Important Zombie Questions

Nitefly · 30 Dec 2011 at 23:51

I'd never thought I'd say this, but zombies have been so overdone in the last ~10 years

Begbie · 31 Dec 2011 at 00:09

churchhawk said:
zombies don't and wont ever exist so don't think or worry about it.

This, sadly :/

ng93 · 31 Dec 2011 at 00:43

In the walking dead zombies can't smell that your alive, but they know your alive because you don't smell dead if that makes sense. So if they see you and you don't smell dead they know your ready to eat, but if they can't see you then you can be as close to them as you like and they wont smell that your there. Seems pretty realistic to me.

Ceryndrion · 31 Dec 2011 at 10:44

with regards the repeated stating that zombies, being dead, will rot and decompose quickly. This is something that was addressed from day 1, why do zombies eat living flesh, and not each other? because it provides them with the living matter that they need in order to not decompose. Deprive a zombie of living flesh for a while and yes, they will start to decompose and "die", but otherwise, their status as undead does not diminish them in that capacity.

As to zombie strength, well, with the impaired nervous system, it is not so much strength that you would fight against, it is as has been previously mentioned, the lack of pain sensation and instinct for self preservation. With many zombies utilising their limbs in a club-like manner. A number of effective counters to zombies, can be employed by overcoming the human instinct to not cause lasting injuries, and to aim squarely for the joints, a sharp stamp to the kneecap, will cripple most zombies quite effectively.

Again, as mentioned previously, zombies cannot swim, although they can walk along the river/seabed with relative ease, albeit rather restricted by currents, and some particular types of fish. That being said, zombies are instinctual hunters, and are unlikely to follow for very long before losing interest.

And finally to senses, while zombies retain all of their core senses, they are reduced to the level of an instinctual hunter, they can see their prey to hunt it, they can smell and even hear them, but do they know to associate lights on in a window with the presence of their quarry? Its hard to say, possible, but unlikely. What is more likely is that they follow the scent trail and that leads them to the same place.

Jay794 · 31 Dec 2011 at 10:51

1 - Zombie strength - I would assume they would maintain the same strength they had in human form, however with decomposition taking place they would probably be fairly week e.g. Rip off their arm and beat them with it

2 - Swimming - No zombies have ever been shown as able to swim (that I'm aware of) however, if you've seen the DOTD remake, one of them learns that they can survive under water after throwing another zombie in. So you can assume they can "breath" under water.

3 - What senses do Zombies work off? Sight, sound and smell

Can they distinguish sounds? I would say no, a noise is a noise
Can they smell humans? I would say yes, based on the Walking Dead, they covered themselves in Zombie bondy parts but were found out

platinum87 · 31 Dec 2011 at 14:07

Zombies wont happen, something like 28 days later might happen.

In which case i will have to rely on my awesome immune system so i dont get infected, and then on my friends, fill and in.

batsy · 31 Dec 2011 at 14:29

churchhawk said:
zombies don't and wont ever exist so don't think or worry about it.

Although there's a famous Jewish one that's supposed to be returning at some point.

Jay794 · 31 Dec 2011 at 14:34

I remember reading about some experiments Josef Mengele did during WWII, he drugged people up so much they were zombie like, without the brain eating or decomposition

shephga · 31 Dec 2011 at 14:38

churchhawk said:
zombies don't and wont ever exist so don't think or worry about it.

They do exist, I had to take some Jeans back to Next in Havant, the area was swarming with them, slack jaws, shoppers in their slippers and wearing what looked like dressing gowns. I exchanged my purchase and drove away from the area as quickly as possible (noting local road speed limits ofc).

Mobius 1 · 31 Dec 2011 at 14:43

nydryl said:
Was Waterworld based in a post-zombie-apocolyptic world?

IIRC, it was a world where the ice caps had melted etc.

Jay794 · 31 Dec 2011 at 14:48

shephga said:
They do exist, I had to take some Jeans back to Next in Havant, the area was swarming with them, slack jaws, shoppers in their slippers and wearing what looked like dressing gowns. I exchanged my purchase and drove away from the area as quickly as possible (noting local road speed limits ofc).

You should try going to Meadowhall, it's full of pajama wearing zombies

dessimpson · 31 Dec 2011 at 14:59

If a group of necrophiliacs met a group of zombies, who would do the chasing?

Liampope · 31 Dec 2011 at 15:14

churchhawk said:
zombies don't and wont ever exist so don't think or worry about it.

LOL. Head in the sand, bro. Head in the sand.

Anyway - I was wondering about decomposition. Does the same devilish force/energy that reanimated the corpses in the first place prevent decomposition and the need to eat to retain energy, etc, etc, or do they eventually run out of steam, die (again!) and decompose? Pretty poor longterm threat if the do, tbh. I'm afraid I genuinely can't remember what the Zombie Survival Guide has to say on that matter. Re-read time for my own good, I think!! :eek:

Mobius 1 · 31 Dec 2011 at 15:17

i think a 28 days later zombie is a much more likely situation..so really we should be preparing for faster more agile zombies that will stop at nothing.

Neil777 · 31 Dec 2011 at 15:30

Jay794 said:
2 - Swimming - No zombies have ever been shown as able to swim (that I'm aware of)

You've obviously not seen the infamous zombie versus shark scene in Zombie then.

gropingmantis · 31 Dec 2011 at 15:43

Liampope said:
LOL. Head in the sand, bro. Head in the sand.

Anyway - I was wondering about decomposition. Does the same devilish force/energy that reanimated the corpses in the first place prevent decomposition and the need to eat to retain energy, etc, etc, or do they eventually run out of steam, die (again!) and decompose? Pretty poor longterm threat if the do, tbh. I'm afraid I genuinely can't remember what the Zombie Survival Guide has to say on that matter. Re-read time for my own good, I think!!

ZSG says that they continue to decompose but it takes so long for that to happen that waiting it out is not that viable (something like 2 years).
Also zombies cannot swim but they can survive underwater because they do not need to breathe so they can walk along the bottom of the ocean.

The Funktopus · 31 Dec 2011 at 17:35

dessimpson said:
If a group of necrophiliacs met a group of zombies, who would do the chasing?

Excellent!

Pho · 31 Dec 2011 at 18:24

Go and buy this

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I bought it for a friend's birthday a while ago, he said it was good.

mehuk · 1 Jan 2012 at 15:08

I need my new question answered -

1 - If Zombies were able to get to the roof of a tall building; would they fall off the edge when wondering around? Or are they savvy enough to avoid it?

This then makes me wonder why no one has invented a sort of huge funnel to guide the zombies toward an empty tall building/s to which they will walk up and then fall off and die from?

Thanks for all the replies though, im currently going through season one of the Walking Dead and noticed that some zombies used rocks to smash glass... they also couldnt smell the 2 that covered themselves in dead guts either... but it did look like they could see, id say that was a definate going back to the 1st episode when the cop sees that half a corpse and it looks round to try and chase him. And also that black woman who kept going back to her house...

When hell is full, the dead will walk the Earth.

Bulldog14 · 3 Jan 2012 at 15:35

The thing with shows like The Walking Dead is that you have to take some elements of it with a grain of salt. Unless you are talking about full fledged undead zombies animated by magic (in which case all bets are off) then some aspects of "rotting infected" style zombies will always be inconsistent. Unless animated by magic they wouldn't last very long and would be effectively deaf, dumb, and blind. They would rot away normally and within a month or 2 would be immobile. Another few months and they would just be skeletons.

I am reminded of how people (including myself) got caught up in the "Lost" series. Throughout the series every detail was important as it had a meaning that became clear later on. This led to people attaching a meaning to everything, when in the end many things just turned out to be "mystical window dressing", that actually didn't mean anything at all.

Zombie films and shows like the Walking Dead are the same. The zombies just are, and how they operate isn't that important to the plot. The whole idea of rotting infected style zombies (like they seemed to try and explain in the CDC Center episode) is so frought with inconsistency that no realistic explanation could ever be given that covers every detail. To me, one shouldn't look too far into the details, or just accept a bit of implied magic to it all.