The U.S. military is the world’s premiere fighting force, but only in real life. They are no match for the undead. Not even when they team up with NATO or another group of allies. That’s a necessary plot hole in any zombie apocalypse story. It’s like killing off a child protagonist’s parents, because otherwise they’d be protecting the child and preventing dangerous adventures. One of these days, someone is going to produce a film in which military strategists are the heroes who actually save the world from a zombie infection. That would be cool. This is the latest from John McNamee at Pie Comic.
Basically, the local police/militia/vigilantes are the slightly better equipped, better fed, and more numerous version of the rag-tag band of wanderers. The only downside to their activities will be the inevitable collateral damage of killing more people than have actually turned. In effect, they'd be more than 100% effective: they'd kill all of the zombies and several non-infected that they suspect might be infected. And once they start they will most likely remain in place for years after all of the infected are wiped out, so any new cases that appear will be dealt with even faster than the first set.