Decapitation and hanging weren't always human forms. However as society progressed they learned that breaking the neck at the base of the spine was the least painful way to kill someone. Eventually they refined it that hanging would break the neck rather than strangle someone. Society went backwards when someone thought electrocution was a good idea but advanced when lethal injection became common and even further when we realised death penalties are abhorrent and ineffective.

Brooks quickly discounts the effectiveness of military weapons like cluster munitions, Gatling guns and other kinds of weapons designed to put a large amount of shrapnel or projectiles into an area quickly. Even if it didn't result in killing of an entire horde, I would expect it to kill a large number and greatly reduce the threat of most of them by seriously degrading their mobility through damage to their ability to walk or move.

You're assuming that a zombie horde acts like a human enemy.

The enemy does not panic, does not fear and it's numbers are far in excess of of the survivors opposing it.

In World War Z, by the time the Battle of Yonkers occurs, New York was already zombiefied, so that's up to 14 million zombies with a conservative estimate still being several million. Further more, the enemy will not stop even if incapacitated they will continue on their hands and knee stumps. Further more, you have to be very accurate and the majority of our area effect weapons are designed to be indiscriminate and inaccurate.

Even though there's a chance they could kill hundreds, you're dealing with thousands of zombies per gun. This is why later in the books, a simple repeating rifle used with tactics designed to counter an enemy that could not fight at range but outnumbered you 100 to 1 was shown to be more effective than a gatling gun and airburst weapons.

The Battle of Yonkers was written to demonstrate the futility of human tactics against a non human enemy.

The thing about zombies is not their tactics or weapons but their numbers and drive.

A human needs to sleep,
A human needs food and clean water,
A human needs ammunition,
A human is vulnerable to infection,

If you have one infected or even five infected, they can be dealt with easily using modern gear. However once their number reaches a critical mass, humans are instantly on the back foot. It doesn't matter if a survivor kills 20 zombies when there is 100 of them. Max Brooks' World War Z book does a good job of explaining how they reach these kind of numbers, mainly through panic, ignorance and occasionally greed. However compared to humans, zombies have several key strengths.

The zombie does not need rest,
The zombie does not feel fear,
The zombie will not despair,
The zombie will not give up,
The zombie can still operate with debilitating injuries,

Humanity's only reprieve is the zombie is not real :)

Stop thinking of it as a Zombie and start thinking of it as a highly infections, virulent disease spread by direct contact with bodily fluids and a 100% mortality rate.

Basically thats what they were moddelling, the Zombie angle just gets publicity (which is good as it draws attention to their research and gets backers).

This is less trying to track a Zombie horde over the US than trying to extrapolate if a hyper deadly mutation of Ebola somehow takes root in a populated area.

Traditional zombies are magically reanimated creatures (the origin of the word is from Haitian Voodoo lore) and the original Zombie movies from the 60's and 70's tended to follow this even if it implied and not indicated outright.

Viral and parasitic zombies are a new concept in cinema. Personally I prefer the biological explanation compared to a magical one as far as stories go (World War Z (book) and 28 Days Later even though it's technically not a zombie movie), but the original concept of the living dead was supernatural.

Its a trade off, stairwells are also very defensible positions. Especially when your enemy isn't nimble and has a small problem with staying balanced.

Obviously you wouldn't live on the top floor of a high rise, but the second or third floor is ideal. As for lugging up supplies, for that you'd need to put in a simple rope and pulley system. A limited number of escape routes is a feature, not a bug of security because it also means points of ingress for the horde are equally limited.

Ultimately what you want is an easily sealed building with few doors and no windows that is connected to a seal-able tunnel system that allows egress at multiple locations... I dont know of any such buildings in my city?

I live in Perth, Western Australia. One of the most isolated cities in the world, by the time the Zombie invasion gets here, it will have wiped out the United States, most of Europe, all of Asia and much of Africa. Whilst is may seem like a good idea to go bush that can kill you easily too as you run out of water in a land that is very hot and has very few fresh water sources that are reliable year round. Beyond this, if you think zombiefied humans are bad, wait until they get the Wombats. A Zombat would be nigh upon unstoppable.

No.

Taxes from Tobacco sales doesn't even cover the medical costs of long term treatment of smokers in Australia, where tobacco taxes are high.

This is just medical costs, it doesn't include fires started by cigarette butts or costs that the government doesn't have to pay (such as cleaning a car or house after it's been occupied by a smoker) that have a net drain on the economy.

For the same reason people prefer to watch 42 meat heads wrestle each other for a ball rather than watch 42 of the brightest minds debate.

I dont mean the suppressed homoerotic desires either.

Given my experience with Civ V, they'll build about 2 cities each and never actually go to war, let alone attack. It will be a paint drying simulator. The incredibly stupid AI was what ultimately forced me back to Civ IV.

I believe the Lt Cmdr has wrestled with that question for years.