Well, they were nuts to envision conquering Venezuela and deposing President Maduro with such a small force, but were they tilting at virgin windmills?

Hell, no.

If you are not familiar with William Walker, you should read a little about him. He was a tiny little man with no military training who managed to conquer an entire Latin American nation with a force as unimposing as the one which went after Maduro.

First, Walker and 45 others invaded Mexico, with a plan to break Sonora free as a separate nation, with a certain William Walker as its autocrat. He did manage to conquer the Baja Peninsula, whereupon he declared slavery legal there. As the History Channel noted, “The spectacle of a man still in his 20s, with some two-score social misfits as his total support, solemnly explaining to 25 million people why he had seen fit to create a new nation on their borders, needs the pen of a Cervantes to do it full justice.” An unconvinced Mexico eventually drove Walker out, but his dreams were merely deferred.

After managing to evade prosecution in the USA for his violations of the Neutrality Act, Walker set off to conquer Nicaragua with another skeleton crew of mercenaries, and this time he succeeded. He first ruled through a Nicaraguan puppet, but eventually was “elected” President himself. Again, he legalized slavery.

Walker was eventually ousted through the efforts of the other countries in Central America and the magnate Commodore Vanderbilt, whom Walker had antagonized by expropriating Vanderbilt assets in the region. Walker’s ouster, however, came at a high price. Many died as a result of Walker’s reckless actions, both during and after his seizure of power. They included men fighting for him or against him, as well as many civilians caught literally or figuratively in his crossfire.

Still undeterred after having been repatriated to the USA, Walker then formulated a plan to establish an English-speaking nation by seizing some islands off the coast of Honduras. For a variety of reasons too complicated to enumerate, this plan was considered a nuisance by the British government, whose navy captured Walker when he landed and turned him over to Honduras. Hondurans were predisposed to hate Walker based on his prior actions, so they quickly marched him in front a firing squad to assure that he would foment no further mischief in the region.

You would think that Walker’s life would make for a fascinating film. He was no redneck simpleton. Quite to the contrary, he may have been a genius. Before he became an adventurer, he graduated summa cum laude from a university while only 14, and received a medical degree while still a teenager. Doctor Walker then abandoned medicine and took up the study of the law, quickly becoming a practicing lawyer in Louisiana. Tiring of that, he became a newspaper publisher. Despite all those achievements by the age of 25, his ambitions were unfulfilled.

Walker’s life was made into a 1987 movie starring the very capable Ed Harris, but that movie was a mess. It took a surreal, comedic approach to Walker’s life, using his 19th century shenanigans as a not very subtle metaphor for America’s ongoing global misadventures. I have seen it but did not write a review, so I’ll turn that over to some untested kid named Roger Ebert.

The couple belonged to a group called “Zombie Response Team” and were found to have 16 illegal weapons in their possession upon crossing the border.

I can’t imagine why they were stopped. Their vehicle is so inconspicuous.

Anyway, they were on a fool’s mission. It’s a well-known fact that Swedish zombies are harmless to humans. They will only eat herring brains.