For the sake of the plot, choose whichever zombie type fits your plans the best.

  • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    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.

    • bitofarambler@crazypeople.online
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      6 hours ago

      there are a few big issues here.

      1. The consistency and efficacy of that pathogen

      2. those people wouldn’t be zombies, they would just be carnivores.

      3. 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.

      • whaleross@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        if cannibalism/societal colapse/megetables are going on, people are going to notice.

        Fake news and xitter would like to have a word.

      • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        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.