Zombies are a problem only because people keep making shows/movies/books about them.
Zombies are dommes?
I don’t watch thses things, so my question is extrememly basic…
Do zombies eat zombies?
If so, the tall building trick won’t work for long because the newly arriving zombies will start feasting on the zombie meat around the bottom of the buildings
It seemed to work okay, but keep in mind that in the book, the entire country is infested, with relatively few humans and human-safe areas. Also, it would only work if the zombies were already in the building, it didn’t tend to work with the ones wandering about. You really should read the book, it’s completely different from the movie.
Not traditionally, no.
Depends on the universe I guess, but in most treatments zombies and other undead repel animals. In the World War Z book it’s specifically mentioned that bacteria won’t consume the diseased flesh which is how they last for years and years.
In the book, as well, although not nearly as quickly.
There is mention of the zombies “ramping up”, given enough stable flat ground near a wall. So, it’s not good enough to build a wall, you need to build a strong, tall wall, and keep them off it.
Fatal flaw: Unless a zombie lands on its head, falling off a roof ain’t gonna kill it.
I’m pretty sure falling off a tall enough building is enough to cause brain damage whether you land on your head or not. Even then, if you destroy the body enough, it doesn’t really matter if a zombie is still alive if it can’t move.
If it’s the memetic ‘spread by a bite’ type, just hunker down and wait for the infection to burn itself out.
If it’s an old school Romero type, learn to live with it - build walls, crematoria, set up body collection details to get the recently dead TO the crematoria, etc.
If it’s REALLY old school, find the Bokor that’s animating them, and cap the SOB.
The nice thing about the tall building trap is that it continuously acts over time without intervention. If a zombie somehow survives the first fall (for example with a shattered leg, but able to limp about), it will be lured back up to repeat the drop. Maybe the remaining leg is shattered on the second fall, but the zombie is able to crawl around. Well, it crawls back up to the top and perhaps the third fall does the trick. If not the third, then the fourth, fifth… or thirty-eighth.
Don’t forget about everyone either needing to sleep alone in a locked bedroom or in a cage. And mandatory vital sign monitors/implants for all.
The best zombie trap I heard of was to use an abandoned quarry with a solar powered radio suspended over it.
And every now and then you spray gasoline into the quarry and toss a match.
The book is not a novel with a continuous plot - it’s a series of unrelated first-person narratives about “what happened in the Zombie war” as reported by people of different ages and nationalities, across about a decade from the initial outbreak to the zombie war and post-Zed rebuilding. If you’ve ever read the Studs Terkel book “Working,” it has the same format.
So, I haven’t seen the movie, but as far as I can tell from reading plot summaries, it has almost no relation to to the book at all.
That’s only in “everyone who’s dead automatically reanimates as a zombie” scenarios. In many you can only become a zombie by contagion.
In the Walking Dead, they were in Georgia, right? So they were right next door to the Okefenokee Swamp, a HUGE (over 400,000 acre) national wildlife refuge in the south of Georgia.
Because it’s a wildlife refuge, nobody is allowed to live in it, so there would be no zombies there. There are a few solid land islands in the middle of the swamp, with plenty of fish, game, and wild edible plants to eat, but you have to be able to paddle a kayak for a few days to get there.
Zombies could try to comb through all 400,000 acres to find you but they would get trapped in the peat, mud and quicksand (there was a reason the Okefenokee was called “land of the trembling earth”) at the bottom of the swamp. They would also probably get eaten by alligators, as the swamp is crawling with 'gators and vultures.
It’s very much an impenetrable swamp unless you have a small boat and are intelligent enough to know how to steer, paddle, and not get stuck. Zombies aren’t lucky enough to know how to use boats.
Then you end up with zombie alligators!
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In the novelization of Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead, it’s established that zombies do not eat zombies; they are attracted by the warmth and odor of living flesh.
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Zombies can climb stairs in most media; they have been shown to have trouble with doorknobs, although about one in ten seems to be able to come to grips with that (pun purely intentional).
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Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide establishes that NOTHING eats zombies; the viral source of the infection makes the meat megatoxic. Insects and animals shun zombie meat. This is kind of necessary, because in the American south, a zombie would be a mass of maggots in days, and a cleaned skeleton well within two weeks.
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An excellent fanfic circulating the 'net takes the form of a CDC report on zombies, and notes that the disease that reanimates the dead also retards decomposition. In addition, a zombie that goes long enough without feeding will tend to seek out a dry sheltered position out of the sun and weather and go “sessile,” just sitting there for days and years until motion or sound nearby reactivates him. This takes a minute or two, and usually results in the zombie LURCHING suddenly to the attack, out of pure silence. I liked this particular fanfic, as it was written realistically, and explained a lot of holes in “zombie theory.”
Ghod, I am such a nerd…
And then if they in turn get bitten by vampire and werewolf alligators, bar the door, Katy!
Build a really tall wall around your compound. Put about 15’ wide stretch of 3’ long rebar spikes on the inside of the wall. Even if the zombies build a zombie pyramid and start to climb over the wall, they fall onto the spikes and get stuck, at which point flamethrowers become very handy.
In reality, seeing a zombie in the city would be as rare as seeing a possum or deer. And probably less dangerous. Unless you’re some macho dumbass. Which is why there would be very stringent laws in place about NOT tying to kill the zombie yourself. Call the local authorities.
Slow zombies of course…fast zombies and all bets are off.