RULES FOR ZOMBIES

Wasnt there a kind of Zombie dinosaur (think it was a Brachiosaurus) in an animated show with a caveman and i think a T-Rex?

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I can go either way with many of these criteria---exept that I think zombies (at least the average zombies) should be dumb. I always saw them as the horror stand-ins for the fear of mob mentality, so having intelligent and/or strategic zombies just does not tap into the simple, primal fears that the classic genres of movie monster can each be associated with.

That being said, the smart zombies in I Am Legend did make for an interesting plot twist...

Oh yes! That was Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal (2019)!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1033250..._nm_0_q_primal

There was an episode where some kind of virus was spreading among dinosaurs which acted very much like turning them into zombies - it made even plant-eating dinosaurs into ones that would attack anything that moved.

The infected dino that chased & terrified the main characters (Spear and Fang) was indeed a brachiosaurus.

Awesome series, btw.

Exactly. Zombies are just a polite way of imagining that terrifying mass of humanity that occupies the globe along side us suddenly crashing into us like a tidal wave.

Wouldn't a smart zombie just be a vampire? (Think about it.)

Almost. Vampires also have a glamour, largely sexual, which helps them prey upon the living. I am not aware of "stupid sexy zombies." I mean there is Ned Flanders.


However, the sexy walking dead are not really a thing. A smart zombie is basically a vampire with no thrall, a player with no game, a swinger with no swag. Most people would still rather be a vampire.

True, but being "smart" might make a zombie take note of things like personal hygiene & appearance, and thus "work" on themselves to become more appealing to others.

Granted, there are still many differences: zombies lack all the shape-shifting & mind-control powers of vampires (although the ability to hypnotize & mind-control may actually be a "skill" honed through centuries of practice). Zombies have no known aversion to sunlight or religious objects or have any need to sleep during the day in the soil of their homeland as vampires do.

What they have in common is they're both "undead" and can both transmit their afflictions through bites.

Isn't a common characteristics of zombies that they are decomposing? Oooh yucko, they must stink to high hell!

Your body isn't healing anymore. No more regeneration. Zombie = animation paired with degeneration.



There is only one known workaround and it isn't hygiene or fashion.




Are you a rich zombie? Because money (the ability to make it rain money) is the only way you're going to be having sex.

Well, when you put it like that, I'd still much rather be a vampire. Sex appeal, turn into a bat, turn into mist, mind control, thralls, style. Yeah, I'm vampin' it. I was never a morning person anyway.



Give me the choice between being a Denver Broncos fan and a zombie, however, and I will choose that zombie-life.

That's part of why World War Z was as effective as it was---they were literally waves in that one.

Well... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588173/

This brings us back to my point about trapped zombies.

If, on one hand, zombies are constantly decomposing from the point they initially become a zombie, then they wouldn't be as huge a problem as they are in certain stories because the landscape would be littered with a lot more "dead" (inert because they've sufficiently decomposed) zombies.

With a story like The Walking Dead, which presumably takes place over the course of several years, then there wouldn't be much left of zombies that were active at the beginning of the outbreak if they start decomposing as soon as they became zombies. Their brains would be decomposed or they'd be long-immobilized by the muscles in their legs rotting away.

Thus, my contention for one of the rules of zombies, is: if they get a steady diet of flesh, they can keep from decomposing the same way we use food to keep us alive. And I think this lends credence to the idea that zombies seek out flesh as a survival instinct or reflex that is inherent in zombie biology in a similar way that babies reflexively seek to suckle.

So what do you guys think? Zombies are always decomposing and thus have a shelf-life of maybe a few months (or less if exposed to the elements)... OR... a steady diet of flesh can keep them going indefinitely in the same way a regular supply of air, water and food keep us living people from decomposing and consistently mobile for many decades?

Warm Bodies was a cute take on the zombie film. It inverts the psychology of genre. Instead of fearing and killing the "other" we find star cross'd lovers, a Romeo and a Juliet reaching across the gap to love the other. The cure for fear is love. Of course, doing this work doubles the zombie problem by halving the zombie population into those who are really gone and those whose hearts can still be touched.


Oh, and that Ed Cullen wannabe ain't gonna be looking so cute in a year. Just sayin'. Yeah, you may be sexy for a little bit, but you're going to age harder a "Real Houswife." I'm still Team Vamp.

haha To be fair, I have never seen that one (and it probably won't find its way into my short list of to-be-seen films, for some reason...). hahaha

Might be some undiscovered enzyme in human flesh that when consumed by zombies keeps their flesh and organs from necrotizing.

Explaining the unexplainable sometimes results in the storyteller losing their grip the property in question (e.g., magic, mystery, supernature). Do we want to know the midichlorian count of zombies? Do we want the zombie apocalypse to be mundane?

But, let's suppose we have enzymes which prevent necrotization. OK, if so, why do we see zombies in various states of decay? Zombies are still decaying, so apparently this enzyme only slows down decay?

This leaves us with an additional problem. Everything that moves needs fuel. Scientific zombies would have to metabolize something, so what is the trapped zombie using for fuel? Those muscles keep on moving. Those nerves keep transmitting information to coordinate movement and track targets. What is powering this stuff?

In the end, the question is "What does your brain need to be told so it can go to sleep, suspending disbelief so that you can fully enter the world of the story?"

Superstitious People - Brain only needs a superstitious premise.

Quasi-Scientific People - Brain needs quasi-scientific B.S. in the premise to "believe" in the zombie.

Scientific People - No fun zone. They cannot or will not accept a bullsh*t premise, because the science part of their brain will not turn off. They are going to argue with you about enzymes, oxidation, metabolism, and so on. However, they can be sold on zombies-by-proxy (not actual undead).

A true scientist will never be found in a classic zombie apocalypse, because they are incapable of believing in the science of "undead." Thusly, ALL zombies that are not zombies-by-proxy ARE, in a sense, Voodoo Zombies, because they require the audience to believe some unbelievable bullsh*t for the dead to rise (it only works if you believe in it).

I was thinking about this last night.

A reason to explain why zombies are in different states of decay would depend on where they were in the decomposing process at the time the outbreak begins.

Long-dead corpses would also be long decomposed - so they simply would not be able to rise again (you shouldn't have any zombies from corpses that died, say, a year or more before the outbreak, and of course none from the cremated deceased).

But with a corpse buried 2 months before it claws its way out of a grave - it would be partially decomposed and worm-eaten (looking much like the stereotypical zombie we've come to know), while a corpse in the morgue that got killed by a car the day before the outbreak would look fairly normal except for visual injuries (if any) that were part of what took it out.

Then there'd be partially eaten zombies who were killed when they were a living human by zombies, but then turned into a zombie themselves before their brains could be consumed by the zombies that "killed" and infected them.

So, you'd have a wide variety of decomposition, injuries and missing pieces among zombies, but any that still had a relatively intact brain & legs to carry them should be able to go about their zombie business of hunting living flesh.

I guess this reveals me as a Quasi-Scientific People.

Wouldn't a buried zombie just be a trapped zombie?

Now you're getting into the Kill Bill Part II conundrum (breaking out of a buried coffin).

P.S. for the sake of my previous example, let's say the "buried" corpse was the victim of a mob hit and was placed in a shallow grave 2 months before the zombie outbreak.

But yeah, I think most zombies in a graveyard would be trapped in their coffins.

Right, the undead would be largely sequestered from us, safely trapped in morgues and coffins or cremated. Thus, we should not see many decomposed zombie corpses if they have a special enzyme that stops decomposition.

Of course, if they just decompose slowly, we merely need to imagine that we're a few years into the zombie apocalypse to justify the presence of many heavily decomposed zombies. However, if zombies do decay, then trick to surviving the zombie apocalypse is to wait them out.

1. Determine their rate of decay. This will let you know when most of the undead will re-expire.

2. Stock up enough supplies in a location with a freshwater supply to wait them out.

3. $$$PROFIT$$$

Thus, a trapped zombie will STILL only be a temporary threat if they decompose slowly. Even if they don't need food (how they move without energy is a nice question!), they will eventually fall apart (because they are decomposing).

So, the problem is rate-of-decay, right? A zombie that doesn't decompose doesn't look the part. A zombie that decomposes as fast a dead human will be bones in a relatively short amount of time. The Goldilocks Zone will be decay resulting in the right aesthetic, but slow enough that the apocalypse will not end with a whimper as zombies fall apart in short order.

Thus, the crucial question in our scholarly discourse on this culturally significant topic is what is the proper half-(un)life of a decaying zombie?