What's your plan for the Zombie Apocalypse?

Absolutely! I'll have your bone ready when you arrive

ooh, no, thank you very much, I'll check it out now.

that sounds like a magic zombie scenario and the aforementioned guidelines apply.

their dead tissue will break apart and decompose very rapidly, and dehydration will prohibit any complex movement after a few hours.

if reanimations are moving their dead bodies around without connective tissue or the fuel/cell requirements needed to work those bodily systems, that's magic.

expecting non-magic zombies to be able to chase someone or gather in a horde is like expecting a car to run without any fuel, engine, or drivetrain.

the closest thing we have to a non-magic zombie but still similar to zombies in movies is rabies. the person becomes violent but extremely uncoordinated, aquaphobic, and then dies because the human body doesn't function without the constant ingestion of water and fuel sources.

28 is probably my favorite zombie series, and those zombies are heavily magic.

moving super fast and uncoordinated means rapid dehydration coupled with injuries, blood loss and tissue loss and damage.

their bodies can't endure that kind of activity for more than a couple hours, and they'll rapidly render themselves immobile, deteriorate and decompose. there aren't going to be any zombies milling around inside houses or crawling around in fields 28 weeks later.

asymptomatic carriers are normally accounted for with any new pathogen, and with the rapid deterioration, incapacitation and death of any symptomatic infected, there aren't going to be major societal collapses.

asymptomatic carriers are going to be an important vector of disease to account for as soon as the disease is recognized, and they'll have to be separated from the rest of society as a vaccine is developed, but given the rapid onset, obvious symptoms, rapid deterioration of the symptomatic carriers and physical transmissibility, a short quarantine period indicates there aren't going to be many asymptomatic carriers.

rabies is a good example, because it's basically 28 days later zombies in real life.

extremely contagious, no cure, carriers become very violent but uncoordinated, they are fast for a very brief period of time but fundamentally incapacitated after a few hours because of dehydration and tissue damage, and then die.

conditions like transmissibility and natural human resistance make the 28 scenario unrealistic but for the most part, the rapid deterioration of the symptomatic carriers is the silver bullet here.

they are still great movies and I'm very excited to see 28 years later next month.

there are a few big issues here.

1. The consistency and efficacy of that pathogen

2. those people wouldn't be zombies, they would just be carnivores.

3. if cannibalism/societal colapse/megetables are going on, people are going to notice.

there are already pathogens that make someone vegetarian, but because of the resilience of the human body, the effect only takes hold in a very low percentage of people introduced to the pathogen (they're not sure which mechanism in tick spit prompts the meat allergy yet, afaik).

The brain is incredibly complex and can rewire itself, so to have even 10% of the population have consistently perfectly rewired brains while maintaining all other normal functions and the coordination to conspire, cannibalize people and change the global food supply is a pretty magical scenario.

i remember being pretty concerned during trump 1 when the US withdrew from the UNESCO literacy program, but it was barely a footnote to anyone

"they need no circulating blood nor an heart pumping it?"

yup, those are the magic zombies. real complex organisms whose muscles won't function without energy/water/bodily structure are much more demanding.

and keep in mind that every moment after death those bodies will be decomposing, that that body is not living, then it is decomposing a piece of steak left over from a picnic in the forests decomposes.

All of the dead soft tissue is going to break apart very quickly and won't be able to hold the body together.

"moving in hordes"

a horde could be a problem for the few hours that they are coordinated enough to move until dehydration sets in.

"Pure brain rot instead of flesh rot...what would I do...I would be throwing all the books from my personal library at them"

this is a great idea, very poetic retaliation.

That said, maybe I should see that as the latest kind of zombification? Pure brain rot instead of flesh rot?

Zombies are sci-fi. Sci-fi, by and large, is social commentary. You’ve hit the nail on the head quite nicely actually.

Like corpses. And corpses don’t tend to be particularly strong or fast once they start rotting. Unless there’s some sort of magic involved to stop the decomposition process, they’ll likely all die out as they rot. The fresher zombies will take a few weeks to become inert, but that’s a blip in the radar in the grand scheme of things.

But the bigger issue then becomes what caused it. If it was something like a prion disease, (like Mad Cow Disease) then you’re likely fucked even after the zombies all rot; Prions don’t decompose, and (if the zombie outbreak was big enough) you’re almost guaranteed to catch it via dirty soil exposure (either directly, or via tainted produce that was grown where a zombie died) eventually.

My head cannon for "realistic" zombies. is Mel Brooks', the writer of 'zombie survival guide and 'world war z' (no relation to the movie or the game) esque zombies.

Oh he liked all of us. We used to help him set up his 4th of July demonstration for the neighborhood every year where he would fire a tank shell into the mountainside along with some fire works . We talked to him about our plan on more than one occasion.

Tanks are heavy for sure but they aren't THAT much heavier than a handful of cars. Plus if it's just for protection against zombies and other humans on foot we wouldn't need a heavily armored one.

In my country, people stay at home and wear mask when outside just fine, vaccination is going as smooth as one can expect from in time of global crisis. Not to mention this is an imaginary crisis of zombie apocalypse, people will stay at home after seeing what it do. Are you sure it's not just your countrymen that's the issue?