I’ve read some zombie fiction and seen some zombie movies.
The usual trope seems to be that some mysterious effect causes dead people to begin reanimating. And once they do, they mindlessly attack living people and any living person attacked by a zombie goes on to become a zombie.
But I don’t recall offhand any zombie story in which the original mysterious effect is ongoing. If you secure an area from zombies, it stays zombie-free unless one of them breaks in. I don’t remember any story in which people who died from non-zombie causes continue to reanimate after the initial event.
Look at World War Z, to give a well-known example. The whole plan was that we could secure areas and then reclaim lost zombie territory. But think how much worse it would have been if all corpses continued to become zombie. There’d be no secure zones because you constantly be having new outbreaks starting every time somebody died.
The very first zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead, resurrected all dead folk, not just those bitten by zombies. In fact, all of the Living Dead movies work the same way.
In fact, the only good zombie stories I can think of that require zombie attacks to create zombies are (some of) the Marvel Zombies comics - here, it was explained as a sentient virus. And possibly Shawn of the Dead - I can’t remember if they ever made it clear on that note - everyone who dies in the course of the movie dies via zombie attack.
Romero’s flicks and the Walking Dead comics go with the ‘everybody comes back, as long as they’ve got a mostly intact brain’ version. It’s a pretty major plot point in Land of the Dead, in fact.
Return of the Living Dead, everyone who comes in contact with Trioxin will become a zombie, and, while Trioxin-infected zombies can expose their bite victims to Trioxin, it’s not the only way.
Traditional zombie stories require an active attempt to create zombies. The Re-Animator series, and a few others take a more science-fictional turn on that same idea.
Some, like Fulci’s Zombi 2 (an unofficial sequel to Night of the Living Dead) have it as a function of a curse (or some other factor) on the location.
Others it’s transient, and can’t be passed on at all.
The comedy Fido uses continual contamination as well. Anyone who dies after the initial outbreak becomes a zombie. Funeral services in it will allow you to pay extra to be decapitated to keep from coming back as a zombie slave.
The Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant has exactly what you describe. Zombie reanimation is caused by a viral infection present in everyone and people can spontaneously convert from “passive” infections to active ones as well as reanimating after death.
Personally, I say bring back the Haitian blowfish zombies and those fucked out of their mind on hallucinogenixcs, totally at the behest of the Witch Doctor.
I never understood how a biological infection could spread worldwide, especially if like the in the 28 XXXX later series the infection takes hold in seconds.
I mean think about countries isolated by mountains or water/oceans, any ship or plane that arrives make the passengers disembark one at a time singing or talking to confirm they are uninfected. Any who are mute but mentally able will copy hand signals, for those not able they will be left onboard for a med team to clear. Anyone refusing to verbalize or respond thats making a break gets shot by one of the 20 armed soldiers guarding the whole thing with snipers watching from afar.
If everyone has a lick of sense its impossible for bio zombie infection to cross an ocean or impassable barrier( assuming it is spread by bites or body fluids).
Romero style all dead rise scenarios is the only way a worldwide zompocalypse makes sense because no where is safe.
In Garth Nix’s Abhorsen trilogy, zombies (called “Hands” IIRC) and higher forms of the Dead continue to spontaneously arise anywhere the barrier between Life and Death has become weakened; although necromancers can also deliberately bring over the Dead. So it’s a continuous effect; in afflicted regions the Dead can and will rise on their own. As the lowest forms of Dead the mindless zombies aka Hands seem to be a smallish minority though.
Well, in the 28 time periods Later series, isn’t the (non zombie, btw :p) outbreak largely limited to Great Britain, at least until an immune carrier brings it over the channel into France? I haven’t seen Weeks more than once, in theaters, but I think that was the way it worked.
In the WWZ version, being bitten or scratched by a zombie had a latent infection period of a couple of days- long enough for people to spread the disease unless they were quarantined for a week or so.
I never understood what the point of the seperate head coffins was. You spend all that money, only to end up a disembodies zombie head rotting away in a tiny box as opposed to being cremated or having somebody take a power drill to your skull. Then again it was a comedy.