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 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.
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.
those people wouldn’t be zombies, they would just be carnivores.
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.
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-fictionalramping 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.
Indeed but, to me at least, this is not Trump/UNESCO-related issue. It’s a Western societies issue.
We have very similar issues going here in France. For me, it all begun back in the 80s so, yeah, it’s not really something new. But things have been going worse since then. And it has been accelerating. Quickly. Badly.
In France, our educative system (it’s called l’éducation nationale, aka a nation-wide highly centralized system deciding what kids are to learn and how they should be educated) and since the mid-80s the level has collapsed beyond belief. Kids aren’t being taught much anymore, and math as well as reading are vanishing skills. Let’s not mention history and civic education (which help in any working democracy). Things have become real worse in recent years. Like, a lot worse.
Obviously, it’s not the kid’s fault. It’s us the adults, teachers, parents and elected representatives voting absurd laws who have failed. But it’s them kids who will pay dear for our mistakes (like with the climate crisis, btw).
They already started paying.
I mean, who has the best chance of getting a qualified job between say a lower or, nowadays, even a middle-class kid barely able to open a book and to understand what’s written in it (and barely able to spell their name correctly) and a kid from a family where knowledge and teaching are still considered valuable investments worthy of sending their kids into private schools in which, unlike public schools, they’re actually being taught how to read (and how to properly use books), and do math, and learn some history, philosophy and so on?
Those wealthier and better-educated kids will get all the rewards, while all the others kids will be fucked up, for their entire life (but hey, they will know how to watch ads on YT and TikTok).
They already are being fucked up btw, they just can’t realize it as we have not given them the basic tools required to understand what’s happening around them.
But the real worse is yet to come. Here in France at least even our private schools are subjected to the dumbing-down of the entire educative system, as they also depend on nation-wide laws and controls… Controls that have been getting harsher and harsher and, unsurprisingly, even those private schools are witnessing a sharp decline. Sure, it’s less sharp than in public schools but still very worrying. So, what will happen? Well, I can’t predict the (very near) future but would I have school-age kids myself and would I have enough money to send them to a private school I would simply pack my things and move abroad in any other country but France, in a country that would not actively be trying to ruin our educative system.
France was rightly regarded as a country of readers up until the late 70s to early 80s. Books (serious books, I mean) were a popular discussion topic, it was in the newspapers, magazines, radio and TV, it was discussed between people (the Internet and social media of back then). It was popular. Nowadays? It’s not rare at all to enter a house where there is not a single book to be found. A house where no one owns a library card either (or read ebooks). Kids are just not encouraged to read books. Even comics are starting to become a happy exception.
Once again, this is a failure that will cost dearly to kids growing up in those families.
Without any reading culture and habits, not only will they be at a disadvantage when competing against ‘reading kids’ but they’re also much more vulnerable to the stupidest ideas floating around… provided those already stupid ideas are simplified enough for them to instantly grasp them without much effort.
What kind of adults and citizen will that create? I’d rather not imagine. That’s a fucking nightmare happening right in front of our eyes and nobody seems to care.
“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”
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 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.
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.
The consistency and efficacy of that pathogen
those people wouldn’t be zombies, they would just be carnivores.
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.
Fake news and xitter would like to have a word.
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.
Isn’t that the whole idea behind zombies: they need no circulating blood nor an heart pumping it? Soulless and heartless bastards, you know.
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.
i remember being pretty concerned during trump 1 when the US withdrew from the UNESCO literacy program, but it was barely a footnote to anyone
Indeed but, to me at least, this is not Trump/UNESCO-related issue. It’s a Western societies issue.
We have very similar issues going here in France. For me, it all begun back in the 80s so, yeah, it’s not really something new. But things have been going worse since then. And it has been accelerating. Quickly. Badly.
In France, our educative system (it’s called l’éducation nationale, aka a nation-wide highly centralized system deciding what kids are to learn and how they should be educated) and since the mid-80s the level has collapsed beyond belief. Kids aren’t being taught much anymore, and math as well as reading are vanishing skills. Let’s not mention history and civic education (which help in any working democracy). Things have become real worse in recent years. Like, a lot worse.
Obviously, it’s not the kid’s fault. It’s us the adults, teachers, parents and elected representatives voting absurd laws who have failed. But it’s them kids who will pay dear for our mistakes (like with the climate crisis, btw).
They already started paying.
I mean, who has the best chance of getting a qualified job between say a lower or, nowadays, even a middle-class kid barely able to open a book and to understand what’s written in it (and barely able to spell their name correctly) and a kid from a family where knowledge and teaching are still considered valuable investments worthy of sending their kids into private schools in which, unlike public schools, they’re actually being taught how to read (and how to properly use books), and do math, and learn some history, philosophy and so on?
Those wealthier and better-educated kids will get all the rewards, while all the others kids will be fucked up, for their entire life (but hey, they will know how to watch ads on YT and TikTok).
They already are being fucked up btw, they just can’t realize it as we have not given them the basic tools required to understand what’s happening around them.
But the real worse is yet to come. Here in France at least even our private schools are subjected to the dumbing-down of the entire educative system, as they also depend on nation-wide laws and controls… Controls that have been getting harsher and harsher and, unsurprisingly, even those private schools are witnessing a sharp decline. Sure, it’s less sharp than in public schools but still very worrying. So, what will happen? Well, I can’t predict the (very near) future but would I have school-age kids myself and would I have enough money to send them to a private school I would simply pack my things and move abroad in any other country but France, in a country that would not actively be trying to ruin our educative system.
France was rightly regarded as a country of readers up until the late 70s to early 80s. Books (serious books, I mean) were a popular discussion topic, it was in the newspapers, magazines, radio and TV, it was discussed between people (the Internet and social media of back then). It was popular. Nowadays? It’s not rare at all to enter a house where there is not a single book to be found. A house where no one owns a library card either (or read ebooks). Kids are just not encouraged to read books. Even comics are starting to become a happy exception.
Once again, this is a failure that will cost dearly to kids growing up in those families.
Without any reading culture and habits, not only will they be at a disadvantage when competing against ‘reading kids’ but they’re also much more vulnerable to the stupidest ideas floating around… provided those already stupid ideas are simplified enough for them to instantly grasp them without much effort.
What kind of adults and citizen will that create? I’d rather not imagine. That’s a fucking nightmare happening right in front of our eyes and nobody seems to care.
“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.