Reading about the Black Death, how it ravaged Europe, amazing that civilisation didn’t completely collapse. But if it survived a real apocalypse, can it survive a fictional one?
Here’s the scenario - instead of being infected with yersinia pestis, the crews of the twelve Genoese galleys that brought plague to Messina and Genoa are infected with solanum, the zombie virus from World War Z. The book, not the film. You know the score - after a few days of fever the infected die, only to reanimate with a craving to bite humans and spread the virus. Only way to stop them is to remove the head or destroy the brain.
Can 14th century Europe survive the unleashing of the undead, or will the zombies succeed where the Great Mortality failed and wipe out the continent?
OTOH, people in the 14th century were much more willing to chop people up and burn them than people in the 21st. They didn’t need a reason, just an excuse.
Many more pointy and smashy things commonly available to deal with zombies back then, and far fewer qualms about using them. Not to mention that castles were designed to repel hoards of invaders so I’m going with Europe FTW.
Yeah, and ISTR that in the book, the old castles and weapons were brought back to fight the zombies, as they were extremely effective vs. book-style zombies.
The big question would be how the feudal types holed up in their castles would get out and clear/plant fields come spring; seems like you’d have to go distract the zombies and then get people set to fencing the fields in as fast as possible.
On the good side its pretty obvious what the transmission vector of Z is. You might not notice a stray rat here or there, but its hard to miss slavering walking corpse. So it would be easier to mount effective quarantines.
Other advantages medieval Europe has over modern times: lower population density means less chance of mega swarms of zombies; harder for infected people to travel very far before succumbing means slower spread, soldiers would have been more experienced with hand to hand combat, and period armor (leather, mail) probably would have offered decent bite protection, so you may not have a Yonkers situation as in the book.
I think is some zombie universes they claim that there were outbreaks of zombies earlier in human history and they were successfully combated. I don’t remember which book(s) I’m thinking of, but I recall them talking about a Roman legion fighting off a horde of undead somewhere or other. I actually think that a zombie outbreak would be less devastating in Europe in 1347 than either the BD or than one would be in the modern world, since assume the zombie virus or whatever only spreads through a bite (instead of being air borne as some versions of the BD were) and the more limited travel and infectious vectors for biting would really reduce it’s spread, especially how quickly it would or could spread. I also think that people in the 1300’s Europe would be more predisposed to taking it seriously from the get go than modern society since they would not think it that strange, considering all of the superstitions and such they had, as opposed to modern people who know that the dead can’t possibly reanimate and go on a brain eating rampage.
Another big advantage that old Europe has over us is that when civilization colapses they don’t have as far to fall. A small village in the middle ages is pretty much self sufficient. But if a small mondern day town is cut off from power and outside supplies they could be in trouble in pretty short order.
I’m generally skeptical of the potential for any zombie outbreak to destroy civilization. Once people figure out what’s going on, the way to stop it is obvious: kill all active zombies, and decapitate all corpses. No reason medieval people couldn’t do that.
Nah, I just swapped out the plague for solanum on the Genoese galleys.
From the Zombie Survival Guide by the same author. Army Order XXXVIII, distributed among Roman legions detailed how to deal with zombies.
I wonder if that would be the case, in that communications are far slower and your might get an outbreak before you know what it is or what to do. Not to mention, they tried all sorts of mad treatments for the plague, from flagellation to inhaling noxious fumes to rounding up the local Jews, when to us the way to stop it is obvious. Plus you have the religious baggage of the time, the risen dead in the Bible behave rather different than modern zed-heads and those are gonna be the ones medieval folk are familiar with.
Assuming zombies can’t outrun horses, the news that the dead are rising will travel faster than the dead themselves.
Here’s what would happen: when zombies appear in the port cities, people’s first thought is demonic possession. Local priests attempt to exorcise the zombies. The priests and some other people get bitten. When they become zombies, it becomes clear to observers that the bite spreads the curse. This is similar to old vampire and werewolf lore that many of these people already believe. At this point, messengers set out on horseback to surrounding towns and cities, carrying word that the dead are rising.
Now, some people will panic and try to escape, or just pray for divine intervention, but to a lot of people, this will be just like the Crusades: a chance to prove your Christian zeal through holy warfare. I would expect a large army to be raised rather quickly. And once they engaged the zombies in battle, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out how to kill them.