# Romero's zombies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 20, 2004, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeros-zombies/265209 "2004-09-20T23:34:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ronnie\_James\_Dio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@Ronnie\_James\_Dio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ronnie_James_Dio)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2004, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeros-zombies/265209/1 "2004-09-20T23:34:12Z")
This is a question about the zombies in Romero and Romero-influenced movies. There are typically endless swarms of them. The method of “reproduction” here is that those who are bitten and die become zombies. In these movies, human characters that fall to the zombie hordes are eaten, leaving barely any carcass behind. My question is, if the zombies eat and munch on their victims, why are there so many of them around? The vast majority of zombies have no bite marks on them, let alone chunks of flesh missing. If the zombies sole purpose is to eat humans, then how do so many of them die intact to become the walking dead? ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2004, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeros-zombies/265209/2 "2004-09-20T23:48:21Z")
Okay, _amigo_, if you’re going to enjoy Romero’s zombie movies, you’ve got to memorize this fact about them – in the world of those movies, every human who dies **for any reason** – car crash, cancer, heart attack, drug overdose, gunshot – becomes a zombie, unless their brain was severely damaged. If you’re bitten by a zombie, it causes a raging infection which will kill you – and then you’ll rise as a zombie, not because of some zombie virus, but because you’re dead. In the Romero movies, it seems that overnight something simply goes wrong with the world, such that the dead walk. As soon as this happens, the zombies start piling up, starting with all the people who normally die in a day. The death rate soon rises, not only because of attacks by zombies, but because of the total collapse of society. In the recent remake of _Dawn of the Dead_, they deliberately went against this formula (with deleterious effects, to my mind). They went to pains to make it clear that only people bitten by zombies were rising from the dead. (They also had the zombies running around like track stars, which was a stupid idea.) Forget about that, and don’t let it confuse your understanding of the Romero Mark I Zombie. Hope this helps. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2004, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeros-zombies/265209/3 "2004-09-20T23:51:02Z")
The less sense you try to make of the new _Dawn of the Dead_, the happier you’ll be. ---
**Author:** ![Ronnie\_James\_Dio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@Ronnie\_James\_Dio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ronnie_James_Dio)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2004, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeros-zombies/265209/4 "2004-09-20T23:51:33Z")
> [@Baldwin](#): > > Okay, _amigo_, if you’re going to enjoy Romero’s zombie movies, you’ve got to memorize this fact about them – in the world of those movies, every human who dies **for any reason** – car crash, cancer, heart attack, drug overdose, gunshot – becomes a zombie, unless their brain was severely damaged. > > Hope this helps. Wow, that totally changes everything. I’ve never even considered that. ---
**Author:** ![Ronnie\_James\_Dio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@Ronnie\_James\_Dio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ronnie_James_Dio)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2004, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeros-zombies/265209/5 "2004-09-20T23:53:20Z")
So are we supposed to assume this happens globally? And that the only safe places are places compeltely isolated from humanity? And at the conclusion of these movies, the world is just…fucked? ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2004, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeros-zombies/265209/6 "2004-09-20T23:54:10Z")
> [@Ronnie James Dio](#): > > So are we supposed to assume this happens globally? And that the only safe places are places compeltely isolated from humanity? And at the conclusion of these movies, the world is just…fucked? Pretty much. No one ever accused ol’ George of being an optimist. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2004, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeros-zombies/265209/7 "2004-09-21T00:16:09Z")
And praise the Lord, it looks like George Romero is finally going to get to do his fourth Dead picture, [Land of the Dead](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418819/). The idea is that his beloved hometown of Pittsburgh is a fortified city, an island of humanity in a sea of zombies. Yes! (And, Anchor Bay has released its super-dooper DVD set of Romero’s _Dawn_. Looks like I’ll be buying the same freakin’ movie for the third time, soon as I’ve got some scratch.) ---
**Author:** ![Chairman\_Pow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Chairman\_Pow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chairman_Pow)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2004, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/romeros-zombies/265209/8 "2004-09-21T01:27:16Z")
> [@Baldwin](#): > > And praise the Lord, it looks like George Romero is finally going to get to do his fourth Dead picture, [Land of the Dead](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418819/). The idea is that his beloved hometown of Pittsburgh is a fortified city, an island of humanity in a sea of zombies. I heard him speak not too long ago and I have to say that I wasn’t too excited about this movie. It was mainly after he said that DAY was his favorite film of the series… On the other hand, I wonder how the survivors of DAWN feel about leaving what will apparently become the only haven…