Aethelmearc – that’s part of New York, part of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, right?
The subject of dealing with zombies has come up many times on SCA-related boards; perhaps it’s a little disturbing how much thought some of us have put into it. I have to admit the thought occurred to me that my recently-purchased battle-axe would be a good anti-zombie weapon. My SCA armour would be fairly good protection, but realistically, SWAT-type gear should work (although the zombies in Romero movies do seem to have amazing biting force once they get their disgusting mouths on you.)
Excellent points in the OP, by the way.
Well, I’m off to see Land of the Dead at a matinee.
Even though a good number of other people have addressed these, I’ll toss in my opinions as well and hopefully add something of value.
I think a lot of people have thought about it, and then thought a little bit more and rejected the concept for the following drawbacks:[ul][li]It’s heavy. Running around with it will wear you out over time, and you’ll be less able to fight off a zombie.[]It’s noisy, which attracts the dead.[]It’s not 100% bite-proof, as the zombies shown have amazing strength in their jaws, much stronger than they had when alive.And regardless of how strong it is, once a zombie knocks you to the ground, you’re not going to get up when you’re encased in metal with a corpse on your chest.[/ul]Better to just stay out of their reach altogether. Hand-to-hand combat is a losing proposition.[/li][quote]
2 - Where are all the wild animals? With all that free meat walking around, wolves, bears, mountain lions and vultures would have a field day. Their populations would explode, they’d become a bigger danger than the zombies.
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Others have mentioned the Zombie Survival Guide, which posits a viral infection (Solanum) that animals smell and avoid. Predatory carnivores won’t eat zombies, and while domestic dogs would form packs, they wouldn’t keep down the zombie population.
Fire and explosives are counterproductive, as others have noted. Going on zombie-killing sorties would only be a viable option if you have sufficient supplies and support staff. Where’s the utility in leaving your fortification to go kill zombies, and coming back and finding it overrun? If you kill one hundred zombies today and fire off a thousand rounds of ammunition to do it, what are you going to do tomorrow when there are another hundred zombies, and then another hundred, and another? In certain circumstances it could be a valid option, but in others (Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead featured a world overrun with zombies except for isolated enclaves) it’s got a lot of risk to very little benefit.
Depends on how the author or director envisions the zombie. The ZSG mentioned earlier argues that bacteria won’t work their magic on a Solanum-infected corpse, and explores how different climates would result in faster or slower decay.
Regarding the twelve-foot concrete wall someone mentioned, that’d be great against one zombie, and against ten, but when hordes appear at the wall and begin piling up, you’ll eventually get a ramp of zombies and then they pour over the top.
The thing that irritates me about zombie movies is that “Oops, I’m a zombie” inevitably equates to “Hey, I’m a zombie. Now I’m evil and going to kill and eat you.” I don’t quite get it.
a. You’re dead. Digestion should be pretty much a thing of the past, sort of by the definition of “being dead”. But OK, there’s some residual metabolic processes going on and you need energy. Wouldn’t it be easier to catch and eat other zombies?
b. Why is it that all zombies zero in inevitably on that invisibly fine point between being completely mindless and having no awareness of their former selves? You never see a zombie (in a movie) that says, “Well, I’m dead. Guess I’ll cash in that IRA now. Oh, and being the same nice guy that I was before I died, can I help you guys fight off the rampaging hordes of shambling wrecks?” The zombies become mindless grunting things, but yet have enough intelligence to continually hunt down and kill unaffected people and the motivation to do it.
At the very least, there should be a spectrum of zombies, some good, some evil, some completely mindless. Sort of like participants on the SDMB.
I’m actually working on a script that addresses that issue. It’s more in the concept stage now, but you bring up a good point that got me thinking as well.
I think the idea is that the force that’s animating the zombies is inherently evil and destructive. There may be benevolent undead-raising magic out there, I suppose, but it doesn’t make that good a story.
LOL, we name our farm animals…we had named a batch of lambs Roast, Leg, Rack and Opal [not from the board…after the daughter of a friend of ours…] and turkeys were Enchilada, Thanksgiving, Giblet, Gravy and Soup. Right now we have a rooster that is named Cogburn that is an outright pet but in a pinch would make a nice pot of coq au vin, and the rest of the meat group are named KFC, Popeye, Bojangles and Salad, and ‘the gang of 3’ [3 cockrels that are due to be axed any day soon, when we get some time and freezer space=)] though the hens arent named, they are egg producers and when they finally stop popping out eggs they will get axed=)
Did i mention our roomie makes killer fried chicken?
I prefer home raised and slaughtered meat - we take very good care of our critters, and kill them quickly and with as little terror as possible. Heck, even the eggs are better tasting than battery eggs - the combination of pure nonmedicated feed grain and natural plants and bugs, and veggie scraps [they love wilted greens and stuff like potato peels, carrot ends and peels, stale bread, leftover popcorn] makes for good healthy eggs. We feed the shells back to the chickens in their scratch so they dont have the chronic calcium loss that a lot of battery chickens do.
The end of the world as we know it would be brought about by the zombies…it might bring forth a new paradigm of lifestyle - walled enclaves of factories, commerce and dwellings surrounded by empty farmland with scattered ‘bunkers’ in case someone is caught outside while working on the land in agriculture. The farm animals would probably have to be bunkered at night to keep them safe as well. I could also see automated crematoria like in David Gerrolds Cthorr series. I would say that cremation would probably become the only legal way of burial to prevent a zombie population rise. Wearing/carrying weapons would also probably become legan and encouraged if not mandatory outside the enclave. Though it is a good question - what started the whole zombie thing in the first place, and would it be permanent or was it something that once this batch of zombies is dead wouldnt happen again…
Well because I’m inexperienced with zombie movies, what usually does cause them? I know 28 Days Later was about a rage virus, but technically those people were not zombies–they were infected, but still alive. Do supernatural forces cause zombies, or science run amok, or what?
It depends upon the mythos. In Night of the Living Dead, they just sort of showed up, as I recall, no explaination given for what happened. In Return of the Living Dead, it was because of a toxic chemical which accidently got spilled. Pre-Night, it was magic potions and the like which created zombis.
I saw parts of a zombie movie on TV years ago, when I was much younger. I thought it was scary as hell then, but for all I know, it could have been intended as a comedy. I think it MIGHT be one of the Return of the Living Dead movies. There was a guy whose girlfriend was turned into a zombie, but he kept her around because he thought he could save her, or she would snap out of it. She kept “piercing” herself with these jagged metal shards. Then his father worked for the military and they had this base where they tortured zombies and kept them in these oil drum-looking things, and when chaos ensued, I remember them crawling out of the drums, pulling scientists into the drums, etc. And some guy got his spine ripped out (a gang member, perhaps?), but he kept moving his head around on the extended spine, like a dinosaur’s neck. It was all gross and disconcerting back then.
it was. In those films, the recent dead, at least, retain their personalities and intelligence. They’re just in terrible pain and eventually develop an overpowering need for brains.
I watched Night and Dawn back-to-back yesterday before going out to see an evening show of Land.
In Night, we hear and see media speculation about a probe returning from Venus that’s discovered to be carrying some sort of radiation and is therefore triggered to self-destruct before landing, and later media reports indicate “rising levels of radiation.” However, no concrete explanation is ever offered, and indeed one of the reports shows journalists following a military man and a scientist as they argue with one another about whether or not the radiation is in fact responsible.
In Dawn, there is no explanation offered, other than Peter’s comment about “no more room in hell.” The walking dead simply are.
Same in Land. We’re here, we’re decomposing, get used to us.
Not a great film but Shatter Dead manages to have non-evil zombies in a horror film. When people die they come back to life, and want to carry on, but they are rotting and so get rejected by the living humans. Meanwhile believing that this is the end of time and judgement day is near causes all sorts of problems…
A thought, what if the Zombies were intelligent to remember names from their life. Shooting a brainless zombie wife may be easy, but if it was calling to you by your name as it trys to get to eat your brain ?
I wouldn’t count them, they aren’t reanimated dead people, they’re possessed live people. Plus, they just kill, they don’t eat the living as far as I can recall.
There was thread devoted to defining this stuff, I think.
In 28 Days Later, the first time we see Frank, he is wearing thick clothing, heavy gloves, a helmet, and is carrying a police riot-shield. Similarly, Mark and Selena are wearing heavy clothes and helmets with goggles at first.
Of course, those have to come off so we can see the characters’ faces.
In Day, they don’t know either, but they are trying to find out. All they learn is that zombies can remember some things from their lives. (They give a zombie an unloaded gun and he starts pointing and pulling the trigger).
Speaking of which, if a Venus probe is connected, does that mean that anything that might live on Venus would become zombified?
