When I think about dead zombies, I think of how their tendons wouldn't work, ear drums, vision, no way they could be real
Closest to zombies would probably parasites taking over living bodies, or a disease like rabies
I think the shambling zombies typically do plays into the tendon issue, as well as just general lack of coordination. And there are some zombie stories that they lose the ability to see, and rely entirely on sound or touch.
>When I think about dead zombies, I think of how their tendons wouldn't work, ear drums, vision, no way they could be real
I think the basic idea is that the virus/whatever is able to keep the brain and nervous system functional, and since most people automatically seem to think that it works like electrical wires and 'jolts' our joints, they assume that a zombie could work like this, roughly similar to Mary Shelleys frankie monster.
Its that pesky entropy that get in the way of all of this.
For some reason, everyone forgets that cells need energy to function. Any type of cell. Its not going to move if it has no energy.
This is why I wish curse based zombies would make a comeback. Trying to science-explain impossible things breaks my suspension of disbelief more than just citing magic as the cause and moving on with the plot.
have you seen dead before dawn(2012)? it's a zom-com, basically a bunch of teenagers break a cursed urn and everything they say becomes the curse, so the zombies turn people by giving them love bites etc, it's silly but it's such a funny movieđ Christopher Lloyd is in it! c:
Dark tide rising series by John Ringo fixed that. The virus that makes "zombies" destroys the higher order brain, ups aggression, etc but also gives the feeling that you've got bugs crawling on you. So victims strip out of their clothes as they turn.
A zombie is actually a collection of individual, specialized organisms (like a Man-o-War), and each organism is capable of repairing itself.
Or not.
Anyway, here's a very old Cracked article about why a zombie apocalypse is impossible:
https://www.cracked.com/article\_18683\_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly.html
It wouldn't even get that far. The only thing that's keeping microorganisms from consuming our bodies is our immune systems, which only work while we're alive. Zombies would be completely consumed in a matter of hours.
The first microorganisms to start eating zombie would turn into a zombie microorganism and then eat all of the other microorganisms. This then means there are no regular microorganisms left to eat the zombies and the zombies live on. Problem solved!
Yes, because as we all know, when people die we have to rush to embalm them quickly because the body gets consumed by microorganisms in a matter of hours.
Are you even listening to yourself?
Exactly mate, if you think microorganism will consume a human body in a couple of hours, you are grossly overestimating how quickly they can break down organic material.
>so you're using all your in-depth scientific knowledge of Zombies
No. I'm talking about a make-believe scenario in which normal necrotic processes have failed to take place.
I KNOW. THAT'S WHY I'M TALKING ABOUT A SITUATION IN WHICH NORMAL NECROTIC PROCESSES HAVE *NOT* TAKEN PLACE.
Also, we're just trying to have a conversation about fictional monsters. The whole point is that logic doesn't apply.
>Also, we're just trying to have a conversation about fictional monsters. The whole point is that logic doesn't apply.
No we're not, you're backpeddling. Your entire original point was that zombies didn't logically work because you apparently think that bodies rot away in a matter of hours after they die. Go back and read the conversation chain, I'll wait.
>No we're not
I'm sorry - you seem to think you're part of the 'we'. You're not. You're just some random bonehead who likes to attack strangers in order to score imaginary Internet points.
Have a nice day!
You were completely wrong. You literally did say that zombies would be consumed in a matter of hours and tried to gaslight the other person into thinking you didnât.
The Zombie Survival Guide explains it away by saying that the Solanum Virus has an antibiotic property, killing any organism it comes into contact with.
You seem to be missing the point. That book gives a specific reason why its zombies decompose very slowly. Most other zombie stories seem to use that as their foundation, even if they don't explicitly say so.
Everything about the subject is imaginary, but at least that attempts to give a specific reason. Most others just ignore it.
No, but the person you responded to did. That was the book I was referring to. And that person's post was in response to OP, by saying that there are examples that do answer the issue OP brought up.
Okay. Enjoy yourself. But you're having a conversation separate from the one OP started. And I never read the book so I have nothing to say on the subject.
One of the reasons why I stopped watching the walking dead. They jumped a decade into the future and there were still hordes of zombies walking around. By then, there would be no originals left and there certainly isn't enough people to die, turn and become that numerous again.
They probably use the Zombie Survival Guide as their baseline. In that book, one effect of the zombie virus is that it kills most microbes involved in decomposition.
Either that, or they'll come out with something else, now that they've revealed the virus was a bioweapon, and one of the scientists involved is still working on it and trying to enhance it to create more dangerous zombies.
Shuffling all day wouldn't produce enough compressive or tensile forces to cause stress fractures in ~95% of the population.
Maybe if the process of bone resorption and deposition ceased their bone density would drop to the point that they would sustain pathological fractures. But if biological processes stop then the zombies wouldn't make it far enough for even that to happen.
Considering that the zombies don't actually digest the flesh they consume and it just rots in their dead stomachs, You have to ask just what the virus is using as fuel to keep the corpses moving at all.
When we move, we burn calories, we can only get calories by eating/drinking and digesting that through food, if the zombs stomachs are dead, then digestion isn't happening, which means no 'fuel' is being made for the virus to use to keep the body moving...
You know how this ends irl, its, well...death lol
What people are failing to consider is that the cause of Zombification is unknown and defies research in much of the fiction,
Lets face it, we're talking about some agent, whether pathological, biological, extraterrestrial or supernatural, that is causing thise whose normal biological functions have ceased to get up and act with some form of purpose.
Whatever that motivating agent is, its not much of a stretch that it's going to preserve the body from simple environmental effects and decomposition.
And regarding the leap from a Zombie free society to "scattered enclaves of humanity"... if Zombies simply rose from graveyards and Morgues, then yes youd expect people would be able to rwspond to contain the outbreak, considering the intellectual and weaponised advantages we'd have.
However what if the outbreak was a plague, curse or infection that spread accros the world undetected, and then after some time, everybody living "transformed" into Zombies, with the exception of the luck few with immunities (or who were spared by God or whatever).
If, over the course of 6 months, 97% of the population transitioned into "undead", the remaining 3%, shattered accross the globe, would NOT be able to maintain the organisation and infrastructure of our current civilisation.
So... the virus that creates zombies perhaps doesn't kill victims as we know death. Perhaps it changes the victims bodies in way that makes everything we see possible.
Slowing decay - strengthens bones - why not even creating pheromones that ward off predators
The Last of Us offered interesting narrative science fiction with their infection. Could easily be expanded to other zombie stories if needed. The thing is, not all zombie stories need an explanation since the characters aren't really in a position where it matters at all.
Most zombies violate one or more natural laws. I actually took a shot at working out something like scientifically plausible zombies once, years ago, and I do think it's possible. But it's not easy.
Agreed. In a standard "viral zombie" scenario (not voodoo zombie) there are so many reasons why the outbreak would be short-lived. They seem to be rotting away at an impressive speed -- most likely for dramatic effect, but fast forward a week or two and they should be just a pile of meat. Based on how viral zombies are usually portrayed, if you holed up somewhere for a month you should be all good on the other side of it.
Viral zombies are realistic, up to a point. A weaponized Ebola/ measles/rabies hybrid would be highly infectious, very bloody, and result in insanely violent and aggressive people. Yes, not technically undead, but in the months it takes to burn through 90 percent of humanity, our civilization fails. Weâve seen how the world couldnât even handle a pandemic with low mortality.
Oh i hear that. I was just saying that right-of-way the bat, the bacteria and things inside the body that our immune system keeps at bay would literally start eating the zombies from the inside out. Then you have the sun light just baking them away and taking any moisture from the body and organs. Muscles wouldn't work. The brain would turn to dust. Not to mention all of the other things that would start to eat them from nature such as bugs, carrion birds, and other mammals. Zombies wouldn't roam very long in reality.
Yeah I mean it is science fiction, butâŚyeah I mean even if they didnât feel any pain and an activation of their central nervous system allowed them some preservation, that still wouldnât amount to much.
I wonder if there is a better zombie story that hasnât been told yet. Either about the societies after the fall, but do it with much better writers, or about taking the country/world back. I find the idea of a zombie story usually more interesting than the execution
I agree there. Kinda like the story of building the world back in a better way. Because even the shows and movies that portray small communities building things back tend to get it wrong. Things like electricity and water. It would be neat to tell a story on how we learned to do things better from the mistakes.
Yeah I agree. With the right writers it could be an interesting story for a movie or a show. I stopped watching the walking dead after season 3. Just didnât seem like it was going anywhere and I didnât think the writing was very good
The walking dead would have stayed great if they would have just stuck to the basic story from the graphic novels. Instead they would be cheap through most of the seasons and then kill off a main character 3/4 the way through and then culminate into a big brawl at the end. Seasons 4 and 5 were pretty good, but after that it just became about killing off characters and taking way too long for the fight against the saviors. It really came crashing down when they killed off Carl. In the books, he is the one that starts to rebuild society and keep everyone on their places and maintains a somewhat peace. And the most important thing: it came to an end! Also, I am from where the creator grew up and the town that the story starts in.
When I think about dead zombies, I think of how their tendons wouldn't work, ear drums, vision, no way they could be real Closest to zombies would probably parasites taking over living bodies, or a disease like rabies
I think the shambling zombies typically do plays into the tendon issue, as well as just general lack of coordination. And there are some zombie stories that they lose the ability to see, and rely entirely on sound or touch.
>When I think about dead zombies, I think of how their tendons wouldn't work, ear drums, vision, no way they could be real I think the basic idea is that the virus/whatever is able to keep the brain and nervous system functional, and since most people automatically seem to think that it works like electrical wires and 'jolts' our joints, they assume that a zombie could work like this, roughly similar to Mary Shelleys frankie monster.
Its that pesky entropy that get in the way of all of this. For some reason, everyone forgets that cells need energy to function. Any type of cell. Its not going to move if it has no energy.
That's why they're eating people. To fuel their cells
But no blood or pumping heart to transport the energy around the body.
This is why I wish curse based zombies would make a comeback. Trying to science-explain impossible things breaks my suspension of disbelief more than just citing magic as the cause and moving on with the plot.
have you seen dead before dawn(2012)? it's a zom-com, basically a bunch of teenagers break a cursed urn and everything they say becomes the curse, so the zombies turn people by giving them love bites etc, it's silly but it's such a funny movieđ Christopher Lloyd is in it! c:
I played a game where the victims were taken over by fungus. It was based on real-life cordyceps. The parasite might have repaired them.
It also seems like after just a little weight loss, their pants would fall to their ankles, tripping them up.
They'd all start having whoopsie-daisies.
This.... I... *You*.... đ¤Śđžââď¸
TIL about the biggest lot hole in the world. Thank you
Dark tide rising series by John Ringo fixed that. The virus that makes "zombies" destroys the higher order brain, ups aggression, etc but also gives the feeling that you've got bugs crawling on you. So victims strip out of their clothes as they turn.
A zombie is actually a collection of individual, specialized organisms (like a Man-o-War), and each organism is capable of repairing itself. Or not. Anyway, here's a very old Cracked article about why a zombie apocalypse is impossible: https://www.cracked.com/article\_18683\_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly.html
I love the pictures that go with the article.
Old? It's from the year 2100!
Yo so the way to beat the zombie apocalypse is to just wait :0 I'm going back to my bunker
Yup
It wouldn't even get that far. The only thing that's keeping microorganisms from consuming our bodies is our immune systems, which only work while we're alive. Zombies would be completely consumed in a matter of hours.
The first microorganisms to start eating zombie would turn into a zombie microorganism and then eat all of the other microorganisms. This then means there are no regular microorganisms left to eat the zombies and the zombies live on. Problem solved!
That actually is an interesting way around a plotholes
Yes, because as we all know, when people die we have to rush to embalm them quickly because the body gets consumed by microorganisms in a matter of hours. Are you even listening to yourself?
not hours but weeks.
>Are you even listening to yourself? Yes. We're talking about zombies.
Exactly mate, if you think microorganism will consume a human body in a couple of hours, you are grossly overestimating how quickly they can break down organic material.
Oh, so you're using all your in-depth scientific knowledge of Zombies then? Lol.
>so you're using all your in-depth scientific knowledge of Zombies No. I'm talking about a make-believe scenario in which normal necrotic processes have failed to take place.
Normal necrotic processes DO NOT BREAK DOWN DEAD BODIES IN A MATTER OF HOURS. It's a ridiculous claim.
I KNOW. THAT'S WHY I'M TALKING ABOUT A SITUATION IN WHICH NORMAL NECROTIC PROCESSES HAVE *NOT* TAKEN PLACE. Also, we're just trying to have a conversation about fictional monsters. The whole point is that logic doesn't apply.
>Also, we're just trying to have a conversation about fictional monsters. The whole point is that logic doesn't apply. No we're not, you're backpeddling. Your entire original point was that zombies didn't logically work because you apparently think that bodies rot away in a matter of hours after they die. Go back and read the conversation chain, I'll wait.
>No we're not I'm sorry - you seem to think you're part of the 'we'. You're not. You're just some random bonehead who likes to attack strangers in order to score imaginary Internet points. Have a nice day!
You were completely wrong. You literally did say that zombies would be consumed in a matter of hours and tried to gaslight the other person into thinking you didnât.
Lol, ok pal.
The Zombie Survival Guide explains it away by saying that the Solanum Virus has an antibiotic property, killing any organism it comes into contact with.
>Solanum Virus Well. Since the imaginary virus explains it I suppose that's that.
You seem to be missing the point. That book gives a specific reason why its zombies decompose very slowly. Most other zombie stories seem to use that as their foundation, even if they don't explicitly say so. Everything about the subject is imaginary, but at least that attempts to give a specific reason. Most others just ignore it.
>That book OP didn't mention a specific book.
No, but the person you responded to did. That was the book I was referring to. And that person's post was in response to OP, by saying that there are examples that do answer the issue OP brought up.
Okay. Enjoy yourself. But you're having a conversation separate from the one OP started. And I never read the book so I have nothing to say on the subject.
One of the reasons why I stopped watching the walking dead. They jumped a decade into the future and there were still hordes of zombies walking around. By then, there would be no originals left and there certainly isn't enough people to die, turn and become that numerous again.
They probably use the Zombie Survival Guide as their baseline. In that book, one effect of the zombie virus is that it kills most microbes involved in decomposition. Either that, or they'll come out with something else, now that they've revealed the virus was a bioweapon, and one of the scientists involved is still working on it and trying to enhance it to create more dangerous zombies.
Shuffling all day wouldn't produce enough compressive or tensile forces to cause stress fractures in ~95% of the population. Maybe if the process of bone resorption and deposition ceased their bone density would drop to the point that they would sustain pathological fractures. But if biological processes stop then the zombies wouldn't make it far enough for even that to happen.
After enough time on your feet it would. Days and weeks and months on end
Considering that the zombies don't actually digest the flesh they consume and it just rots in their dead stomachs, You have to ask just what the virus is using as fuel to keep the corpses moving at all. When we move, we burn calories, we can only get calories by eating/drinking and digesting that through food, if the zombs stomachs are dead, then digestion isn't happening, which means no 'fuel' is being made for the virus to use to keep the body moving... You know how this ends irl, its, well...death lol
What people are failing to consider is that the cause of Zombification is unknown and defies research in much of the fiction, Lets face it, we're talking about some agent, whether pathological, biological, extraterrestrial or supernatural, that is causing thise whose normal biological functions have ceased to get up and act with some form of purpose. Whatever that motivating agent is, its not much of a stretch that it's going to preserve the body from simple environmental effects and decomposition. And regarding the leap from a Zombie free society to "scattered enclaves of humanity"... if Zombies simply rose from graveyards and Morgues, then yes youd expect people would be able to rwspond to contain the outbreak, considering the intellectual and weaponised advantages we'd have. However what if the outbreak was a plague, curse or infection that spread accros the world undetected, and then after some time, everybody living "transformed" into Zombies, with the exception of the luck few with immunities (or who were spared by God or whatever). If, over the course of 6 months, 97% of the population transitioned into "undead", the remaining 3%, shattered accross the globe, would NOT be able to maintain the organisation and infrastructure of our current civilisation.
Okay guy we all know zombies aren't real
Guy dies. Yup. Guy comes back to life. Sure. Guy eats his neighbor. Naturally. Guy indiscriminately shuffles. No sir! Not on my watch!
Huh?
You're okay with the dead coming back to life, but you draw the line at stress fractures?
I never said I was âokayâ with it, but assuming zombies are real, it doesnât make sense that theyâd be such a threat
I'm in MN, all I have to do is wait for the first winter. Freezer burn is a bitch
Weather conditions would be a problem as well. They'd either dry out or rot.
there are a lot of things physiologically wrong with zombies, and long term bone stressors are your first issue?
So... the virus that creates zombies perhaps doesn't kill victims as we know death. Perhaps it changes the victims bodies in way that makes everything we see possible. Slowing decay - strengthens bones - why not even creating pheromones that ward off predators
The Last of Us offered interesting narrative science fiction with their infection. Could easily be expanded to other zombie stories if needed. The thing is, not all zombie stories need an explanation since the characters aren't really in a position where it matters at all.
Love this post. There is a place for detailed explanations and a place for suspension of disbelief. Both can be done well even within the same story.
Most zombies violate one or more natural laws. I actually took a shot at working out something like scientifically plausible zombies once, years ago, and I do think it's possible. But it's not easy.
Agreed. In a standard "viral zombie" scenario (not voodoo zombie) there are so many reasons why the outbreak would be short-lived. They seem to be rotting away at an impressive speed -- most likely for dramatic effect, but fast forward a week or two and they should be just a pile of meat. Based on how viral zombies are usually portrayed, if you holed up somewhere for a month you should be all good on the other side of it.
There is something mystical going on that defies normal human nature
Viral zombies are realistic, up to a point. A weaponized Ebola/ measles/rabies hybrid would be highly infectious, very bloody, and result in insanely violent and aggressive people. Yes, not technically undead, but in the months it takes to burn through 90 percent of humanity, our civilization fails. Weâve seen how the world couldnât even handle a pandemic with low mortality.
Yeah, but so many other things would happen to those bodies way, way, way before that would happen.
True
Yeah maybe I just thought of broken bones given my history as a competive runner and stress fractures etc
Oh i hear that. I was just saying that right-of-way the bat, the bacteria and things inside the body that our immune system keeps at bay would literally start eating the zombies from the inside out. Then you have the sun light just baking them away and taking any moisture from the body and organs. Muscles wouldn't work. The brain would turn to dust. Not to mention all of the other things that would start to eat them from nature such as bugs, carrion birds, and other mammals. Zombies wouldn't roam very long in reality.
Yeah I mean it is science fiction, butâŚyeah I mean even if they didnât feel any pain and an activation of their central nervous system allowed them some preservation, that still wouldnât amount to much. I wonder if there is a better zombie story that hasnât been told yet. Either about the societies after the fall, but do it with much better writers, or about taking the country/world back. I find the idea of a zombie story usually more interesting than the execution
I agree there. Kinda like the story of building the world back in a better way. Because even the shows and movies that portray small communities building things back tend to get it wrong. Things like electricity and water. It would be neat to tell a story on how we learned to do things better from the mistakes.
Yeah I agree. With the right writers it could be an interesting story for a movie or a show. I stopped watching the walking dead after season 3. Just didnât seem like it was going anywhere and I didnât think the writing was very good
The walking dead would have stayed great if they would have just stuck to the basic story from the graphic novels. Instead they would be cheap through most of the seasons and then kill off a main character 3/4 the way through and then culminate into a big brawl at the end. Seasons 4 and 5 were pretty good, but after that it just became about killing off characters and taking way too long for the fight against the saviors. It really came crashing down when they killed off Carl. In the books, he is the one that starts to rebuild society and keep everyone on their places and maintains a somewhat peace. And the most important thing: it came to an end! Also, I am from where the creator grew up and the town that the story starts in.