For the sake of the plot, choose whichever zombie type fits your plans the best.
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Relevant XKCD : https://xkcd.com/599/
Go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this to all blow over.
Popcorn, in general. But recently I don’t watch that many of these movies anymore.
I’m of the firm “no magic zombies” camp.
If the zombies aren’t magic, they aren’t going to last long, whichever form of zombie they are. Wait inside a few days, most of them should be dead or immobile.
If a zombie loses blood, they aren’t going to keep walking, their muscles won’t work without blood.
If you have a strong door, zombie arms will break before the door breaks.
Dehydration. Organisms need water to function at all, let alone move, and zombies aren’t big on water fountains.
I see zombies as dangerous for a few days, with their senses failing so they can’t track you effectively for the majority of the outbreak, then it’s over.
Anything other than that scenario is a magical zombie, who can move without energy, function without a body, or unrealistically mutate.
I love zombie movies and comics, but for real real, no magic zombies.
update: I’m going to do a podcast episode about magical zombies now.
What about a subtler zombie pathogen that merely rewires your brain to make you allergic to everything but meat. It would have longer to spread, and the increase in consumption would probably cause a general environmental collapse.
You’d have aspects of cannibalism, societal collapse, and dramatic infection deceit scenes and nobody would ever look like a zombie.
People would have to publicly eat plants to prove they’re not zombies to enter secure areas. Remember the time Arby’s made a fake carrot that was made of meat? They called it a megetable. That’s real. What if the infected wormed their way into the food industry and started mislabeling things to muddy the waters due to social stigma?
Scientific zombies wouldn’t necessarily look dead, and a real version would be way less overt.
there are a few big issues here.
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The consistency and efficacy of that pathogen
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those people wouldn’t be zombies, they would just be carnivores.
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if cannibalism/societal colapse/megetables are going on, people are going to notice.
there are already pathogens that make someone vegetarian, but because of the resilience of the human body, the effect only takes hold in a very low percentage of people introduced to the pathogen (they’re not sure which mechanism in tick spit prompts the meat allergy yet, afaik).
The brain is incredibly complex and can rewire itself, so to have even 10% of the population have consistently perfectly rewired brains while maintaining all other normal functions and the coordination to conspire, cannibalize people and change the global food supply is a pretty magical scenario.
I think you’re reading some things into what I said to make it magical, but it’s not important. I’m just ideating because you got me excited about an idea.
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what about the nonmagic zombie situation where the plague spreads slowly and through typical viral pathways so that it becomes an endemic where people trying to go about their regular life will occasionally keel over and come back up as berserk monsters
that sounds like a magic zombie scenario and the aforementioned guidelines apply.
their dead tissue will break apart and decompose very rapidly, and dehydration will prohibit any complex movement after a few hours.
if reanimations are moving their dead bodies around without connective tissue or the fuel/cell requirements needed to work those bodily systems, that’s magic.
expecting non-magic zombies to be able to chase someone or gather in a horde is like expecting a car to run without any fuel, engine, or drivetrain.
the closest thing we have to a non-magic zombie but still similar to zombies in movies is rabies. the person becomes violent but extremely uncoordinated, aquaphobic, and then dies because the human body doesn’t function without the constant ingestion of water and fuel sources.
If a zombie loses blood, they aren’t going to keep walking, their muscles won’t work without blood.
Isn’t that the whole idea behind zombies: they need no circulating blood nor an heart pumping it? Soulless and heartless bastards, you know.
If you have a strong door, zombie arms will break before the door breaks.
One zombie no doubt, but like we all know those assholes are often moving in hordes… Sure, the first zombies squashed against the door won’t like that very much but then neither will the door and once it breaks under the weight of all the other zombies… Or if it is not the zombie-proof door, they will inadvertently press too hard on one of those nice large windows we often see in the hollywood type of houses, a window that isn’t zombie-proof obviously and then… bon appétit, like we say in my country ;)
The only kind of zombies I really worry about is the quickly and very much non-fictional ramping up illiteracy among younger generations. To me, this kind of cerebral death is much more worrying than hordes of dead people suddenly wanting to take a bite of my sorry ass. That said, maybe I should see that as the latest kind of zombification? Pure brain rot instead of flesh rot?
So, what would I do if illiterate zombies were to try to eat me or turn me into one of them? I would be throwing all the books from my personal library at them, knocking them off one by one with some (not always that) serious knowledge I suppose :p
Or maybe it’s time I learn how to pray? Because if those illiterate zombies become dominant we’ll all be screwed once and for all I’m afraid.
“they need no circulating blood nor an heart pumping it?”
yup, those are the magic zombies. real complex organisms whose muscles won’t function without energy/water/bodily structure are much more demanding.
and keep in mind that every moment after death those bodies will be decomposing, that that body is not living, then it is decomposing a piece of steak left over from a picnic in the forests decomposes.
All of the dead soft tissue is going to break apart very quickly and won’t be able to hold the body together.
“moving in hordes”
a horde could be a problem for the few hours that they are coordinated enough to move until dehydration sets in.
“Pure brain rot instead of flesh rot…what would I do…I would be throwing all the books from my personal library at them”
this is a great idea, very poetic retaliation.
My plan, in its entirety:
BRAAAAINS!!!
Die, I guess. On the off chance that I survive the first few days, try to build a civilization.
I feel like that in this timeline we should already start and try to build a civilization
Hoard toilet paper.
Also, buy truckloads of hand sanitizer
Probably start eating brains. Too close to a major population center to think I’d get out and away without being bitten at least once or twice.
“I would just die” has always been my plan too.
Hope they are vegan zombies.
