A moment, if you please, while I consult with my resident thaumatology expert.
Ahem.
@discobot fortune
You may rely on it
I’m also dubious about even fast zombies getting to the 99.99% dead stage.
At any given time, the majority of people are indoors. If it looks like there’s widespread violence outside, we’re not going to go out.
And in the meantime, once the situation is clear, the military + “unregulated militia” will mop up the zombies pretty fast – they’re significantly easier to shoot or trap than most animals.
The whole thing is a frontier fantasy, the jump to that situation is best not thought about.
You would never see a more justified use for the Second Amendment than this one. Those 300 million privately owned firearms would be brandished everywhere. Every gun owner would want to be bragging about having bagged a zombie during the Great Zombie Event.
The life expectancy of a zombie might be something like ten minutes in such a world.
Yes, I know that. You left out my last sentence. There’s no explanation of what killed 99.9% of the population, turning them into zombies, if it wasn’t zombies. There wasn’t a war, or some kind of disease, that killed most people.
We see for example a huge pile-up of cars on the highway, and a few cars still have zombies trapped inside due to people having been killed in the crash. But most of the cars aren’t damaged enough to have resulted in fatalities. Ninety percent of the people in that pile up should have survived without turning into zombies.
Or we see a building that is jam-packed with zombies, apparently originating from the start of the apocalypse. If one or a few zombies got in, they should have been able to kill them before they bit everyone. And given the lag in people turning, they should be able to kill them (or amputate a limb) before they turned.
I’m currently up to Season 9, which I think is about 10 years after the apocalypse. Zombies really should have been eliminated by then, aside from people who die in isolation so others don’t prevent them from turning.
Another annoying thing is that all the zombies at this point have long stringy hair. What, has their hair been growing out all this time? We should still be seeing zombies with short hair.
I have the same thought. Ok, they’re low energy, so maybe they last a year. But on TWD some of them have been shambling around for 10 years now.
You also mention “rotting away.” We have actually seen zombies with maggots infesting them, so they are not immune to decay. Exposed to the elements, they should be in the same condition as any other 10 year old corpse, that is, a bunch of bleached bones.
If a zombie bit your shiny metal #$%, would you turn into a zombie?
@discobot fortune
Then people would have to deal with skeletons in addition to zombies.
Now that is an experience we should be terrified of. All skeletons are fast skeletons, so none of that slow, shuffling business. They know how to use tools, at least swords and shields. They can also dance and create music (at least percussive music) so they have creativity and artistic verve.
So by my thaumatological analysis (and becoming a subject authority by watching lots of movies and a few animations with skeletons in them), once the undead cast off the flesh that holds their true intellect back, they metamorphosise from slow, dull zombies to terrifying, flesh-rending, tool-using reavers
Since they have that creative streak as well, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to use guns. They’ll be much harder to fight then, as their lack of flesh makes them much harder to hit with return fire.
Don’t be giving them ideas! There’s a skeleton inside each of us, reading this, formulating plans.
I don’t think zombies would be so obvious immediately after reanimation (unless of course they had visible fatal wounds); someone who just died looks exactly like they did a few moments earlier when they were still alive. It’s a pet peeve of mine that most zombie movies are quick to go overboard on the makeup. Night of the Living Dead (1990) was an exception.
The idea that you’re not sure if someone’s a zombie is very frightening. Remember the testing scene in The Thing?
Heck, I see people like that on the street every day.
And how about, if I were a zombie… would I know?
That would be a cool strain of zombie virus.
I’m intrigued by the amount of time some of you spend on thinking about zombies. And a little worried.
That’s the kind of thing a zombie would be worried about.
Why are you not helping the tortoise?
It beats thinking about reality.
Do more Americans think COVID is real, or think zombies are real?
we would eventually figure ways around it.
Maybe everyone would have to get a piercing since the thing can’t replicate non organic tissue.
just make sure everyone gets some non organic material implanted on or near their body that a thing couldn’t replicate (in the prequel they used dental fillings) and it becomes much easier.