guys are on a roll.

Assuming the humans don't panic, the situation in Boulder should start to stabilize.

• The population is locked up tight in boarded up homes and fortified public buildings, and they're armed. This means that the Inklings will have a tougher time recruiting than was the case during the initial outbreak and they're taking losses doing it. And don't forget, Datu is at large, with a pickaxe!

• Army units that were guarding the perimeter of the city will be reorganizing and converging on the city center. With the civilians indoors, anyone seen on the streets will be a target, allowing the troops to make maximum use of their firepower and making it much harder for the Inklings to turn the troops. This should slow the outward spread of the Inklings, and possibly start pushing them back. The assault force from Fort Irwin should arrive in time to reinforce this effort.

• The trick now will be to draw the Inklings into the open, where they can be effectively engaged by any available armor, artillery and helicopter gunships. This becomes particularly attractive if there is an MLRS unit in Boulder. Imagine the KODI, but on a grand scale. Let's hope that Michael shared the sweat lure idea with Boulder, that they've laid in a stock of sweat bottles, and that it works on Inklings! The athletic fields at the University of Colorado campus would make a wonderful killing ground.

This leads me to a chilling thought. I'm not sure if you mentioned it more explicitly, but do you mean that the soldiers could target and kill humans breaking curfew? This would help slow the growth of the Inkling populations. I read a research abstract, once, about a neural network simulation of a naval battle. The network would sink its own damaged vessels in order to gain better maneuverability of its healthier ships. The fighting here seems like a checkers game where one player's pieces (The Zombies) can behave like either checkers pieces or Othello pieces.

I can see the use of KODI. If the sweat lure doesn't work they still have noise and, if need be, plenty of corpses laying around doing nothing. If it does work then what about used PTs, gear from the athletic facilities or NikVooDoo and LitMaster dressed in a Datu costume dangling from a wire?

CabbagePatch: Thank you, you are awesome. I see the 'weak spots' in my ideas. And granted: The heroes need to deploy the sweat bombs - at least in order to learn how the LOs react to it.
And you are right: The Little Ones in Boulder act more like Regulars up until now. That struck me already the first time I listened to 34-1, but I failed to realize it properly. Compared to any other activity they had on the complete show it is a different behavior - for whatever reason. Maybe, because they are out of control or have encountered less resistance, since their number is high (several hundred infected within Boulder's walls). Compared with any other time, at which LOs were only few (one to two encountered simultaneously) and were very cautious in engaging armed humans (exception: the one that attacked the car with Briggs, Tardust and Lizzy in it; but that LO was controlled and directly commanded by Bill Roberts/ Pinstripes/ Ink), the LOs in in Boulder are in a frenzy and on a rampage.
The "cold blooded" strategy makes a lot of sense; never thought of it that way. But naturaly this is the way to deal with any real threat - why risk the lives of many, if you can at least try to put some leverage against the zombies with means of passive resistance ...

All the best!
Liam

Good point. Their cautiousness seems to be the binding trait. This would make developing a lure difficult.

+CB
+LK