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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m also wondering about how there’s relatively little illness during Zombie Outbreaks.

With lots of mobile rotting flesh, we should expect a fly epidemic. Like, lots and lots of flies.

Whilst the maggots would help render down the Dead into a pile of bones, the adult flies remain a serious disease vector. And without ready access to antibiotics? That’s bad.

I know TWD sort of played with that during Season 4. But still. Should be a larger and more common issue.

That´s debatable. Insect population has taken a big hit since modern agriculture started to use pesticides en masse. Back in the day your windshield was completely covered by dead flies when you went to vacation in the summer. Nowadays you are lucky, if you hit a single one of the buggers when you drive your car around..


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 LordofHats wrote:
Surely we're not just glossing over the masterpiece that is Zombeavers

What´s their MO? Let me guess: It´s sabotage of inland waterway transport routes by building dams all over the place. Such furry, rotten rascals!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m also wondering about how there’s relatively little illness during Zombie Outbreaks.

With lots of mobile rotting flesh, we should expect a fly epidemic. Like, lots and lots of flies.

Whilst the maggots would help render down the Dead into a pile of bones, the adult flies remain a serious disease vector. And without ready access to antibiotics? That’s bad.

I know TWD sort of played with that during Season 4. But still. Should be a larger and more common issue.

That 'ultra-flu' was silly on several levels, including it being cured with antibiotics.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m also wondering about how there’s relatively little illness during Zombie Outbreaks.

With lots of mobile rotting flesh, we should expect a fly epidemic. Like, lots and lots of flies.

Whilst the maggots would help render down the Dead into a pile of bones, the adult flies remain a serious disease vector. And without ready access to antibiotics? That’s bad.

I know TWD sort of played with that during Season 4. But still. Should be a larger and more common issue.

That´s debatable. Insect population has taken a big hit since modern agriculture started to use pesticides en masse. Back in the day your windshield was completely covered by dead flies when you went to vacation in the summer. Nowadays you are lucky, if you hit a single one of the buggers when you drive your car around..


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
Surely we're not just glossing over the masterpiece that is Zombeavers

What´s their MO? Let me guess: It´s sabotage of inland waterway transport routes by building dams all over the place. Such furry, rotten rascals!

Counterpoint on the insects issue.

I do agree we’ve effed up their numbers of late. But they’re nothing if not prolific. And with so much dead meat up and walking around, with nobody clearing it away, that’s prime breeding ground.

 gorgon wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m also wondering about how there’s relatively little illness during Zombie Outbreaks.

With lots of mobile rotting flesh, we should expect a fly epidemic. Like, lots and lots of flies.

Whilst the maggots would help render down the Dead into a pile of bones, the adult flies remain a serious disease vector. And without ready access to antibiotics? That’s bad.

I know TWD sort of played with that during Season 4. But still. Should be a larger and more common issue.

That 'ultra-flu' was silly on several levels, including it being cured with antibiotics.

Did they ever actually state that it was the flu and not a bacterial infection?

The problem is, if its not magic, its a form of mad cow/super rabies. To be more than slghtly dangerous it has to spread very quickly. The downside in the real world is that real world diseases like that (Ebola) tend to burn through a population quickly.

Plus if its a disease then its just sick...people. Mankind has proven itself remarkably adapt at wiping out vast numbers of other people very quickly. As seen in Rwanda we can waste each other with sticks and knives at hyper prodigious rates.

If zombies are spread by a disease of sorts, I think that it would make the most sense to make it some kind of dormant infection. Something you get that doesn't really have much of an effect on you until some other triggering factor kicks in

Kind of like shingles. If you've ever had chicken pox you might just get shingles some time later in life.

The zombie disease could originate as some kind of low-grade symptom you'd pass off, or even be asymptomatic. Perhaps it just piggybacks on another bacteria or something. It will then lie dormant until activated.

Then when a certain condition is met it will suddenly kick in and zombify a person. That condition is death. Which I guess is actually pretty much the plot of TWD. everyone all ready has the infection.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m also wondering about how there’s relatively little illness during Zombie Outbreaks.

With lots of mobile rotting flesh, we should expect a fly epidemic. Like, lots and lots of flies.

Whilst the maggots would help render down the Dead into a pile of bones, the adult flies remain a serious disease vector. And without ready access to antibiotics? That’s bad.

I know TWD sort of played with that during Season 4. But still. Should be a larger and more common issue.

That 'ultra-flu' was silly on several levels, including it being cured with antibiotics.

Did they ever actually state that it was the flu and not a bacterial infection?

The exchange (thank you interwebz) went like this:

It's a sickness from the walkers? No, these things happened before they were around.
Could be pneumococcal.
Most likely an aggressive flu strain.

I'm 95% confident that's where things sit for the rest of that storyline.

 cuda1179 wrote:
If zombies are spread by a disease of sorts, I think that it would make the most sense to make it some kind of dormant infection. Something you get that doesn't really have much of an effect on you until some other triggering factor kicks in

Kind of like shingles. If you've ever had chicken pox you might just get shingles some time later in life.

The zombie disease could originate as some kind of low-grade symptom you'd pass off, or even be asymptomatic. Perhaps it just piggybacks on another bacteria or something. It will then lie dormant until activated.

Then when a certain condition is met it will suddenly kick in and zombify a person. That condition is death. Which I guess is actually pretty much the plot of TWD. everyone all ready has the infection.

Except the condition 'death' pretty thoroughly eliminates the body's ability to do basic functions like, well, MOVE. For a human body to remain self-mobile, there needs to be at least some normal metabolism functioning. Heartbeat, sufficient blood volume, lungs functioning, cerebellum and spinal cord intact... that sort of thing. Even then, without some cerebral function the body will just lie there like a lump.

Long and short... yes, brain shots will destroy a biological zombie, but so will heart shots, and shots through the lung will disable one in short order, and major blood loss or dehydration will still kill such a zombie...

It's like people who want zombies to be the walking dead haven't noticed just how impossible that is, and people who want the walking infected haven't noticed what happens to people who get sick either.

Well, Zombies inherently require suspension of disbelief. And I’m a massive Zombie fan.

Hence, on occasion, I like to start this sort of discussion. Helps ground things a bit, and, much like a Zombie virus, get the old grey cells ticking over


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Besides, one can always put any Zombie invasion down to ‘Necromancer hiding somewhere’.

Indeed, one of the best explanations of Zombies I’ve ever found is in Black Library’s Liber Necris. Supposedly a treatise on Necromancy by none other than Mannfred Von Carstein.

The description of ‘how it works’ is certainly interesting. I would say original, but perhaps ‘original so far as I’m aware’ is more interesting.

Zombies require a relatively small amount of Magic, as it’s effectively replacing the brain’s impulses. Skellingtons? The magic essentially forms an otherwise invisible musculature.

As I said, interesting, if perhaps not original?

 Vulcan wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
If zombies are spread by a disease of sorts, I think that it would make the most sense to make it some kind of dormant infection. Something you get that doesn't really have much of an effect on you until some other triggering factor kicks in

Kind of like shingles. If you've ever had chicken pox you might just get shingles some time later in life.

The zombie disease could originate as some kind of low-grade symptom you'd pass off, or even be asymptomatic. Perhaps it just piggybacks on another bacteria or something. It will then lie dormant until activated.

Then when a certain condition is met it will suddenly kick in and zombify a person. That condition is death. Which I guess is actually pretty much the plot of TWD. everyone all ready has the infection.

Except the condition 'death' pretty thoroughly eliminates the body's ability to do basic functions like, well, MOVE. For a human body to remain self-mobile, there needs to be at least some normal metabolism functioning. Heartbeat, sufficient blood volume, lungs functioning, cerebellum and spinal cord intact... that sort of thing. Even then, without some cerebral function the body will just lie there like a lump.

Long and short... yes, brain shots will destroy a biological zombie, but so will heart shots, and shots through the lung will disable one in short order, and major blood loss or dehydration will still kill such a zombie...

I mean, I know the whole zombie thing is impossible, just trying to see how close to possible we could get.

So, we'd need some kind of latent activating disease (possible), that deactivates parts of the brain while keeping other parts active (real life has examples), and that somehow also fights further disease and reforming endothermic beings into exothermic while totally transforming metabolism and reforming some king of new nervous system.

I feel like the Rage virus from 28 is the closest.

It shuts down higher thought, without the body being medically dead.

Add in a general lack of coordination to show the virus is particularly unpleasant, and we can satisfactorily arrive at plausible Romeroesque infected, where they’re still alive, but act like Zombies. The lack of hygiene, plus lack of any self preservation or sense of pain gets us damned close.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I feel like the Rage virus from 28 is the closest.

It shuts down higher thought, without the body being medically dead.

Add in a general lack of coordination to show the virus is particularly unpleasant, and we can satisfactorily arrive at plausible Romeroesque infected, where they’re still alive, but act like Zombies. The lack of hygiene, plus lack of any self preservation or sense of pain gets us damned close.

I'll agree with this statement.


I will also say that I prefer the idea of slow zombies much more than fast zombies. I like how slow zombies have always been both literally and metaphorically a slow death you can't excape. A slow zombie horde slowly closing in around a person is just so much more ominous than the jump-scare of the fast zombie.

In fact, add in something akin to advanced syphilis (google that at your own risk. Seriously. I take no responsibility) and you get the rotting look as well.

Once you postulate even a tiny amount of magic, we've gone past the subject of the thread. Magic is not real.

 Vulcan wrote:
Once you postulate even a tiny amount of magic, we've gone past the subject of the thread. Magic is not real.

Ahh but you're making a classic mistake on reality here.

See this thread makes its opening claim about dealing with regard to realism within the context of zombie settings. Now the thing is this means we already accept the unreal in the zombie; the realism issue is discussion around the presentation of the zombie in various films and books and games and how those creations don't stick to their own rules. We assume that they are "our world" just "with zombies" thus when we see missing things - like missing fly swarms. Or we see military forces unable to cope with brain dead sluggish walking corpses who should, in theory, be super easy to gun down with modern weapons etc... Basically its a discussion on the realism within fantasy.


So magic is perfectly acceptable to bring to the table.Indeed many of the early zombie films were all about magical or supernatural sources for zombies. It's more that more recent times have popularised the super-plague zombie often born of man made bioweapons. With magic the discussion shifts a little more overtly because its a bigger change in the rules of how the world operates; but still magic has rules and worlds built on it have rules that they should follow. Plus people are people; governments are governments etc... so we can make basic assumptions that it should be akin to how our world would react - with the modifiers (eg magic) that the story presents.

Regardless of how authors try to pseudo-science it up, proper zombies are straight up magic. Rage virus zombies might be plausible, but they'd still be attacking each other more than anyone else (no herds of rage zombies, they'd tear each other apart), and people out of physical control of themselves hurt themselves a lot and very quickly. They'd be a mass of torn muscles in almost no time and probably bleed out from many, many lacerations they acquire constantly. And that's not accounting for septic shock from untreated wounds or the inability to properly go to the toilet - yes, every rage zombie would have their pants full of poop and urine, at least until they got rid of their pants. Assuming they did get out of clothing - because you're a rage zombie and clothing is restrictive, they'll be way more susceptible to all those aforementioned injuries piling up.

So for rage zombies to work as they do in movies, it's basically back to magic. Magic to keep them from attacking each other, magic to keep them from hurting themselves constantly, magic to keep them from dying of poop related issues.

I always figured the rage virus had a pheromone type component, that stopped them attacking each other. Makes sense for a virus (as much as any of this make sense!), because it needs to put it’s energy into spreading the infection, not fighting itself.

There are also relatively common ways to protect oneself.

At a bare minimum, a Glossy Mag, sellotaped round the forearm can be jammed into the walker’s mouth, buying at least a few seconds (would’ve save Tyrese’s life in Walking Dead).

And, weather allowing of course, motorcycle leathers will prevent bites and scratches quite nicely.

I can see how a collapse could occur. In the US, the military is pretty small. The full US Army would have a hard time completely controlling the urbanized coastal areas (way too many people in complex terrain). If food/water/power were not able to be delivered to those areas within days they would be a mess and any zombie plague would spread easily.

As troops start having to gun down citizens and see society dissolving, some if not many will decide "hey, I need to get back to my family and take care of them". Add in the infrastructure required to rapidly and efficiently move troops and their gear and keep them supplied with fuel and ammo (and food and water) around the US would quickly be overburdened. A place like NY City could swallow a couple divisions pretty easily. Military capacity to handle actual mass casualty events isn't what you would think either. When trying to care for civilian casualties as well as their own the military capacity is just way way too low.

Looks at how the LA Riots overwhelmed the local and state law enforcement, and even the national guard and eventually active duty troops took a while to exert control. That was a relatively localized event. Turn more/most urban areas into that and it is feasible that on't control collapses.

 CptJake wrote:

Looks at how the LA Riots overwhelmed the local and state law enforcement, and even the national guard and eventually active duty troops took a while to exert control. That was a relatively localized event. Turn more/most urban areas into that and it is feasible that on't control collapses.

Note that these sorts of events are difficult to control because the police/military are hesitant to fire upon civilians, even ones engaging in rioting and looting. In a weapons free situation it's a different story. Zombies are generally too stupid to effectively siege even a group of soldiers on a residential rooftop.

And the USA is probably the nation best equipped to deal with a zombie outbreak (aside from maybe Switzerland), because a lot of the population owns firearms and gun shops are pretty common.

Tanks can also squish Zombies quite effectively.

 John Prins wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

Looks at how the LA Riots overwhelmed the local and state law enforcement, and even the national guard and eventually active duty troops took a while to exert control. That was a relatively localized event. Turn more/most urban areas into that and it is feasible that on't control collapses.

Note that these sorts of events are difficult to control because the police/military are hesitant to fire upon civilians, even ones engaging in rioting and looting. In a weapons free situation it's a different story. Zombies are generally too stupid to effectively siege even a group of soldiers on a residential rooftop.

And the USA is probably the nation best equipped to deal with a zombie outbreak (aside from maybe Switzerland), because a lot of the population owns firearms and gun shops are pretty common.

Private gun ownership is almost nil in most urban areas, not enough to make a difference. Ammo and gun availability is very limited too.

And US Troops in a ''weapons free' situation are not going to want to kill their fellow citizens just because they are in a weapons free situation.

 CptJake wrote:


And US Troops in a ''weapons free' situation are not going to want to kill their fellow citizens just because they are in a weapons free situation.

Aye but once you've got hoards of people tearing each other limb from bloody limb and feasting on the organs things kind of change. Though yes its actually harder to kill than many realise (apparently in WW1 and 2 is was hard to get people to actually shoot to kill through conscripted armies); but I think once you're past the "are these really zombies are we really doing this" phase things change.

In general opening up automatic weapons onto concentrated blobs of people the result is generally one sided, esp if the large mass attacking has no artillery, no means of ranged retaliation and no means to coordinate its strikes. It's an extreme display if super primitive VS advanced weapons.

The only bonus zombies have is if they get a boosted start; eg an infectious cloud, which infects a major urban area. Even then without some kind of "hive mind" thing going on the zombies could be encouraged to flock in groups.

It strikes me that most Zombie stories depend on people being really rather stupid.

Now of course, nothing lowers the collective IQ of a crowd quite like stress and fear. But to the degree needed?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It strikes me that most Zombie stories depend on people being really rather stupid.

Now of course, nothing lowers the collective IQ of a crowd quite like stress and fear. But to the degree needed?

I think it works in tight situations - like being trapped on a space ship or oil tanker or in a locked research lab etc... But once you start giving them cities to run around in and countries I think too many zombie franchises rely not just on stupid, but also utterly insane characters. Those "mad" ones who open the doors to let the zombies in so they can kill their rivals etc...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It strikes me that most Zombie stories depend on people being really rather stupid.

Now of course, nothing lowers the collective IQ of a crowd quite like stress and fear. But to the degree needed?

This isn't specific to zombie films, horror movies in general run on people doing stupid things for the sake of moving along with their absurd plots. I was raised on horror movies from a young age so it doesn't bother me, but for some it's just very hard to make that disconnect.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It strikes me that most Zombie stories depend on people being really rather stupid.

Now of course, nothing lowers the collective IQ of a crowd quite like stress and fear. But to the degree needed?

This isn't specific to zombie films, horror movies in general run on people doing stupid things for the sake of moving along with their absurd plots. I was raised on horror movies from a young age so it doesn't bother me, but for some it's just very hard to make that disconnect.

True - although sitting at our keyboards we may consider ourselves more competant than we are......I donlt mind poeple doing stupid stuff now and again - especially if they are called out on it but sometimes when the film/book/series depends on stupidity (see Promethius vs Alien) thats not good.

Buffy was all about not being the stupid blonde chased by monsters but even she (and her friends) would do stupid things.

Zombies work for me in a enclosed situation or if they are just apart of the problem - be that epedemics, alien invasions or the T-Virus.

I believe its a proven point that a person in panic makes poor reactionary choices that, given a more calm mind, they'd never make. I think the problem in a lot of films though is that they abuse this mechanic somewhat (like they abuse many things*)



*If you watch most modern cop shows it seems that murders are wrapped up in around 24 hours or so and forensics takes less than a day to fully do all the lab work on a crime scene; get the dna and find the killer

It is indeed true.

In Insurance terms, it’s referred to as ‘agony of the moment’.

See, the basis of UK Insurance law is the concept of ‘what would a reasonable person do?’. From there, one can establish fault.

But, Agony of the moment allows for odd situations. For instance, if you jump in your car, and take off without regard or looking? You’re in Tort. But, if you were being chased by an armed person intent on doing you harm? There’s no Tort.