# Walking Dead style Zombies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 31, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340 "2011-10-31T01:09:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![GreedySmurf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a698b9/32.png) [@GreedySmurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreedySmurf)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/1 "2011-10-31T01:09:30Z")
I have recently got my hands on the Walking Dead Season 1 and the first couple of season 2. I really only have the TV series itself as reference material. I’m curious if in the books or somewhere ancillary to the TV series, if there has been any details provided on how the Zombies are still active? In the CDC episodes, they fairly explicitly explained that it was a virus that caused the zombification. So they aren’t ‘magic zombies’ as such. However if it is a virus that has reactivated the base centre of the brain, presumably the Z’s ability to move, etc, is still reliant on their normal physiology. So should these zombies then be starving to ‘death’ at some point? Unless they are magic zombies, their muscles will require energy from somewhere right? ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/2 "2011-10-31T05:54:48Z")
I think it’s clear that they are magic in that way, that is they don’t starve. I would like to know what the rules are apart from that. How do they know if there are humans near them? ---
**Author:** ![Capitaine\_Zombie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@Capitaine\_Zombie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capitaine_Zombie)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/3 "2011-10-31T06:40:03Z")
> [@mr.jp](#): > > I think it’s clear that they are magic in that way, that is they don’t starve. > > I would like to know what the rules are apart from that. How do they know if there are humans near them? I read the first episodes of the comic book, and I seem to remember that they go on a somewhat infiltration mission right into a city overrun with zombies. To do that they use body parts and goo from taken-out zombies to make themselves look like zombies (with a zombie shuffle). So, there’s some thought right from the start of the book as to how zombies detect humans. Apparently it is from eyesight, smell, and behaviour (if it walks like a zombie it is a zombie, if it walks like a human it is a human). Long time since I read it (and since it is quite cliched, it is even harder to remember than usual) but I think the mission goes awry and they get “caught” (though the plan worked for a time, as zombies really couldnt detect them). ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/4 "2011-10-31T13:10:15Z")
> [@GreedySmurf](#): > > In the CDC episodes, they fairly explicitly explained that it was a virus that caused the zombification. So they aren’t ‘magic zombies’ as such. However if it is a virus that has reactivated the base centre of the brain, presumably the Z’s ability to move, etc, is still reliant on their normal physiology. > > So should these zombies then be starving to ‘death’ at some point? Unless they are magic zombies, their muscles will require energy from somewhere right? This is what consistently takes me out of the story while I’m watching. I can accept a basic premise that has ‘magic’ zombies, and I can suspend disbelief for a pseudoscientific zombie virus, but the writers need to accept the consequences of their premise. If you’re going to posit a virus which somehow reactivates brain stems after all necessary bodily functions have shutdown, you have to ‘reactivate’ those other functions which make it possible for locomotion. Which means you must have muscles contracting, which implies the provision of nutrients throughout the body, which means forced blood flow and oxygenation of the blood through breathing. Muscle cannot at the same time be capable of flexing and relaxing in response to nerve impulses _and_ be rotting away. Zombies cannot be capable of sensing their living prey without having working olfactory receptors and/or sensory organs which respond to light, pressure, temperature, etc. In the WD zombieverse, the virus is supposed to work on the brains of people who’ve been damaged enough through injury or disease to have expired naturally. Where I could accept such a virus were it to first ‘kill’ and then ‘reanimate’ otherwise healthy victims, I find it harder to accept the animation of naturally expired victims without some work around the original cause of death. Either give me a supernatural explanation which defies physics, or give me a better attempt at some sort of ‘natural’ phenomenon that requires zombies to breathe and allows them to ‘die’ from exsanguination or starvation just like any other animal does. I don’t care if they don’t need to sleep, and if they never stop to rest when pursuing prey, but don’t give me _ **non** _magical creatures that survive amputations and removal of organs but not a stick shoved through an eye socket. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/5 "2011-10-31T13:19:57Z")
I’m a Zombie lover (Not in the physical sense) but am a heretic as far as the mainstream is concerned. Have read Max Brooks stuff and consider it to lack internal logic. I personally believe that the Z virus is spread by blood contamination, and possibly in a way similar to the spread of influenza when the Z virus is in its earlier stages. Which annoys me when I see people unconcerned about getting Z blood on them. If they ingested it or had cuts or grazes on their skin then they too would become infected. Also Max Brooks says that there is no blood circulation in a Z, if that was so their blood wouldn’t be red and it wouldn’t be liquid. If a normal corpse IRL is cut open there is no blood spattered all over the place because it has all coagulated when it stopped flowing. As to Zs eating, I disagree with the premise that they don’t eat to actually feed . A body uses energy to articulate, and also for the brain and nervous system (Or what is left of it ),if they aren’t using the meat for fuel then they wouldn’t function,let alone move. The Zs can hear and I believe have vision,but maybe not as defined as humans and not in colour. Unless of course the Zs are in fact magic, in which case why go through all of the palaver of having a virus and a method of transmission etc. ? You could simply have a curse or a magic spell or whatever. If the Zs were magic I’d lose interest in them as the suspension of disbelief would be too great; plus it would mean that you could make the rules up as you went along, ie… “Ah yes I’ve been bitten, thank god I had the legendery staff of Kyfflos with me, which negates the power of Z bites etc.”. As to suspension of belief, most people can can let themselves enjoy an increased pulse race (Cos none of us get scared, thats for wimps !) watching a ripper or Z movie, because there is a theoretical chance that it could happen. But say Vampires or Werewolves… Vampires may be cool but scary no ! And Werewolves aren’t even cool . And yes as a grown reasonably intelligent adult, I do spend some of my spare time daydreaming up my Z survival plan… But don’t tell anyone else ! ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/6 "2011-10-31T14:17:53Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > I’m a Zombie lover (Not in the physical sense) but am a heretic as far as the mainstream is concerned. > > Have read Max Brooks stuff and consider it to lack internal logic. Just to be clear, The Walking Dead does not take place in the Max Brooks universe. It has its own rules. Although I am curious if WD zombies freeze in the cold, like Zacks do. Since WD takes place in the south, we’ll probably never know. ---
**Author:** ![Smitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Smitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smitty)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/7 "2011-10-31T15:16:16Z")
Well, obviously you have to suspend disbelief for a Romero zombie to exist at all (defined as a reanimated corpse). All I ask is that once you set the rules, you follow them, which I don’t think **The Walking Dead** has been doing this season. Last season it was clearly established that the “Walkers” detect living humans by smell, yet this season the living can hide under cars as the dead pass without being detected. Even worse, someone cuts what appears to be a major artery, gushes blood all over the place, and the walkers just pass right on by as he hides. I do like the show, but that sort of took me out of it. ---
**Author:** ![GreedySmurf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a698b9/32.png) [@GreedySmurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreedySmurf)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/8 "2011-10-31T16:10:51Z")
> [@Smitty](#): > > Well, obviously you have to suspend disbelief for a Romero zombie to exist at all (defined as a reanimated corpse). All I ask is that once you set the rules, you follow them, which I don’t think **The Walking Dead** has been doing this season. > > Last season it was clearly established that the “Walkers” detect living humans by smell, yet this season the living can hide under cars as the dead pass without being detected. Yeah that one really bothered me too. A bit of rain was enough to wash off enough of the zombie stink (which had been applied very liberally) in less than a minute to have the zombies chasing them, but hey, apparently hiding under a car masks your smell somehow. :dubious: I suppose the idea of a virus makes zombies somewhat plausible, but for me if you start of with a scientific explanation you need to stick with it. For some reason doing that inconsistently is a bigger stretch for me than if you just go with magic zombies from the outset. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/9 "2011-10-31T16:45:33Z")
> [@Hello\_Again](#): > > Although I am curious if WD zombies freeze in the cold, like Zacks do. Since WD takes place in the south, we’ll probably never know. [Don’t be so sure.](http://images.tmcnet.com/featurestory/ap/2010/12/29/Winter-Weather-JPEG-7.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Inthewater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Inthewater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inthewater)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/10 "2011-10-31T16:47:07Z")
For the record, most of these inconsistencies are in the series, not the comics. They wisely never really touch on what caused it, or what “rules” may be in place. The walkers are much more responsive to sounds and smells/actions of living people. Again though, as someone else stated, this is a whole different universe, one in which “The Romero Zombie has never existed” according to Kirkman on The Talking Dead. The issues of the blood spatter and the hiding under the cars working was talked about, as well. He said that if they don’t see you, the smell may not be enough to attract them. They aren’t blood hounds, but if they see you moving, you smell like living and move like living, they will notice you. Kinda makes sense. All other times, when using the “walker guts smooshed all over you” they were actively walking through a crowd of zombies. They do not “smell” them when they are in a house and they are outside. ---
**Author:** ![Inthewater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Inthewater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inthewater)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/11 "2011-10-31T16:48:29Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > [Don’t be so sure.](http://images.tmcnet.com/featurestory/ap/2010/12/29/Winter-Weather-JPEG-7.jpg) Pretty sure the effects of the cold on the walkers are discussed in the comics. It gets quite cold and snowy, especially later in the story. No idea what they will do in the series. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/12 "2011-10-31T16:52:37Z")
> [@Smitty](#): > > Last season it was clearly established that the “Walkers” detect living humans by smell, yet this season the living can hide under cars as the dead pass without being detected. > > Even worse, someone cuts what appears to be a major artery, gushes blood all over the place, and the walkers just pass right on by as he hides. > > I do like the show, but that sort of took me out of it. I don’t know if the Zombies have that good of a sense of smell. I assumed that they use smell to see if the guy right in front of them is a fellow zombie or lunch but can’t necessarily zero in by smell alone. ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/13 "2011-10-31T16:53:29Z")
I have no problem with it being a magic virus, that enables them to survive without food. In fact its necessary, otherwise they will run out of food very soon. I don’t see why “magic virus” is a worse explanation than “magic”. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/14 "2011-10-31T18:39:12Z")
> [@mr.jp](#): > > I have no problem with it being a magic virus, that enables them to survive without food. In fact its necessary, otherwise they will run out of food very soon. I don’t see why “magic virus” is a worse explanation than “magic”. That doesn’t seem necessary. 1. They can go into near-death/hibernation state where they are hardly using any energy at all. And even when they are not hibernating, they tend to conserve energy by moving sluggishly or barely at all. 2. In a worst case scenario, they can start eating each other – they just prefer not to. Similarly, they could probably eat some amount of plant matter, animals, and other waste, with some sort of explanation that they can extract more energy out of what they eat than humans due to an overall slower metabolism. True, in this case, you would expect zombies to quickly move into nature rather than hanging around in cities, where food is scarce (after they’d emptied all of the dumpsters). 3. And then there’s always the option of photosynthesis. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/15 "2011-10-31T19:46:38Z")
Stepping away from Walking Dead zombies, specifically, I actually once copied down an interesting musing on Zombie biology in my “maybe need it one day misc. information” file a few years back, unfortunately from a source I forgot to note (:smack: ☹ ). I don’t think it was from the SDMB, even, but here it goes… > [@Unknown Unknown](#): > > Well… There are necrotizing bacteria, but zombie tissue is already necrotic. They probably don’t have an active immune system, but that doesn’t mean that whatever’s keeping them going is not in some way also making them more resistant to decomposition, which seems to be the case. At the very least, whatever it is, it stops the cells in the human body from undergoing autolysis, or else zombies would go immobile pretty damn fast. > > I actually started thinking a bit about it (how zombies move) when CAV brought up the nerve agent thing and I think zombies do have a metabolism, an anaerobic metabolism. Keep in mind this little theory is full of holes cause I’m no biologist. > > Somehow the mitochondria at the cellular level might be replaced with an anaerobic organelle that can consume glucose in the absence of oxygen generating about 1/13th of the usual energy output and like some strains of clostridia produces acetic acid as a waste product, which slows decomposition. But in the absence of available glucose the cells undergo autolysis which explains tissue necrosis. > > The energy output is so low that it might not support tissue regeneration, it appears to generate no body heat, and it probably contributes to why zombies have no apparent throught process (not enough power to juice the whole brain) and the shambling (not enough energy for a regular walk, let alone a sprint or jog). > > That sort of organelle replacement might be the result not of a virus but a plasmid, a kind of evolutionary precursor to a virus. I think a plausible explanation of how the “virus” might work is that it’s not actually a virus, it’s a collection of several different microorganisms in a symbiotic relationship: A plasmid, anaerobes and certain strains of bacteria similar to the one that causes botulism, which is why Z-flesh is toxic even after cooking. These organisms could go into a dormant stage when not actually interacting with living matter, which means that the energy produced by the breakdown of glucose would be temporarily stored and give zombies the capacity for short bursts on energy after periods of inactivity and it also means that any traces remain dangerous and infectious for prolonged periods of time. In this case zombies are not seeking living tissue to consume for sustenance or because only the basic parts of the brain remain operational but because they are mobile transmission vectors for the “disease”, which is also why they don’t attack each other or corpses. > > Edit: Sorry I realized I didn’t answer your question Matt. I guess you’d need tissue samples to see what kind of microorganisms decompose zombie flesh most effectively to see if that’s viable, but in theory it should be possible. I can offer no technical commentary on the above aside from noting that it’s much better technobabble than late _Star Trek_. Faint praise, admittedly. Someone on these boards also once put forth the theory that zombies had metamorphosed to derive energy from the gasses produced by the decomposition of human flesh they’d “eaten.” They also graciously gave me permission to steal the idea if I ever wrote a zombie story. 😃 Happy Halloween! ---
**Author:** ![Capitaine\_Zombie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@Capitaine\_Zombie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capitaine_Zombie)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/16 "2011-10-31T20:34:32Z")
> [@Inthewater](#): > > They aren’t blood hounds, but if they see you moving, you smell like living and move like living, they will notice you. Yeah, that’s how I remember it being played in the first episodes of the comic book (but, it is common in long-winded zombie stories to start introducing variants in the rules zombies follow. So maybe this changes later on in the series?) ---
**Author:** ![Inthewater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Inthewater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inthewater)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/17 "2011-10-31T20:39:20Z")
> [@Capitaine\_Zombie](#): > > Yeah, that’s how I remember it being played in the first episodes of the comic book (but, it is common in long-winded zombie stories to start introducing variants in the rules zombies follow. So maybe this changes later on in the series?) If you mean in the comics, it has not changed as far as I know. I haven’t read the last 6 issues as I like to read the 6 issue volumes, but I have read it all up to that point. They act and react the same as the first issue, unless I missed something. The only thing they come across are different “variants” of the walkers, or at least they label them differently (lurkers, roamers, walkers, etc…) ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/18 "2011-10-31T20:55:50Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > Also Max Brooks says that there is no blood circulation in a Z, if that was so their blood wouldn’t be red and it wouldn’t be liquid. In WWZ, zombies don’t have red blood. Their blood is a thick, black sludge. This is a minor plot point in one of the stories, where a guy is bitten by what appears to be a zombie, and is relieved when he sees that the “zombie” is bleeding bright red blood - not an undead, just a crazy bitey dude. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/19 "2011-10-31T23:58:23Z")
> [@xenophon41](#): > > …Either give me a supernatural explanation which defies physics, or give me a better attempt at some sort of ‘natural’ phenomenon that requires zombies to breathe and allows them to ‘die’ from exsanguination or starvation just like any other animal does. I don’t care if they don’t need to sleep, and if they never stop to rest when pursuing prey, but don’t give me _ **non** _magical creatures that survive amputations and removal of organs but not a stick shoved through an eye socket. George Romero had the right idea. _Never_ reveal the cause; just have characters speculating without anything being confirmed. No speculation was even mentioned in more than one movie; Night had radiation, Dawn had divine wrath, Day had a biological pathogen, by Land nobody even bothered to speculate anymore. > [@Inthewater](#): > > …Again though, as someone else stated, this is a whole different universe, one in which “The Romero Zombie has never existed” according to Kirkman on The Talking Dead… Pretty much _all_ modern zombie fiction takes place in a universe where Romero never made zombie films, which makes sense given that he basically invented the modern concept of a zombie. **Return of the Living Dead** is the main exception I can think off; of course those zombies don’t play by his rules at all “You mean the movie _lied_!”😉 Sometimes in fan fiction you’ll get a vauge reference to “certain films”. Also it appears that Romero existed in the Zombie Survival Guide/WWZ 'verse since most the “myths” Brooks debunks are cleary from his films. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340/20 "2011-11-01T00:10:14Z")
> [@Smitty](#): > > Last season it was clearly established that the “Walkers” detect living humans by smell, yet this season the living can hide under cars as the dead pass without being detected. As I already mentioned in the episode thread, they explained this on the Talking Dead the night of that episode. Zombies can tell fresh meat from rotten (ie humans from walkers) by smell. But they aren’t bloodhounds and don’t use smell for tracking down humans. It makes sense. I can tell if I take a piece of rotten meat out of the fridge that I don’t wanna eat that, but I certainly am not going to be able to track down an animal by scent. Walk by me with a big plate of juicy burgers, then I’m gonna get ready to chow down. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/walking-dead-style-zombies/601340.md?page=2)