The Walking Dead

[coyote6]

Bird flu spreads orders of magnitude faster than ZA. ZA would spread pretty slowly, especially once it was identified.

That assumes the zombie-causing agency is only passed by contact with the zombies. If anybody that dies for any reason turns into a zombie, and zombie bites just kill you & zombify you faster, then the apocalypse gets a lot more apocalyptic. How many people die every day? They're all zombies. And they're probably zombies before the people at the morgues, mortuaries, cemeteries, crime labs, etc. are aware that they should be ready to re-kill corpses.

I'm pretty sure at least some zombie stories have something like that as a basis for the zombification.

Then there's zombies a la King's Cellular or the final episodes of Dollhouse (neither of which actually zombies, but serve much the same function), where people are "converted" simultaneously, and over broad swathes of territory, if not world-wide.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That assumes the zombie-causing agency is only passed by contact with the zombies.

I personally haven't seen any zombie fiction in which the condition is spread without something like a disease-type vector or creation by human action- spells, super-science, etc.

The closest thing to what you describe I know of is the undead in Legend of the Seeker, but they're not really zombies.

 

[Klaus]

I personally haven't seen any zombie fiction in which the condition is spread without something like a disease-type vector or creation by human action- spells, super-science, etc.

The closest thing to what you describe I know of is the undead in Legend of the Seeker, but they're not really zombies.

[sblock]
In the Walking Dead comic, anyone that dies comes back, regardless of bites.
[/sblock]

 

[Viking Bastard]

I personally haven't seen any zombie fiction in which the condition is spread without something like a disease-type vector or creation by human action- spells, super-science, etc.

Night of the Living Dead? Dawn of the Dead? Day of the Dead? Land of the Dead?

It's never clear what activates the Romero zombies, but everyone who dies returns as a zombie. It is not spread by a bite, but zombie bites are deadly.

 

[Crothian]

In the second residental evil movie zombies dig out of their graves so they were not biten first.

 

[Janx]

When has any war involving a world power's defeat ever been decided by one battle?

I know that I watched the Gulf War when my Dad was deployed.

I wasn't worried- concerned, yes- but not worried. Had those initial engagements been turned around as Iraqi victories, the cry would not have been "Oh, no!" but "Oh yeah?" as things got ramped up.

And if ZA actually did get out of hand, and cities or even the nation itself were severely compromised, you KNOW that the military's last act would be to order those soldiers in safely isolated locations to let the munitions (including nukes) fly.

And that's a LOT of cities & zombies gone: between the air forces and navies of the USA & Russia alone you're talking tens if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers, ICBMs, TacNukes and so forth. That's because the vectoring of ZA would largely prevent it from reaching subs, aircraft carriers and missile silos.

Why would you send a platoon into the city to face the zombies, when instead, you could send in a chopper? Zombies don't shoot missiles (or anything else for that matter).

I agree that the military would probably attack from a distance. and thus be relatively secure.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Night of the Living Dead? Dawn of the Dead? Day of the Dead? Land of the Dead?

It's never clear what activates the Romero zombies, but everyone who dies returns as a zombie. It is not spread by a bite, but zombie bites are deadly.

Go watch those again. Even in those films, most who die do not come back unless injured by zombies. The "transmission by injury" trope started with Romero.

I will concede, though, that ZA's start is mysterious, including the animation of some long dead. But again, we don't know if they were infected before burial...incubation times seem to vary, after all. That they rise after being long buried proves nothing: just being buried 6' down means you're under tons of earth in a coffin, with no leverage. It would take ages to dig yourself out. You'd die long before surfacing...conveniently, having time and no worries about death are two quintessential zombie traits.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Well, you go watch those again. I was just introducing them to my GF. It was a point in Day of the Dead!

Didn't the spread by infection start with Russo's sequel novel?

 

[renau1g]

I know there's been a lot of talk about the inefficient/inept military in zombie fiction. I just (well in Oct) finished reading Tooth and Nail. A zombie book about a group of soldiers stuck in NYC during zombie times. Great read, soldiers are really efficient, only problems they have are the psychological effects of shooting American citizens (which is a nice realism element). I really recommend this book.

One of the problems with the military in an event like this is A) people at the top will likely take a bit longer to realize/admit that the dead are walking, and b) I'd imagine many soldiers go AWOL to get to their wife/husband and kids. It would be mighty difficult for me to stay on my base if I knew that my family might be torn apart by a bloodthirsty zombie.


[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Tooth-Nail-Craig-Dilouie/dp/1930486987/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288749829&sr=8-1]Amazon.com: Tooth And Nail (9781930486980): Craig Dilouie: Books[/ame]

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, you go watch those again. I was just introducing them to my GF. It was a point in Day of the Dead!

Are we talking the 1985 original in which they have the soldiers in the underground bunker and the scientist working with "Bub" the trained, gun-shooting zombie he's feeding with dead soldiers?

Only those dead injured by zombies come back. Otherwise, you wouldn't have the base leader bringing fallen soldiers back into the compound...thus, unintentionally providing "Dr. Nutjob" with chow for his zombie training program.

Furthermore, towards the end of the movie, Johnson, who is accidentally shot and killed by Miller, who is being attacked by a zombie, does not reanimate...and Miller in turn begs to be killed so he does not reanimate.

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088993/synopsis

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088993/synopsis