Do you have a plan?

[FoxEye]

i have actually got a pretty detailed zombie plan that will work against a traditional "walking dead" style shambling hoarde, although if we're talking world war z style piles of bodies it gets a bit trickier.

Zombies (the animated dead) only work in magical settings.

So it's not the zombies you have to worry about, it's the necromancers. Well, and the zombies.

"The Walking Dead" and suchlike just aren't possible. Movement requires energy, and the dead have no means to turn food into energy. Sure, sure, they can "eat" brains, but they aren't receiving any nutrition or turning their food into any kind of usable energy. Mostly since their circulatory system no longer functions, neither does their digestive process, etc.

Even in D&D zombies are rule-breakers. Whilst physical dragons can fly due to the laws of physics, dracoliches whose flesh has entirely decomposed can still fly, by "supernatural" means. It's BS. Won't somebody please think about the practicalities of being undead and apply some logical consistency? It's serious business.

There was a new zombie arrival in a certain popular TV show recently, and I was a bit upset with how they handled that too. Zombies are great and all, but to make them work you really need to think about how they work, and not just do things because they're "cool" or necessary for the plot.

 

[Rroff]

Zombies (the animated dead) only work in magical settings.

So it's not the zombies you have to worry about, it's the necromancers. Well, and the zombies.

"The Walking Dead" and suchlike just aren't possible. Movement requires energy, and the dead have no means to turn food into energy. Sure, sure, they can "eat" brains, but they aren't receiving any nutrition or turning their food into any kind of usable energy. Mostly since their circulatory system no longer functions, neither does their digestive process, etc.

Even in D&D zombies are rule-breakers. Whilst physical dragons can fly due to the laws of physics, dracoliches whose flesh has entirely decomposed can still fly, by "supernatural" means. It's BS. Won't somebody please think about the practicalities of being undead and apply some logical consistency? It's serious business.

There was a new zombie arrival in a certain popular TV show recently, and I was a bit upset with how they handled that too. Zombies are great and all, but to make them work you really need to think about how they work, and not just do things because they're "cool" or necessary for the plot.

Full on rotting type zombies yeah but theoretically you could have some kind of parasitic type infection the took over brain functions, reprogramming the brain for its own uses and keeping the body functioning just enough to serve its own ends especially if its just using the body as a host for breeding, etc. it might just suffer slow decline until it was no longer needed - as seen with some organisms in nature.

The chance of some kind of virus or something mutating into that is pretty unlikely but we are approaching the age where something like that could be designed in a lab.

Obviously you wouldn't see re-animation of long dead people who've largely decomposed, etc. but at the point of death and/or living hosts that become infected is possible.

 

[adolf hamster]

Zombies (the animated dead) only work in magical settings.

tbf thats starting with the premise that zombies are actually dead. which whilst it is the usual premise of tv shows (the clue generally being in the name) it need not be the case.

i particularly liked the way the last of us handled the inconvenient "jump" to there being a mass outbreak of zombie-like creatures. what with it being based on actual real biology (albeit the real version only works on insects as opposed to humans or other large mammals).

iirc there are a few scenarios where it's been raised that zombies, if unfed, will eventually die of starvation (cant remember where that was from, 28 days later maybe?) which would lead to them again not actually being dead, or at least not totally dead.

so something along the lines of an infection that causes the skin to die and renders the subject fearless, immune to pain and completely insane would work, of course in that case you're correct that they'd still need a functioning circulatory system (maybe reduced rate- hence the shambling to conserve oxygen and enhanced ability to suffer limb-loss?) and therefore would be susceptible to any attack that would kill a regular human (perhaps a fatal heart shot would have a delayed response if they're functioning with a reduced metabolism).


as for the subject of dragons- rarely does a fantasy depiction of such creatures match the requirements to actually fly whilst obeying physics, the wings are almost always too small, a realistic dragon would look pretty much like a pterodactyl with a tiny body (filled mostly with flying muscle) and huge wings.

 

[FoxEye]

Full on rotting type zombies yeah but theoretically you could have some kind of parasitic type infection the took over brain functions, reprogramming the brain for its own uses and keeping the body functioning just enough to serve its own ends especially if its just using the body as a host for breeding, etc. it might just suffer slow decline until it was no longer needed - as seen with some organisms in nature.

The chance of some kind of virus or something mutating into that is pretty unlikely but we are approaching the age where something like that could be designed in a lab.

Obviously you wouldn't see re-animation of long dead people who've largely decomposed, etc.

Which presents its own problems. Such an infection/parasite would need to maintain automatic brain functions, such as motor control, but would have to disable higher brain functions, such as empathy, problem solving, self-preservation, etc.

Which means realistically all it could do is cause some form of insanity. In ants they can do things like drive them to climb up the tallest structure they can find before dying.

When you talk about "re-programming" obviously the intelligence of a parasite is extremely limited. We are only intelligent to the degree we are due to our relatively large brains and density of neural connections, etc, which a parasite lacks. Thus you couldn't "re-program" a human to be some kind of killer but with human intelligence, entirely under the control of the parasite. Tho you could potentially alter the perception of the human, causing paranoia, etc. I guess a bit like hallucinatory drugs, and with similar effects.

There are parasites which allegedly make us respond favourably to cats, etc. But the kind of whole-scale change necessary to create a living "zombie" human death-machine would pretty much require some kind of crippling insanity, and entirely disabled ability to reason. With the loss of reason comes the loss of problem-solving, meaning a living "zombie" would be pretty stupid, more likely to smash its face into a closed door than try to open it. These zombies would be akin to a human so high on drugs he basically doesn't know left from right any more.

Thus you have two likely scenarios:

1) The parasite/infection is so contagious that everybody succumbs pretty quickly and society is destroyed, barring geographical separation keeping some populations untouched. Then the parasite dies off with no host to sustain it. But in this event turning the human population into human-hunting zombie killers isn't even necessary. You just have to make them insane enough to stop feeding themselves, and they'll die of starvation. Or just kill them outright with the parasite. Much easier, surely?

2) The infection is easily dealt with by the military, who basically have a few days of target practice.

Either way I'm not bothering to make a plan for this Forward planning was never my thing, anyway. I can barely dress myself, let alone plan for the zombie apocalypse.

 

[V F]

One in ten Brits have a zombie plan.

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/09/08/one-ten-brits-have-zombie-plan/

YouGov credibility went right out the window now?

 

[Rroff]

Which presents its own problems. Such an infection/parasite would need to maintain automatic brain functions, such as motor control, but would have to disable higher brain functions, such as empathy, problem solving, self-preservation, etc.

Which means realistically all it could do is cause some form of insanity. In ants they can do things like drive them to climb up the tallest structure they can find before dying.

When you talk about "re-programming" obviously the intelligence of a parasite is extremely limited. We are only intelligent to the degree we are due to our relatively large brains and density of neural connections, etc, which a parasite lacks. Thus you couldn't "re-program" a human to be some kind of killer but with human intelligence, entirely under the control of the parasite. Tho you could potentially alter the perception of the human, causing paranoia, etc. I guess a bit like hallucinatory drugs, and with similar effects.

There are parasites which allegedly make us respond favourably to cats, etc. But the kind of whole-scale change necessary to create a living "zombie" human death-machine would pretty much require some kind of crippling insanity, and entirely disabled ability to reason. With the loss of reason comes the loss of problem-solving, meaning a living "zombie" would be pretty stupid, more likely to smash its face into a closed door than try to open it. These zombies would be akin to a human so high on drugs he basically doesn't know left from right any more.

Thus you have two likely scenarios:

1) The parasite/infection is so contagious that everybody succumbs pretty quickly and society is destroyed, barring geographical separation keeping some populations untouched. Then the parasite dies off with no host to sustain it. But in this event turning the human population into human-hunting zombie killers isn't even necessary. You just have to make them insane enough to stop feeding themselves, and they'll die of starvation. Or just kill them outright with the parasite. Much easier, surely?

2) The infection is easily dealt with by the military, who basically have a few days of target practice.

Either way I'm not bothering to make a plan for this Forward planning was never my thing, anyway. I can barely dress myself, let alone plan for the zombie apocalypse.

You are making quite a few jumps in the reasoning there - if it was something that was weaponised or maliciously developed then it could be crafted to overcome much of what you are talking about - but yeah zombies would be very stupid with everything but the most base instincts removed not knowing left from right and smashing into things - which is basically what we see in most zombie movies.

While it would take a lot of work figuring it all out there are already organisms in nature that can use chemical secretions to basically wipe out a lot of functioning of the host brain except what is needed by the parasite - often with very odd results but that is something that has come about almost by accident in an uncontrolled way.

 

[FoxEye]

as for the subject of dragons- rarely does a fantasy depiction of such creatures match the requirements to actually fly whilst obeying physics, the wings are almost always too small, a realistic dragon would look pretty much like a pterodactyl with a tiny body (filled mostly with flying muscle) and huge wings.

I'm aware of this but it's a small amount of suspension of disbelief to "just go with it" in this case. I'm not going to start using equations to determine if the surface area of the wings and muscle mass is sufficient to gain lift off For me it suffices to say that the dragon flies by beating its wings. Hence its flight is not supernatural, but physical. Levitation is supernatural/magical.

Now if the undead dragon flies by magical/supernatural means, then why shouldn't the other zombies also fly? The zombie bears, the zombie humans, the zombie giants...

The biggest problem I had in this case was the fire breathing. In this world dragons are creatures. I have made the assumption that their fire-breathing is due to their physiology/biological. A biological process like a snake's venom.

Hence I'm confused by the zombie dragon's ability to breathe fire. Even *more* confused that they decided it would be *blue* fire. Just why? "Because their eyes are blue, silly!" I think that's actually the limit of the explanation...

And again, if the fire is now supernatural/magical, then why not give the zombie bears and the zombie humans and the zombie rats the ability to breathe fire?

"Oh but they couldn't do that in life," is not a sufficient explanation/justification.

You can see now why people hate watching or discussion films/stories with me

 

[FoxEye]

You are making quite a few jumps in the reasoning there - if it was something that was weaponised or maliciously developed then it could be crafted to overcome much of what you are talking about - but yeah zombies would be very stupid with everything but the most base instincts removed not knowing left from right and smashing into things - which is basically what we see in most zombie movies.

Which begs the question:

Why develop a parasite which creates stupid humans you *hope* will kill each other?

When you already have parasites which can kill, chemical weapons which can kill, weaponised viruses which can kill. Given the short life-span of your very stupid human zombie, and the likely ease of nullifying its threat due its stupidity?

Would it be more effective to just kill your target population instead of trying to zombify them?

So that basically just leaves a zombie plague causing thing to come about by lab accident/natural processes. And again, due to the ease of killing such a stupid zombie creation, you have to expect an actual outbreak or epidemic to be unlikely. Unless such a thing has a very long dormancy period before becoming symptomatic. At which point if you're symptomatic you're dead already (like rabies), and if you're not you can just wait a couple days until these stupid short-lived zombies die off.

I really can't see any scenario where an exponential chain-reaction zombie apocalypse makes sense. Too many problems with it.

Besides, necromancers are much cooler than viruses.

 

[FoxEye]

Sorry I forget the biggest problem with virus zombies: if you (Mr Zombie) kill someone you can't turn them into another zombie. Meaning the infection can't spread. Meaning you can never get critical mass of zombies.

So in this scenario you basically just have a virus that kills people. The virus can spread by normal means (airborne/water borne) but the zomibification is nothing more than an interesting side effect before death.

 

[adolf hamster]

There are parasites which allegedly make us respond favourably to cats, etc. But the kind of whole-scale change necessary to create a living "zombie" human death-machine would pretty much require some kind of crippling insanity, and entirely disabled ability to reason. With the loss of reason comes the loss of problem-solving, meaning a living "zombie" would be pretty stupid, more likely to smash its face into a closed door than try to open it. These zombies would be akin to a human so high on drugs he basically doesn't know left from right any more.

tbf that description does sound pretty zombie like, given most conventional representations have them as unable to perform any problem solving and indeed smashing faces against doors is a pretty common one.

what would be more apt would be to query how they'd identify their prey- given that they're plainly meat hungry but don't attack each other, or animals. and if they did attempt to eat humans the next question is how do they identify when the human has "turned" and is now a zombie and therefore not prey. in other words they'd likely eat each other

i guess you could say something along the line of pheromones, but then there's barriers of how quickly an infected human turns (which tends to be inconsistent in most fiction ranging from seconds to days, with the latter plainly raising questions as to how the infection could spread so quickly in the first place)

I'm aware of this but it's a small amount of suspension of disbelief to "just go with it" in this case. I'm not going to start using equations to determine if the surface area of the wings and muscle mass is sufficient to gain lift off For me it suffices to say that the dragon flies by beating its wings. Hence its flight is not supernatural, but physical. Levitation is supernatural/magical.

i think pratchett has this one- assuming dragons to be intellegent creatures that are naturally magical, using this magic to aid their flight and also in their "fire breathing". it's then not too hard a leap to go to a particularly ancient and wise dragon gaining the knowledge and power to re-animate itself after death and using the same powers for flight and firebreathing as it did in life, pretty much the same general idea as a human lich.

of course that then leads to the issue of exactly how a regular magical zombie human/creature comes about, except possibly to put them down as the results of necromancers experimentation who have either escaped, or outdeathed their creators (for example if the necromancer was slain but his creations werent), which would then explain their inability to fly/breathe fire as these aren't magical abilities they had in life.

 

[Django x2]

Get on my boat and wait for it all to blow over and scavange / hunt from other sea faring vessel (ferries, etc).

 

[FoxEye]

i think pratchett has this one- assuming dragons to be intellegent creatures that are naturally magical, using this magic to aid their flight and also in their "fire breathing". it's then not too hard a leap to go to a particularly ancient and wise dragon gaining the knowledge and power to re-animate itself after death and using the same powers for flight and firebreathing as it did in life, pretty much the same general idea as a human lich.

of course that then leads to the issue of exactly how a regular magical zombie human/creature comes about, except possibly to put them down as the results of necromancers experimentation who have either escaped, or outdeathed their creators (for example if the necromancer was slain but his creations werent), which would then explain their inability to fly/breathe fire as these aren't magical abilities they had in life.

I believe it's similar in D&D, where a skeletal dracolich can fly, but a zombie dragon can't (D&D experts can correct me if I'm wrong!).

In this certain TV show I was referring to, the dragons are animals, and don't cast spells or become liches. Their fire-breathing is not mechanically explained, and if you should say, "It's an entirely magical ability, retained on undeath," it would be impossible to prove otherwise. I personally think it's a bit of a cop-out, tho. I like to think a dragon's fire breathing is partly a biological process, like the mixing of two chemicals. Why does a living dragon's fire always behave like non-magical fire otherwise? Unless you say the ability to generate the fire is magical but the fire itself is non-magical. That's a bit specific! But then the undead version's fire *is* magical, because it's blue.

So now we have a situation where a living dragon creates non-magical fire magically, and an undead dragon creates magical fire magically. And then I start thinking, if you can imbue an undead dragon with a modified breath attack, why can't you imbue any other zombie with magical attacks?

I think I've thought about this much too much. I also think I'd have had much less of a problem with it if the undead dragon had breathed yellow (normal) fire instead of blue fire. I think that was a mistake, because it forces me to ask questions about the nature of the breath weapon, which I might not have asked if it had not changed.

 

[Rroff]

Which begs the question:

Why develop a parasite which creates stupid humans you *hope* will kill each other?

When you already have parasites which can kill, chemical weapons which can kill, weaponised viruses which can kill. Given the short life-span of your very stupid human zombie, and the likely ease of nullifying its threat due its stupidity?

Would it be more effective to just kill your target population instead of trying to zombify them?

So that basically just leaves a zombie plague causing thing to come about by lab accident/natural processes. And again, due to the ease of killing such a stupid zombie creation, you have to expect an actual outbreak or epidemic to be unlikely. Unless such a thing has a very long dormancy period before becoming symptomatic. At which point if you're symptomatic you're dead already (like rabies), and if you're not you can just wait a couple days until these stupid short-lived zombies die off.

I really can't see any scenario where an exponential chain-reaction zombie apocalypse makes sense. Too many problems with it.

Besides, necromancers are much cooler than viruses.

You are assuming a rational goal - maybe just some crazy with access to the wrong tools? or some other motivation than just plain killing people like using them as hosts for something, etc.

Sorry I forget the biggest problem with virus zombies: if you (Mr Zombie) kill someone you can't turn them into another zombie. Meaning the infection can't spread. Meaning you can never get critical mass of zombies.

With the numbers of humans there is enough room for both. The long term goal is slightly more dubious as you'd relatively quickly exhaust the supply of new humans but we don't necessarily need a rational end goal to satisfy the possibility.

 

[adolf hamster]

I believe it's similar in D&D, where a skeletal dracolich can fly, but a zombie dragon can't (D&D experts can correct me if I'm wrong!).

In this certain TV show I was referring to, the dragons are animals, and don't cast spells or become liches. Their fire-breathing is not mechanically explained, and if you should say, "It's an entirely magical ability, retained on undeath," it would be impossible to prove otherwise. I personally think it's a bit of a cop-out, tho. I like to think a dragon's fire breathing is partly a biological process, like the mixing of two chemicals. Why does a living dragon's fire always behave like non-magical fire otherwise? Unless you say the ability to generate the fire is magical but the fire itself is non-magical. That's a bit specific! But then the undead version's fire *is* magical, because it's blue.

So now we have a situation where a living dragon creates non-magical fire magically, and an undead dragon creates magical fire magically. And then I start thinking, if you can imbue an undead dragon with a modified breath attack, why can't you imbue any other zombie with magical attacks?

I think I've thought about this much too much. I also think I'd have had much less of a problem with it if the undead dragon had breathed yellow (normal) fire instead of blue fire. I think that was a mistake, because it forces me to ask questions about the nature of the breath weapon, which I might not have asked if it had not changed.

i guess the distincton to be made here is the difference between liches and zombies, with liches retaining a certain level of intellegence and ability through the zombification process that regular zombies cant, due to either their innate power (because you need it to defy death) or simply due to the process itself.

after all, a necromancer raising a regular zombie is raising an already dead (generally days if we're going for the grave-robbing hedge necromancer) or unwilling specimen and trying to bend that creature to his will, therefore it'd be in his own interests to ensure that whatever creature he raises would be weak and subservient to him, given necromancers are mages not warriors they would need to ensure their ability to kill their creations should something go wrong with the spell and it attacks him. it could also be the case that someone willfully entering a zombified state retains much more of their living ability than someone forced into it.

so to get to the blue fire thing, it could be said to be the result of the dragon needing to revert to a less potent form of fire magic to account for its loss in potency due to being a lich, or alternatively it could simply be that it prefers this style of flame for the same reasons living dragons choose to use fire to attack its foes as opposed to other magical attacks.

this is of course assuming dragons to be image concious, which does at least fit with other established dragon lore such as the whole hoarding gold thing. although it could also be a tactical choice in both cases picking an attack that's guaranteed to instill terror in it's foes.

my other main assumption would have course be that a living dragons breath is still magical fire, but that all magical fire regardless of caster behaves like regular fire unless the caster specifically chooses to control it in some way (for example the skyrim progression of flames>firebolt>fireball would hint that casting fire is easy, but controlling it to specific shapes requires additional magical skill)

also have we reached the stage where we should be feeling ashamed that we've managed to turn a thread on the zombie apocalypse into a detailed discussion on the nature of dragons yet?

 

[V F]

Get on my boat and wait for it all to blow over and scavange / hunt from other sea faring vessel (ferries, etc).

 

[Django x2]

But they can't swim, only walk along the bottom, No biggy for me as Poole Harbour drops to over 30m in places

 

[DarrenM343]

I just had the weirdest of thoughts. If you had sex with a zombie, a recently dead one that hasn't rotted away too much yet, would it be rape, or necrophilia ?

.
Some people are staggered at the stuff that pops into my head

 

[Whitewater]

I just had the weirdest of thoughts. If you had sex with a zombie, a recently dead one that hasn't rotted away too much yet, would it be rape, or necrophilia ?

.
Some people are staggered at the stuff that pops into my head

They'll probably want to **** your brains out.

 

[FoxEye]

also have we reached the stage where we should be feeling ashamed that we've managed to turn a thread on the zombie apocalypse into a detailed discussion on the nature of dragons yet?

Shame! ... Shame! ... Shame! ... Shame! ... Shame!

Where's my bell...

 

[stopper]

YouGov credibility went right out the window now?

YouGov was credible?