# What would've happened if it didn't rain in Return of the Living Dead? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [August 14, 2022, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628 "2022-08-14T01:23:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**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:** [August 14, 2022, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/1 "2022-08-14T01:23:58Z")
In the Return of the Living Dead after Burt and the gang get rid of a zombie by creammating it, the fumes Trioxin 245 get in the air and rain down upon a graveyard It soaks in the soil and revives corpes. What if it didn’t rain? Would the gas from the chimney kill and get reanimated? Or just harmlessly dissipate? Would there have even bring a get movie? ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2022, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/2 "2022-08-14T01:38:12Z")
If it didn’t rain it would turn out that Trioxin 245 was heavier than air and it would sink to the ground all by itself. Or maybe when they tossed out the ashes, the Trioxin 245 left in them would have been scattered on the ground and reanimated the zombies. Of course, if the fumes had harmlessly dissipated in the air, there wouldn’t have been much of a movie, would there? ---
**Author:** ![Hatchie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hatchie/32/3983_2.png) [@Hatchie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hatchie)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2022, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/3 "2022-08-14T02:42:00Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Would there have even bring a get movie? There would not have bring a get movie, no. Hard to imagine what would have bring a movie of the get variety. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2022, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/4 "2022-08-14T04:37:54Z")
Bring Trioxin, get movie. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2022, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/5 "2022-08-14T10:28:40Z")
More paramedics ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/6 "2022-08-15T01:34:57Z")
Then the writers would have had to come up with another mechanism to animate a lot of dead bodies. How did the stuff get spread around the crappy sequel? I barely remember it. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/7 "2022-08-15T01:46:37Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > How did the stuff get spread around the crappy sequel? Zombie origins went through a period of voodoo magic, then toxins / chemical weapons like Trioxin. We are now firmly in the virus / genetic bioweapon era. People would now laugh at something as silly as magic, and be skeptical of chemicals. We all now know that only viruses or genetic bioweapons can reanimate corpses. Or maybe _Cordyceps_ sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/8 "2022-08-15T01:55:07Z")
I was specifically asking how it was spread around in the Return Of The Living Dead 2 (1988), the sequel to Return Of The Living Dead (1985). ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/9 "2022-08-15T01:56:04Z")
Still Trioxin, maybe a different form. > **[Trioxin](https://livingdead.fandom.com/wiki/Trioxin)** > > Trioxin is a gas-liquid in the Return of the Living Dead Series that can reanimate inactive organic matter and convert living flesh into reanimated dead tissue, in other words a zombie. There are more than one kind of Trioxin as the zombies differ in... ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/10 "2022-08-15T01:56:35Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Zombie origins went through a period of voodoo magic, then toxins / chemical weapons like Trioxin. We are now firmly in the virus / genetic bioweapon era. People would now laugh at something as silly as magic, and be skeptical of chemicals. We all now know that only viruses or genetic bioweapons can reanimate corpses. Or maybe _Cordyceps_. There was a role playing game called _All Flesh Must be Eaten_ that came out in the late 1990s designed to emulate various zombie movies. The main book gave 5 different zombie outbreak worlds, and in one of them, the zombie plague was started by a kid who used voodoo to animate his his dead girlfriend, uh, “party” with her, and attempt to put her back in the ground but things didn’t work out so well. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen magic used as an excuse for a zombie apocalypse in a movie. Maybe because the Romero zombie is a modern invention? ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/11 "2022-08-15T02:01:46Z")
Yes, but I’m trying to ask _how it was spread around_, since that’s pertinent to the OP’s question. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/12 "2022-08-15T02:07:46Z")
There’s some limited information in the link I provided. > The Trioxin in this movie was also from a canister which was tinkered with by Billy Crowley. The Trioxin was released into the nearby cemetery and reanimated the corpses within. I don’t remember the detailed plot. ETA, here we go, from Wikipedia evidently rain was involved again: > Billy and Johnny return to the barrel and open it, releasing the Trioxin gas that begins to permeate the whole cemetery… acid rainfall causes the Trioxin to begin seeping into the ground and reanimating the corpses. ---
**Author:** ![WhyKickAMooCow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9fc29f/32.png) [@WhyKickAMooCow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyKickAMooCow)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/13 "2022-08-15T08:56:28Z")
Does the release of gaseous trioxin-245 cause the rain I wonder. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/14 "2022-08-15T13:56:52Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen magic used as an excuse for a zombie apocalypse in a movie. Not a movie, but that’s the mechanism in the comic book series _Afterlife with Archie_ (yes, Archie Comics did a zombie apocalypse storyline). The whole thing starts when Sabrina the Teenage Witch casts a spell to bring Hot Dog, Jughead’s dog, back to life after Reggie hit him with a car. ---
**Author:** ![psiekier](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psiekier/32/116_2.png) [@psiekier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiekier)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2022, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-wouldve-happened-if-it-didnt-rain-in-return-of-the-living-dead/969628/15 "2022-08-15T15:42:01Z")
I believe in Rick Grimes!