# What if the Zombies win? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 1, 2009, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976 "2009-08-01T14:36:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/1 "2009-08-01T14:36:10Z")
As an avid Z fan I have participatedin the many threads about the subject but noone has told us what would happen if the Zs beat us. With their primary energy/propogation source wiped out would the Zs in their turn die out becoming effectively extinct ? Would the Zs go “cannibal”? Or would the host bodies eventually disintergrate but the virus lie dormant awaiting new hosts? Or maybe adapt to other animals as hosts? Or then theres the case of the Zs, as in at least one movie evolving some sort of intelligence,if this proves to be the case what sort of society will they develop? Breeding the last few human survivors as food and new hosts? ---
**Author:** ![Serenata67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/serenata67/32/10646_2.png) [@Serenata67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Serenata67)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/2 "2009-08-01T15:51:38Z")
Bad zombie joke coming: I don’t know if they’d have enough braaaaaiiiiinnnnssss to set up an organized society. I guess if the zombies win, it won’t matter that I haven’t finished my novel. ---
**Author:** ![Skylark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Skylark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skylark)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/3 "2009-08-01T16:23:17Z")
If? The zombies _always_ win. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/4 "2009-08-01T17:17:44Z")
In pretty much every zombie movie, the zombies make up for their lack of intelligence and tool using ability by sheer numbers. But that’s a bad strategy for what’s essentially an apex predator. If you want to get by at the top of the food chain, you need a lot of herd animals and few predators. Zombies, as generally portrayed, are like ebola virus. Too deadly to their hosts to be a viable pandemic. Then again, very few zombie movies that I’ve seen have addressed the issue of zombies actually starving to death. For example, in the recent “I am Legend”, it’s not clear what all the zombies were actually subsisting on during the years since the plague. If you accept that zombies are too dumb to handle a can opener and that they have the same general capacity as humans to go without food for maybe a week or two, then generally any zombie outbreak should run its course within a month or so, after which you’d just have a few enfeebled zombies who’ve run out of prey animals. As for smart zombies (e.g. the original I am Legend), they’re going to have to develop a more varied diet than human brains and intestines. Humans are terrible food animals – they breed slowly, take forever to reach maturity, are expensive to feed, and there’s just not that much meat to be had. ---
**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/5 "2009-08-01T18:42:26Z")
Zombies won’t starve to death. According the The Zombie Survival Guide zombies only eat due to instinct, not actual hunger. So, zombies would roam the earth until they fall apart. First the humid areas, like the rain forest, would be clear first. Lastly would be the arctic areas (they thaw then refreeze every winter) and the deserts. ---
**Author:** ![G0sp3l](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@G0sp3l](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G0sp3l)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/6 "2009-08-01T18:44:13Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Humans are terrible food animals – they breed slowly, take forever to reach maturity, are expensive to feed, and there’s just not that much meat to be had. I wish you’d said that BEFORE I bought all those shares of Soylent, Inc. From what I remember of World War Z, the Zs didn’t starve but they fell dormant during the winters and spent months crossing ocean floors with no ill effect. I’m thinking humans are more of an ‘addiction’ than a food source. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/7 "2009-08-01T18:57:18Z")
Max Brooks masterful command of biology notwithstanding, the laws of physics demand that bodies (living or dead) get the energy to move from _somewhere_. Living bodies get this energy from chemical energy stored in food. Where zombies, especially zombies without or not using their digestive tracts, get the energy to move after the fat reserves of the body are used up (or the oxygen to process the chemical energy in food) is beyond me. At best, zombies should be able to use self-cannibalism on a cellular level to move around by consuming their own bodies for a short time. So any survivors will only have to survive long enough to let the zombies starve to death, and shouldn’t have any trouble dispatching the late-in-the-season zombies who were “created” as almost-survivors succumb to the Horde. ---
**Author:** ![Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/regallag_the_axe/32/445_2.png) [@Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Regallag_The_Axe)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/8 "2009-08-01T21:03:05Z")
> [@appleciders](#): > > Where zombies, especially zombies without or not using their digestive tracts, get the energy to move after the fat reserves of the body are used up (or the oxygen to process the chemical energy in food) is beyond me. Magic, duh. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/9 "2009-08-01T22:16:20Z")
You knew this one was coming: The zombies have already won. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/10 "2009-08-01T22:40:44Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > You knew this one was coming: > The zombies have already won. And elected a former President. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2009, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/11 "2009-08-01T23:00:32Z")
> [@Regallag\_The\_Axe](#): > > Magic, duh. Yeah, but if “magic” is the answer, the OP becomes pretty uninteresting. Of course the zombies are going to win if they don’t have to obey the laws of physics. Even the “zombie virus” explanation is stretching the limits of what is biologically possible – you have to allow that even though the zombie is dead and decaying, it still possesses enough functionality to allow digestion to take place. ---
**Author:** ![Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/regallag_the_axe/32/445_2.png) [@Regallag\_The\_Axe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Regallag_The_Axe)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/12 "2009-08-02T01:54:07Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Yeah, but if “magic” is the answer, the OP becomes pretty uninteresting. Of course the zombies are going to win if they don’t have to obey the laws of physics. Even the “zombie virus” explanation is stretching the limits of what is biologically possible – you have to allow that even though the zombie is dead and decaying, it still possesses enough functionality to allow digestion to take place. In the unlikely event that I decide to be serious for a few minutes, I’d probably conjecture that digestion does not occur in the gut. I might say that the zombies internal cells digest our flesh externally, like fungus does to plant tissue. Then again, it might just be the beer doing the hypothetical speaking. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/13 "2009-08-02T02:51:17Z")
Zombies appear to be cold blooded. That should dramatically lower their energy needs. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f07891/32.png) [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Plastic_Ninja)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2009, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-zombies-win/504976/14 "2009-08-02T16:37:54Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > And elected a former President. 😃 The image of Zombie Reagan is appealing. Or Zombie Kennedy.