In the Romero Universe, it’s not brains. It’s any and all tasty human flesh.
The O’Bannon zombies crave brains, because being dead hurts, and eating the brains of the living makes that pain go away, if ever so briefly.
And nobody knows how long the dead take to fade out. In Land of hte Dead, it’s clearly been quite some time, but the zombies are hale and healthy… at least, sort of.
And while Romero hints at some Zombie evolution in Land, for the most part no, a flesh eating zombie is just a flesh eating zombie. No such thing as a middle management zombie outside of the corporate world. Now then, to get back to the meat (hehehe) of this thread…
Ranchoth, I bow before your incredible researching skills. I certainly don’t deny that a great number of zombies wouldn’t be smoked. The gist of what I’m saying is that the wounding and secondary death via radiation and burns would essentially be of no consequence to the average zombie.
Nobody really knows how the zombies track their prey. In Day of the Dead, the good doctor says that they continue to try to attack despite losing all of their sensory organs. Brooks continues with the “nobody knows how they sense humans” meme. So being blinded by heatwave may not be as limiting as one would hope. It all sort of depends on what sort of Zombies one is dealing with.
But count me as at least partially converted that nukes would be a good tool.
And I seem to recall hearing, once, about stories of the Chinese “Jiang Shi” creatures (zombie-like, but normally considered vampires) gaining great strength and power if they lived long enough, turning into horrific beasts (IIRC, it also involved growing hair out of their muscles. Yargh). But then again, I haven’t been able to back this up with anything I’ve found, recently. It might even have been a completely different form of corporeal undead that was mentioned.
P.S.—Thank you, Tristan! It’s always good to talk with someone who appreciates a sane, reasonable proposal on an issue of public health and safety.
Their bodies decay, but not as fast as a corpse. They don’t need food or air, but a zombie in a cold environment will last longer than one roaming a swamp.
Zombie flesh derives energy from methane gas. The methane from flesh in the stomach, means the zombie cells don’t have to metabolize the host’s body for the energy it contains. The gas defuses through the body so no working circulatory system is required. Decaying flesh in the stomach energizes the zombie so they can be more active and lively.
