Yeah, it’s hard to keep zombies fresh.
Honestly if I had zero knowledge about zombies and some shambling thing resembling a corpse is heading over to me I’m going to be shooting at center of mass until I run out of bullets. If I hit him in the head it would probably be on accident.
Perhaps, but SOMEONE is going to take a headshot (untrained people generally aim at the face precisely because that’s where you look when you look at other people) and when that works, that word will get transmitted to others rather rapidly.
Sure, until someone shoots one of the zombies in the head and it DOESN’T drop it. Then the panic really starts.
Again, in WWZ.
-Joe
Doing a text search (just for a data point) shows that Guillermo del Toro uses “zombie” 7 times and “vampire” 26 times in The Strain.
alphaboi nailed it. Simililarly, the Superman movies take place in a parallel universe in which Siegel & Schuster created a fictional character of that name; in fact, there’s probably no superhero comics or movies at all in that world.
The Night of the Living Dead uses the term ‘ghoul’ which would have been a more accurate adaptation of existing lore, for a given value of accurate, and for whatever such accuracy is worth. But ‘Zombie’ stuck. What the hell, it’s a fun word to say.
No, you wouldn’t. See the appendix of Zombie Survival Guide and ZSG: Recorded Attacks…it seems that only the advent of air travel, combined with an outbreak in one of the most populous areas of the world, made sure the global pandemic which eventually came to be called World War Z could happen, while otherwise, zombie outbreaks were easily contained. Oh, the humanity! If only we had learned!
Speaking of headshots v. center of mass; aren’t military & law enforcement being trained to go for headshots because of the greater prevalence of body armor?
Also one of the things I liked about the Romero/Savini remake of NotLD was how subtle some of the zombie makeup was. It was the start of the outbreak and most of the zombies were extremely “fresh”; only undead a few hours (or days at most). Other than odd wound most of them just looked like disoriented sick people with severe cataracts, not rotting corpses.
I think that for most writers, this is probably the explanation of my question in the OP.
Of course it goes a little further than that. Most horror movies take place in a universe in which horror movies do not exist. Star Trek – at least The Original Series – takes place in a universe without a long history of time travel fiction.
For many shows and movies, it doesn’t matter, though. There’s plenty of medical soap operas in the House universe, for instance.
Cops, I don’t think so. There’s all kinds of paperwork to fill if you kill someone, and cops hate paperwork. They much rather just shoot to stop, not to kill.
In the army…where I served we were taught to use the Mozambique drill when applicable, but in general headshots are discouraged just because the target is smaller and more mobile; there’s always time to put one in the brainstem afterward if you manage to knock him down with a center-mass shot.
Shooting to stop is shooting to kill. Shooting at all, for a cop, is shooting to kill. A cop who shoots the bad guy in the kneecaps is going to face all the same paperwork, and is also going to get called onto the carpet for showing off stupidly instead of going for the sensible center-body shot.
Well, true. The difference I was going for is; once the guy is on the ground and not moving, we were taught to walk over and put one in the brainstem to make sure, whereas I believe the cops are taught to call an ambulance. They still do that, right? I’m not too familiar with the US regulations post 9/11. And true, I’m only assuming that the paperwork required for, “forced to return fire” is somewhat less than “shot him in the back of the head after he was unconscious and cuffed”… I could be wrong.
I like to call the fast zombies, “zoombies”, that’s even more fun to say.
Some agencies train for headshots due to the concern you mentioned, but based on previous threads we’ve had with CopDopers, current doctrine is to shoot for center of mass.
I’m thinking they train for headshots in case they run into a subject who is obviously wearing armor or one who is evidently armored due to resisting center of mass shots.
The paperwork for what you just described involves losing your job, and possibly your career.
I just realized that Mr. Slant is posting in a thread about zombies. Perfect!
Would you believe that you noticed the irony before me?
I agree with this. Like movies take place in another universe where none of the actors exist.
One thing this reminds me of that really bothers me is Bridget Jones Diary. Here her love interest is called Mr Darcy. He has a character and they have a story very similar to that of Pride and Prejudice. The book exists in this universe. Yet this isn’t commented on at all, if I recall correctly.