Would a zombie apocalypse occur in the following typical outbreak scenario?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Let’s consider the following zombie outbreak scenario, which in the movies, books, comics, etc. typically turns into an apocalypse.

  1. Some kind of government, military, or top secret corporate experiment goes wrong. Some of the test subjects, or maybe some innocent bystanders, become infected and turn into zombies.

  2. The zombies begin attacking other people. If you get bitten or scratched you turn into a zombie a few hours or days later.

  3. The newly infected zombies perpetuate the cycle.

There are two other factors that seem to be typical in zombie stories that I think would lead to this cycle not taking hold.

  1. The reason zombies attack other people is because they are hungry and want to eat living human brains.

  2. The only way to kill a zombie is by destroying the brain.

Wouldn’t this mean that most of the victims of a zombie would just straight up die rather than turn into zombies themselves since the zombie that attacked them ate their brain? If most of the victims just die without reanimating, would a full blown pandemic be able to take hold? It would seem that the only new zombies would be from people that were injured by a zombie but managed to escape before getting killed and having their brain eaten. Once word got out about what was going, I think zombie injuries would be very rare. Wouldn’t most encounters with zombies either lead to the living person being killed or escaping without injury, limiting the extent of the outbreak?

Feel free to criticize my premises as not being typical :stuck_out_tongue:

2

As someone who has been a part of several Guiness World (Zombie) Records I always fall back on the teachings of Saint George (Romero). The ghouls, to use the more correct name, seem to be more driven by a need to feed on blood than brains. They bite more to cripple and control much as a wolf would but when they go into full feeding mode its more the internal organs such as the liver, stomach and intestines that are the main target. A good illustration of this is the original Dawn of the Dead when the motorcycle gang is swallowed (sorry) by the horde.

In cities, possibly. But this is a big country and there will be a lot of empty places where you may avoid being overwhelmed by a horde but not escape totally untouched. Just a little nip and you are the next ghoul-in-training.

3

This “brains” business was started by Dan O’Bannon and crew in “Return Of The Living Dead” (17 years post-Romero).

I side with kopek, the Bible for this genre is the original “NOTLD,” which said everyone would become a ghoul, even people who died of “natural” causes: the father getting shot by Ben was “ghoul-injury”-free, as was the mother. In the Tom Savini re-make, I found it funny that one ghoul shambling around had a needle sticking out of his arm–just below the tourniquet–and I wondered if he was back for flesh or more H.

4

Lets check the experts…