The relative increase in Zombie "intelligence" in the Romeroverse...

Cafe Society
1

It seems that in George Romero’s “Dead” movie universe, the shambling hordes slowly get more intelligent as time progresses…

since it isn’t likely to be progression of time (as a newly-risen Zombie in “Land” is equally as intelligent as the one that bit him), what’s the likely cause, if it was time-based, the new shambler would only exhibit the “animal” intelligence in the original film…

for example;

NOTLD; Zombies have a simple “need to feed” motorized instinct, can be stopped by physical barriers/fire, no reasoning or higher intelligence, minimal (if any) tool use (the little girl in the basement kills Mom with a trowel)

Dawn; Zombies follow an instinctual urge to congregate in groups at the mall, “memories, what they used to do, this was an important place in their lives”

Day; first signs of base-level reasoning and associative behavior, the shamblers penned up waiting to be experimented on show signs of fear of their captors, Bub shows memories of his past life (ex-soldier), basic reasoning (listening to music, operating a gun) and simple emotions (recognizing “freind” from “food”, showing pride in figuring out how to escape from his chains, sadness at the death of his “father”, anger and revenge at the soldier who killed “daddy”)

Land; [spoiler] “Big Daddy” figures out how to operate a gas pump, use a firearm and jackhammer, and shows more advanced reasoning (realizing that since they don’t need to breathe, they can cross the river by walking underwater across the riverbed) and more advanced cause-and-effect reasoning (shooting a burning zombie so it doesn’t detonate a fuel pump, the elaborate planning of the death of Dennis Hopper’s character by filling the limo with gas, creating a puddle of fuel around the limo, then rolling a lit propane cylinder down the ramp to detonate the pooling fuel) he also teaches the other Zombies to use guns/tools

IIRC, he also seems to be the first Zombie that does not eat flesh for the entire length of the movie, he may have the ability to repress his instinctual need to feed[/spoiler]

so, over time, the Zombies are getting smarter, why is that, if it was a contagion (lets say it’s a virus), i could see the viral contagion evolving over the course of the films, seems logical, but that would limit the “smart” zombies to those that had died/risen by a bite, scratch or other fluidic contamination, simple deaths and suicide risen zombies would be the brainless “shamblers”

it wouldn’t explain “radiation/cosmic rays” as those, being purely physical contaminants, do not evolve

also, if we follow the events in Land to their logical conclusion, given enough time, the only difference between a Zombie and a human, aside from the decomposition factor, would be the Zombie’s preference for really, really rare meat… they would be able to control their base urges, perhaps even supress them…

what do you think, what’s the most probable reason for smarter Zombies (better education system, perhaps?, Undead Sesame Street… “B is for BRAAAIIINNNS!, that’s good enough for meeee”, "one, ONE human arm, ah, ah, ah, TWO, two human arms, ah, ah, ah…)

2

Darwinian Selection?

If we postulate that the virus varies in the amount of independent thought the LD can handle then the one’s that have the most would be more likely to survive going after the living.

Then if we postulate that causes those virus particles to reproduce to a greater extent each generation of LD will be increasing capable of thought and tool manipulation.

And the generations pass fairly quickly, I’d wager.

3

Instead of evolution across generations of zombies, how about evolution across generations of the zombie virus. It would have to have a kind of hive-mentality to survive inside a body and control it, even at the initial stages of human infection.

If a zombie makes it past the first few days of re-animation, the virus becomes more organized. It’s not just looking for food (as in NOTLD). It is making a home for itself, becoming more able to control the host and actually start accessing basic memories (as in Dawn.)

By the time Day rolls around, those zombies that are tool users are ones that have been zombies the longest, or have been infected by zombies that have the more-evolved virus. There is more body control and reasoning abilities present, because by now the virus/hive is firmly in charge. Zombies that are made by those of this generation receive not the chaotic unspecialized virus, but highly evolved and organized viruses, so they can act even more human right out of the gate.

A little rough, but Ithink you can see where I’m heading on this.

4

IIRC, in the Romero movies, the mechanism can’t be a virus because anyone who dies will become a zombie, even if they were never bitten.

5

that’s the exact reason i postulated in the OP that it was improbable that it was a virus, in NOTLD it was hinted it was some form of cosmic rays/radiation from a downed sattelite…

viral infection/mutation explains the shamblers created by being bitten/scratched/otherwise physically damaged by a zombie, it does not explain non bite-related zombies, i.e. dying of natural causes, or suicides

6

Oh sure, let a perfectly good theory go by the wayside because of a couple of lousy facts.

7

Maybe it’s a virus but it’s kept in check by the immune system. It’s already present in living people but it doesn’t take control until the host dies and the immune system stops. Then the virus is unchecked and is able to re-animate the body.

8

Such a virus seems so close to an impossibility that it sounds more reasonable to say “There’s no more room in Hell.” One of the things I like about the Romero zombie movies is that there’s really no explanation; the world has just changed in a horrible way.

If you really want an explanation, I’d say that George Romero wanted to do something more interesting with the living dead; what’s evolved isn’t a virus, it’s a storyline.

9

I have a theory, especially after seeing Land of the Dead, that Romero doesn’t put much thought into it at all.

10

Or, it could be airborne.

Of course, this all assumes that there’s scientific explanation for the zombies. They might be supernatural.

11

They may have gotten more intelligent, but they seem to have slowed down physically. In the new Dawn of the Dead, a lot of them were able to run and seemed to have superhuman strength. But in Land of the Dead, they seemed to somewhat return to the slow (albeit smarter), weak, meandering zombies of the old Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.

12

I haven’t seen Land of the Dead, but as for DotD, it might be skewing things to include Bub—after all, he was being subjected to experiments to try and jog his memory. If he’d been left “in the wild,” he might have remained dimwitted.

13

The remake of Dawn of the Dead is out of continuity, so it doesn’t count.

14

Land of the Dead is supposed to precede the Dawn of the Dead remake, isn’t it? (and not precede Day of the Dead)

This is, at least, my interpretation of two different sequences:

  1. Night of the Living Dead (1968) → Dawn of the Dead (1978) → Day of the Dead

  2. Night of the Living Dead (1968 or 1990) → Dawn of the Dead (2004) → Land of the Dead

15

grrr…“precede” - I meant follow.

16

No. Romero didn’t have anything to do with the Dawn remake and it’s considered outside continuity. It goes

Night - Dawn - Day - Land. With the updated Dawn nowhere in there.

17

OK, I now see that the ramake of Dawn of the Dead was done by Jack Snyder. I was thrown by the Dawn of the Dead remake and Land of the Dead being released only a year or so apart.

18

Just watched the unrated director’s cut of Land of the Dead last night. Fun stuff.

God bless The Onion: Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared for Full-Scale Zombie Attack.

The Onion article refers to elements of the Romero movies, the Return of the Living Dead spoofs, and the Dawn of the Dead remake. Obviously written by somebody who knows the subject.

19

Actually, I think Romero is on record that his films aren’t meant to have any tight continuity at all. Sure, the zombies all work by the same basic rules, and there’s a rough progression of the zombie menace between the films, but, especially since there aren’t any characters shared between them, they aren’t really the same story.

20

I’d say that despite what he says, the fact that his movies all are set at different times during the zombie menace that they all are a part of the larger zombie menace story and there’s no doubt that each movie follows the other in the same timeline.

Unfortunately the fact that the reasons for the zombies are unknown, while great for keeping the zombies mysterious, leaves little room for Star Trek like fan explanations for the rise in undead intelligence.