Walking Dead/Zombie Discussions

TBH, I think the whole zombie scene needs a good shake up, as its all getting a little samey and stale for me.

One of the core fundamental requirements, as it were, for a zombie apocalypse to happen is that things go south so quickly that society is overwhelmed before we figure out how to counter the living undead.

However, the more popular the zombie genre becomes, the less likely that would happen, as everyone and his dog should now know to "shoot it in the head" to stop zombies, so you shouldn't have to keep enduring scenes were police and army units panic and collapse like a bunch of newbie chumps after shooting a few rounds into bodies to little effect.

For a zombie apocalypse to happen in a world with zombie fiction, the writer should be smarter.

If I was to write or direct a new zombie book/film/TV series, I would work with the growing popularity of the zombie genre, rather than keep trying to pretend no one in my fictional world ever saw a zombie film before. Thus, rather than the unknown speeding the collapse, I would design it such that when a "real" zombie apocalypse occurs, it is people's preconceptions that prove to be mankind's downfall.

The zombie virus in my world would be airborne as well as being spreadable via more "conventional" ways, but have a fairly short lifespan outside of a host, and concentrated in the host's brain.

Thus, if you shoot my zombies in the head, yes, you take them down, but you also expose yourself and others around the dead zombie to the infection. So everyone thinking they are part of Rick's crew who goes around shooting/stabbing/bashing zombies in the head like a boss is actually help spread the infection.

I would also make my zombies "upgradable", in effect, the host dies after infection, and something else inhibit his/her body. This something else starts off basic and primitive, barely able to control its host's body, is driven only by hunger and is essentially unthinking.

However, as time passes and the infection spends more time inside the host. it starts to be able to assimilate more complex memory engrams and develop more advanced cognitive as well as achieve better motor controls.

So you start off with your "walking dead" kind of slow shuffling zombies, but they gradually evolve into "world war z"/"28 days later" style fast zombies, and then ultimately move to "I am Legend" semi-cognitive zombies able to plan ahead and start to organise themselves.

It would be set up like an evolutionary arms race, as soon as humans think they have the measure of the zombies, the zombies adapt, and as the zombies adapt and "evolve", it forces the human survivors to also adapt and change their strategies.

Assassinsmace,

I can see you are in the full-moon mood for Halloween. If you are going to a party, I wonder what disguise you will don. I know Terran will stick to his T-Rex as usual. Just don't get too inebriated.

t2contra said:

Assassinsmace,

I can see you are in the full-moon mood for Halloween. If you are going to a party, I wonder what disguise you will don. I know Terran will stick to his T-Rex as usual. Just don't get too inebriated.

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Actually I'm not really someone who likes to get into costume unless it's really good. I'm the guy behind the scenes. When my friends have parties, I help setup the gags and I'm the guy that will spend the time doing stuff like throwing a dead dummy off the roof in front of people below.

What sort of candies/treats do you guys give out during Halloween? From my experience the kids favourite are those treat-sized chocolate bars (mars/moros/snickers/crunchie). They are just the right size that you can give one to each person and not have to worry about counting and maintaining consistency. It is easy to tell how many are in a bag and how much exactly you have left. We just give those out nowadays. Some people don't because chocolate bars are usually more expensive than scattered candies for the same amount of people that can be distributed to.

Also, moro and mars tastes a bit too similar, but moro is sweeter and mars have nuts. Snickers is less sweeter still and has even more nuts.

Only 273 survivors after 100 days from the start of the zombie apocalypse? What about all the native tribes isolated from civilization with no contact with the outside world? I imagine there are more than 273 of them around the world.

AssassinsMace said:

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Only 273 survivors after 100 days from the start of the zombie apocalypse? What about all the native tribes isolated from civilization with no contact with the outside world? I imagine there are more than 273 of them around the world.

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The model ignores geographic isolation, and that was mentioned specifically as a weakness. Other weaknesses being that humans cannot kill zombies, fixed 90% chance for a zombie to infect a person throughout, so effectively a total disregard for organised human countermeasures.

Basically what that model does is show how humanity would fair if we were all stuck in a giant earth sized Petri dish, with no weapons to fight, tools or means to built protective shelter, or ability to communicate or co-ordinate.

In effect, that model reduces humanity to cattle, who could only try and run away without any of the higher level functions and capabilities that set humanity apart from the rest of the animal kingdom to counter a zombie plague.

In reality, how well humanity will deal with a zombie virus will depend on so many factors as do be almost impossible to model. Some of the key ones being: transmission vector (does it have to be bite/blood, or is it airborne and only kicks in after host dies); virus incubation period (the longer, the harder it is to contain if it achieves breakout, but conversely, the longer the incubation period, the lower the spread rate); motor function capabilities of the infected (slow or fast zombies); period infected can survive without feeding etc.

However, in my view, it is exceptionally unlikely that a zombie virus could take hold 'naturally'.

If such a virus did appear, it would take a phonebook's worth of lucky breaks (for the virus), screw ups and unlikely developments for it to achieve breakout almost at the same time globally.

If it doesn't hit everywhere at roughly the same time, our existing medical quarantine measures should do enough to at least slow it enough for global governments to see how big the threat is from it to drastically change their behaviour and military ROEs to stop it.

We may suffer terribly to start with, but it's very hard to see such a virus being able to seriously have much chance to cause complete collapse of all governments and societies. Some may fall, but some, if not most should survive.

Worst case scenario you work backwards, forget about trying to stop the spread of the disease if that's a lost cause, and instead establish safe zones/havens as a means to rebuilt and repopulate after you let the virus burn itself out.

All military bases would already have extensive security barriers in place, and with masses of trained, armed and disciplined combatants, with plenty of supplies and weapons and munitons, they will serve as the natural starting points to ensure governments remain in control.

Geographical barriers could serve as an easy separators to slow or contain the infection. Blow all the bridges across major rivers and shot everything trying to come across. Or use shipping containers to build quick walls around cities and key infrastructure etc.

From those bases, you can then push out to slowly clear and build more safe zones.

In the meantime, if you have the means, you can mass airdrop weapons, ammo and supplies in infected regions to help survivors. Think strapping a rifle or two, ammo, food, water and other misc equipment and supplies to single man parachutes and dropping them by the thousand in infected areas.

The only plausible way I can see such a virus seriously become an existential threat to humanity is if it wasn't a 'natural' phenomenon, but was a human engineered doomsday bioweapon, that was intentionally used as such.

Even a 'rouge' nation like NK is unlikely to be able to use such a weapon in such a way as to cause the collapse of all human civilisation.

If you were to play mad despot hell bent on ending humanity with your zombie virus, it's actually surprisingly hard.

Spreading the virus is comparatively easy, but stopping countries from containing and eradicating it is going to be far harder. Never mind trying to ensure no large scale organised safe zones survive.

Firstly, you will need to try and destroy or infect all major military and paramilitary bases globally to cripple world government's ability to mount an effective co-ordinated military containment and eradication campaign of the virus.

If even a handful of military bases remain, then humanity is not lost. Worst case, they barricade themselves in and wait for all the infect to drop dead from starvation after they eat everyone else. They can then come out and start slowly repopulating the earth.

So you will need to launch a concerted conventional or nuclear military campaign to degrade and destroy pretty much all major military installations globally.

As such, realistically speaking, the only way I can see a zombie virus wiping out humanity is if the US or Russia was the one to develop and unleash it, on the back of a massive global conventional and nuclear military campaign.

Although with Trump soon to be in the White House, that thought is not as reassuring as it once was...

I bet there would be more than 273 survivalists hunkered down in their bomb shelters after 100 days also.

What about all those survivors working at sea in both military and civilian ships or submarines? I'm sure they would've get hold of what's going on land therefore avoid going to port as long as possible.