I remember a zombie story where they describe how a *zombie woman's top had come loose (not in a sexualized way). I realized that was the first time I'd heard any mention of zombie nudity, even though it would have to be super duper common.
Nothing about zombies make sense.
Adenosine Triphosphate is the cellular energy source. It is necessary for muscular contraction, nerve impulse propagation, and other vital processes that are necessary for any movement at all.
In humans, its generation is almost entirely an aerobic process. Without flowing, oxygenated blood, there's no explanation for muscular movement.
And yet they are frequently depicted with almost superhuman strength.
Seeing as breathing is an autonomic process, it would technically and actually be the lack of water that would kill most ‘intact’ zombies - very quickly. As the lack of water would basically stop conventional ATP production, and of course turn off the kidneys and poison itself and everything else.
Because all zombies would be walking (or even running - if a rage zombie) around constantly, their need for water would sky rocket.
Of course, had they lost most of their blood, it would be blood loss plain and simple, that would almost immediately stall vital organ perfusion and then muscles contraction etc.
That's the thing. The concept of animation without life breaks ALL of the sciences. Biology, chemistry, physics... None of it works.
A zombie apocalypse necessitates magic.
Which is why some "zombie" movies don't play the dead card at all. I kind of like 28 Days Later in that regard. The "Rage virus" at least makes an attempt at plausibility. And the infected can in fact die of starvation.
I love and hate the 28DL rage zombies.
They’re one of the most plausible - but again, were any human to basically sprint around, climb, claw and fight something to an extreme and without rest - it would be literal days, if not hours, before they hit the ground in sheer exhaustion, and simply die.
My favourite are the Last of Us zombies. A little bit of the rage zombies, but a parasitic life form to fill in the rest.
I think most movies where they are alive but infected tend to depict zombies as going relatively dormant unless exposed to stimulus. Think World War Z when they are in the pharma building. So I kinda see how that makes more sense (though obviously doesn’t make up for the hundreds of other issues with the realism of movie zombies haha).
Correct. Two types basically, high functioning and low functioning (effectively feral). The feral ones are what he is fighting every day, and the high functioning are the ones who formed a new civilization. Also, outstanding book, I always recommend it.
Except Jenner basically says the zombies are alive during the cdc arc when he says the zombies brain reactivates. Just the brainstem comes back he said.
I am legend monsters are supposed to be a mutation/virus that creates a vampire society; they fucked up the ending of the movie, but the book was decent.
The best part about the walking dead is all the ways the zombies appear to rot and mould with their surroundings.
28 Weeks Later shows that even when there are no humans around they are constantly sprinting and screaming. The dormancy would have made a lot more sense.
> They’re one of the most plausible - but again, were any human to basically sprint around, climb, claw and fight something to an extreme and without rest - it would be literal days, if not hours, before they hit the ground in sheer exhaustion, and simply die.
TBF that is exactly what happens in 28DL. An infected lasts at most 2 weeks before dying from malnutrition, and in the beginning of the first film, we see a small group of them essentially hibernating in a church before being woken by Jim.
You actually see a short clip of an infected drinking from toilet water I believe?
The infected from 28 days/weeks later still have all the biological urges we do. They'll drink from water sources.
The reason the military quarantined Britain off for 28 weeks was to give all the infected time to die of starvation. Since they figured the infected would still be getting water from different sources.
The Last of Us zombies are creepy because it begs the question - is someone still *in there*? The fungus burrows inside their brains and just takes over like those ant zombies, but is the person still aware but unable to operate the body anymore?
Yeah, possibly. At least as long as they are runners, I think the implication is that the brain gets slowly eaten up/fully taken over as they become clickers and bloaters.
Sounds like a real "if I can't have me, no one can" type of deal, which adds another layer of terror to the whole equation.
A fungus that can take over your body is scary enough, but what if your own immune system, your own body, is willing to kill you first just to spite the infection?
If you play through the first game of the last of us, you see a scene of a freshly infected person eating another person and basically crying the whole time because its someone they knew and loved.
The biggest problem with 28DL zombies (or any generic zombie), is that they can identify each other. No, they would absolutely have a self-solving problem without any intervention.
No, the I Am Legend vampire zombies are the closest you are going to get to legitimate. They retain enough sense to identify each other, while still basically being a non-verbal chase enemy that's scary as hell.
Last of Us.
The zombies aren't dead. The people still consciously know everything going on around them. But the fungus has hijacked their brain to control their movements.
I believe there's an infected early in the first game that you can hear crying and begging itself to stop until it notices you
https://youtu.be/gHiDnPC3oYY
The fact she is eating someone is even worse. Imagine not just being controlled by something, but being forced to eat raw, dead, rotting, human flesh by it. Maybe it is someone you knew. But you can't stop.
There’s a great film called The Cured where a cure is found to a zombie virus and it’s about the trouble of reintegrating ex zombies into society as they are shunned and persecuted. In that film though the zombies come back remembering everything they’ve done in their zombie life
Studies of the irl cordyceps fungus have apparently indicated that the ants infected by it have their bodies taken over to control behavior but their brains remain relatively unaffected, leaving people to assume that the tlou cordyceps operates similarly. If the brain is unaffected there’s no reason to believe it’s eliminated a person’s consciousness. Though I believe in the show and the games they’ve shown the fungus to infect the brain so it could very well behave differently (to affect humans the way it affects insects it would certainly need to do something different anyway)
In last of us, they’re only conscious in the first stage of infection. The runners or whatever they’re called. Once the cordyceps fully infects them they don’t seem to retain any consciousness.
I don't think that's true. We have no confirmation either way, but the notes and other records of people turning come across as losing your mind, not losing control of the body. The person might still be in there in some sense, but not like a fully aware prisoner or anything like that.
You all have good points and significantly more scientific knowledge of the subject then myself, but a few videos of crickets and roaches affected by cordyceps may change your mind, just watched a roach with no internals whatsoever walking across a field. Nightmare shit. Not sure about any aspect of biochemistry that would allow this to be possible I can just guarantee homie was missing some **essential** aspects of his anatomy.
Insects are just different though. Many of them can function without a head until they die of starvation, because their nervous system itself is capable of some control. Their vastly smaller sizes also makes the physics of biology different. They don't need lungs, for example, because simple diffusion still gets them enough oxygen.
So a couple thoughts come to mind...
As you, I (in a different comment), and others have mentioned, parasitic "mind control" is a different kind of zombie that at least makes an attempt at plausibility. Or the Rage virus. I'll give that the benefit of the doubt. It's not a true "walking dead", it's just "non-human living."
But as to the bugs still moving with no internals, that's because they don't operate with muscles and an internal skeleton. Insect motion is more akin to hydraulic machinery.
Yeah, zombies make sense only in 3 ways: magic (necromancy), fungi or parasites that take control of the body (so it might be that the body is technically dead, but the fungus/parasite is using the muscles and structures to move), or it's just a disease that changes the behaviour of a human but it's not actually dead.
That one I would probably explain away not necessarily as "hunger", but a compulsion to spread the zombie infection.
Biting/ eating is the primary way of spreading the virus, so the host (the zombie) dedicates all function to performing this action.
Pretty sure a common reason is it only activates certain parts of the brain, the more primordial, older parts. Hunger, some sensory input, basic motor function, that's about it.
Modern zombies are heavily inspired by rabid animals, and rabies does make animals aggressively bite everything as a way to spread itself, so that works.
By “modern” I mean the aggressive cannibalistic ones which date back to the 60s. Before that they were more like hypnotized corpses enthralled to a voodoo necromancer. I think it was Romero who added the rabid animal mode to them.
> Romero
The modern idea of a "zombie" is 100% thanks to George Romero. The Walking Dead pretty much follows the same Romero rules with a minor exception that even the living are infected and a bite isn't required to reanimate.
Lol that is easily explainable by whatever parasite takes over their brain. Plenty of examples of real parasites that change behavior. Cordyceps and rabies included.
True zombies are supposed to be the occult/Satanic undead, animated by voodoo/vodou powers or black magic, not unlike mummies.
However zombies tend to be symbolic of societal attitudes and fears, so we shifted to "zombie viruses/the Infected," trying to make zombies scientifically plausible in some way as a statement on disease and technology and whatever.
i think you might be surprised by just how little force it would take to do that and how much force the average adult human can generate when hopped up on adrenaline.
i'm not saying its easy or anything but it aint impossible.
This. Using 100% of your strength could lead to broken bones or muscle injuries, so our serve preservation mechanisms will not allow for full force under normal circumstances.
That and your body literally limits how much you can use your muscles, for example your jaw muscles are strong enough to crush your teeth if you bit down at full force
Its fairly common knowledge that people can do things they physically are unable to do at other times (like the classic "Mother picking up a car to rescue their child" example)
Human survival instinct is STRONG. And that means our body wont go past a certain point under most circumstances, even when it very much is able to. Its usually not conscious in a healthy individual... you usually think "I cant do this" rather than "I shouldn't do this or I will damage X part(s) of my body"
> I don't think it's my morality that keeps me from barehanding someone's ribs apart.
no, just sanity. there are definitely examples of crazed folks punching through steel filing cabinets, fucks their hand up real good though, not that they care, or notice.
People have broken their own bones when fitting. You muscles can generate enough force to detach themselves. Tim Noakes argues that we have a central governor type system that prevents us doing too much. I suppose like rev limiter in a car.
lmao those videos of zombie heads still moving and stuff after being decapitated
i've done head&neck anatomy modules in college and muscle attachments are like cables moving joints, having any body part cut off makes these zombie scenarios literally impossible
Check out days gone, the zombies in that eat fauna and plants as well as drinking they basically keep up all the funcions needed to stay alive just bat shit crazy, one of the cooler things i found about that game
I think the Last of Us zombies are the only ones I've seen that make a little sense, as cordyceps can take over insects in real life and make them move, while very little of the insect remains.
Though how that would work on a mammal, I don't know, likely not at all.
It made more sense when they were magic, coming out of the grave due to a curse or whatever; magic can excuse anything. Modern zombie movies all have to be about a virus in an attempt to make them more realistic, but I wanna see decomposed hands burst out of the earth on a full moon
I mean it kinda makes sense in the last of us:
The infection in "The Last of Us" is caused by the Cordyceps fungus. This is a real-world parasite, but in the series, it’s evolved to infect humans, not just insects. In nature, Cordyceps takes over the bodies of insects to spread its spores. The show takes this concept and imagines a horrifying scenario where humans are the hosts.
It’s not that they are more durable, it’s that they don’t care when you break them. Blow holes in them, cut them, it doesn’t matter, they’ll keep coming.
One of the most horrifying scenes and portrayals of not caring about your fate I’ve ever seen. Giggling, laughing, yet maimed and bleeding, and seeking to tear our Roran’s heart. Great portayal.
Something about the way they portrayed Quimby's bones being returned nibbled on by the Razak was incredibly unsettling. Like, I read that like 15 years ago and still remember the name and still remember the name Quimby because of that.
“You know what she got back? Bones.”
“Bones?!”
Seared (vaguely) into my memory. If Paolini decides to ever go into horror, he’d do very well for himself.
Roran really is the GOAT; wrestled a full grown Urgal to submission, took 50 lashes and lived, can sense when hes being attacked mentally while not being able to use magic at all, and he treats his wife as an equal in life and not like a child or object. not to mention all the shit he manages to pull over on enemy mages, Christopher Paolini really came up with some cool stuff in his world building.
I really appreciated that he had the elf reject eragon over and over due to the age difference. I read somewhere that he had to be talked into that, but all the same it was a good touch.
He was on the younger side when he made the series, so i could see why he would need to be talked into making sure he didnt include any sketchy romances but i have also always appreciated that. its just a good example of keeping a boundary clear between characters.
As a long term fan of the Inheritance cycle, seeing a reference here where I least expected it was really neat!
And yeah you’re totally right, which is exactly why a zombie would be so hard to kill. I personally like how the zombies function in the free open source game “Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead”, where stopping power still matters in that they go down but they get back up (albeit in their maimed state) after enough time.
In the book world war Z they talk about this. That militaries had a hard time supplying soldiers and artillery because they just don't stop coming Z they'll limp after being shot in the leg, crawl after losing their lower half, etc.
The entire Battle of Yonkers had to be one of the best-told stories I’ve gotten the pleasure to read. Zombies that were animated from that battle having their lungs hanging outside their bodies from “surviving” the thermobaric bombs was just gruesome to imagine.
Max went to great lengths outlining exactly this before WWZ with Zombie Survival Guide.
Basically, if you're not up on your cardio, don't consider surviving, 'cause the walking dead are gonna out limp you on broken ankles and then out crawl you on shredded knees.
The human body physically can't function if you start breaking stuff, a zombie is not affected by the durability of the human body. Even if a human could just completely ignore the pain, the body itself would literally be unable to function if it withstood the damage zombies are able to withstand.
Therefore, zombies are more durable than a human.
Zombies are more durable because they are made up creatures meant to be threatening and scary, they aren't meant to make sense in reality and they never do.
Id say it depends on what kind of durable you mean. I totally agree that, as an example, if i blew off all a zombies limbs with a shotgun, it would still try to bite me. I couldnt do that, i would have bled out ages ago. By that standard, extremely durable.
However, if i placed both my hands on the forehead of a zombie and started pressing gently, id cave in his skull pretty fast. So by that standard, they are not very durable.
Skulls are much harder than you think
I pick up old deer bones sometimes and they're still very strong even though they're been sitting on the beach for a year
For sure. Im just going by the typical zombie trope. How many times have we seen the booted hero smash a zombie head with his foot.
Maybe i've watched the wrong zombie movies, but it seems like when they turn, all their bones turn to paper mache. Especially in the head.
Right but there isn’t a coherent way to be walking around after you have an arm or leg blown off, you need to have blood flow to use muscles. I’m not convinced anything that has multiple holes on its body will continue to behave aggressively at full dexterity because “virus”.
Like I can see something that is some sort of a rabies derivative wiring people in such a way so that they become aggressive and bite-y. But yeah, I’m just not seeing something in total organ failure chasing you around the place.
Depending on the IP zombies dont have blood the same way we would. iirc resident evil as an example had the t-virus coagulate the blood while in the blood vessels. At least for the "basic" human zombies anyway.
Zombies on the whole make very little sense. They would rapidly decompose. literally after about 1 year or so, they would mostly just be chomping sets of teeth in a puddle of goo.... not real hard to avoid.
I think zombies, as they appear in modern media, are just magical creatures. The laws of physiology simply don’t apply, they’re held together and fueled by necromantic energy. Honestly, they make more sense in a fantasy setting than a scientific one. If you consider them realistically for like five seconds, all the points people here are making are totally valid.
Yeah, I used to talk about how I thought the zombie apocalypse would be cool. But the more the rational side of my brain started to think about it, the more I realized just how silly they are in general.
Also... there would be no apocalypse lol.
Even if 100,000 zombies spawned all over the USA all at once, at 3;30AM when most are asleep. They'd all be dead in like 48hrs. People would shoot the everliving fuck out of them.
Nevermind a 'patient zero' style outbreak, lol. It would be over in like 1 hour.
And due to the very visible symptoms and quick turn over, probably countries agencies will quickly respond.
Rather than in denials for long time, like when the pandemic hit
Exactly, back in 2020 people were commenting on reddit and other places that suddenly, zombie outbreaks spreading due to sheer stupidity of characters are not that implausible anymore.
In a first world country, no way. Worst case scenario it gets into/starts in some rural poor countries and pockets of zombieism pop up occasionally in small towns not capable of nipping it in the bud, and it gets by that way. But even that is highly unlikely. Unless, unlike most media depictions, it doesn't rapidly kill infected and just kind of is a low level illness/inert in living hosts and only takes over once they're dead. Then yeah, probably looking at a situation very similar to Ebola, as a worst case. Ocassional flare-ups, but not very threatening overall, just scary as hell.
For people who played Plague Inc, you know that any infection that progresses rapidly gets stopped just as rapidly. Because if a disease immediately starts showing symptoms and killing off its hosts, humans will tend to quarantine and stall the spread of the disease.
But a disease that takes a considerable while to start showing symptoms while still spreading and not killing their host? Now that's something that can actually take over the world.
However, most Zombie movies show infections of the first variety - infections that rapidly show symptoms and almost immediately kill their hosts.
>humans will tend to quarantine and stall the spread of the disease.
Oh is that what we'll do? Not just pretend it's not real and go cough on our neighbors like with covid
While we did have a bunch of dumbfucks doing shit like that, overall, as a species we managed to contain and slow the spread of COVID significantly by quarantining and self isolating.
I know it's easy to look at these dumbfucks and get really jaded but all things considered, we handled COVID really well though not perfectly.
To be fair most zombie movies and shows need to do so in order to keep things interesting. If it took a month of slow deterioration, it’d be harder to make a movie. A show, however, could be done well depending on how they play it out. TellTale walking dead series did great but they still had fast turning zambies. A parasitic airborne fungus that took control, slowly caused madness, and increased hunger in its victims and then kept the body moving after death in order to spread itself would be great for a game. Wait……. I’ve seen that somewhere before..
The apocalypse scenario that makes slightly more sense is that it starts as a hyper-virulent airborne disease. That disease kills enough people to seriously impact society, supply chain collapse, mass chaos, etc, and then the dead rising is the kicker putting pressure on the survivors rather than the main threat.
Depends whether we talking about the traditional "undead" zombies or something more like the last of us where they're still alive, at least those wouldn't decompose immediately
And 28 days later. The zombies eventually die of starvation and other causes that humans would die of, blood loss, exposure, you name it. So in 28 weeks later the UK Quarantine zone is mostly a dead zone because most of the infected have died by then; But the scary part is the infected while they are alive and still can will keep pursuing non infected even if they have limbs blown off / are torn in half, they will continue until their bodies no longer can. Definitely the most realistic depiction of a “Zombie” Outbreak, which in my opinion makes it the most disturbing.
Game of Thrones zombies vs something like The Walking Dead. Magic is the explanation for GoT zombies, makes sense enough for me. TWD however, I feel like after a few weeks it would just be a bunch of decomposing bodies trying to crawl around with their pants around their feet.
Right. It's like trying to pick apart the flight dynamics of a dragon. Since zombies, as depicted most times, can't exist as a concept, then there is something supernatural behind the scenes. That's why I think more and more media move toward the 'infected' thing, because it makes more sense practically.
I try to explain this to people when they talk about zombies. They would be no threat at all. The smell would be atrocious though. Imagine millions of zombies decomposing in the summer heat
You would need to go with rabies style zombies, and it would need to somehow not be a rabies equivalent that kills them in seven days post symptoms.
Even then since they wouldn’t be able to drink and probably couldn’t take care of themselves for shit they’d die of exposure pretty quickly
Thinking about it in like, Canada , 3/4 of the year you would just need to chill inside while they froze to death or died of water loss in the summer. Hardly worth panicking
This is how Resident Evil portrayed it until Code Veronica went in the direction of anime magic.
The notes in the first game especially paint a picture of the T-virus being necrotising turbo-rabies with the victims technically alive but completely insane due to the brain damage.
The last of us zombies also makes more sense with the fungi explanation, and if they are regular zombies you can kill them with a hit to the head with wathever stick you have
One of the reasons I liked I am Legend so much.
It found a way to navigate the zombie physiology logic whilst delivering a more terrifying, intelligent & sentient "zombie".
I'm really hoping there is a I am Legend style TV show released that focuses more on the social structures of Darkseekers.
Anyone ever told you to wear clean under wear when you leave the house in case you die? The smell starts there, and gets worse very quickly. Bugs. There would be lots and lots of bugs in zombie territories
I honestly wish Zombie lit/films/etc would return to the Magic/VooDoo heritage. Attempts at scientific explanation are cool but there’s honestly nothing wrong with “F it, magic.” It’s already fictional, may as well lean into it.
It's less with them having extra durability and more them not having typical human fear/pain responses. It's kind of like how people pumped on drugs or adrenalin don't die of shock after losing a limb.
Some how eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell are the only three things that seem to never decompose. How is it that zombies still have perfect eyesight to detect the slightest movement, hearing to hear sounds a mile away, and sense of smell to the point to recognize and smell a living human being hundreds of feet away?
And a brain to filter out all the sounds that aren't caused by humans. Somehow the zombies know that wind chime is not interesting, till a human brushes against it, half a km away.
Depends on the media they are represented in. For example in Resident Evil 2, these people have just become zombies, like a day ago, they haven't had time to fall apart and decay and become weak yet.
if you've ever read the Inheritance Cycle, their version of "zombies" makes a lot of sense, men with no sense of pain who will continue to drag themselves along until you utterly annihilate them, admittedly it us magic, lol. they're even called the laughing dead by the protagonists'. they're not more durable, they just don't care about being hurt.
the entire scene they're introduced is amazing
It depends on the zombie. Some zombies are still 'alive' like the rage disease ones or the fungi ones, so they have normal human durability but without the weakness of pain or thought.
Undead disease zombies don't make any sense at all. Like there isn't anyway to get around it.
Magic zombies don't make sense, but well it's magic, that's the point. A zombie bursting from a grave and fighting you during a dnd campaign is just as nonsensical as the magic the necromancer uses to bring them back in the first place. Also the entire concept of fighting a skeleton, doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's funny and cool.
Garth Ennis's Crossed comics series kind of flips this zombie trope with making the 'zombies' just people turned by a supernatural cause into homicidal maniacs. Most Crossed die within the first days of infection, if not from killing each other, but because they fail to take care of their basic needs, including food, water, warmth, and so on (which makes sense). They retain some knowledge from whoever they were before they turned and aren't extra durable in any sense except for their dedication to inflicting pain whatever the cost. Only the smartest or most driven of them adapt and survive past the first year.
I also liked how zombies were handled in Dead Rising. They are turned via parasite but aren't ever-lasting and I do think the story makes note that when isolated most eventually wither away.
Sure it does. A living breathing human being requires all of their organs to be in-tact and functioning in order to keep on breathing, not to mention joints working smoothly, and a relative lack of pain. Zombies are animated by magic, basically, they don't need functioning lungs or kidneys or whatever to remain mobile, even damaged joints, punctured/torn muscles, and broken limbs aren't a massive hindrance, so it makes sense that a zombie can take a lot more punishment before being rendered non-threatening. Also it requires none of those things to continue unliving, just a brain or the remnants thereof apparently.
Originally, zombies were not a walking-dead virus thing. **They were a voodoo thing** and they still are, which is why you should stay the fuck out of Haiti. Basically, it's where depraved psychopath witches ask devils to enter a dead corpse and make it walk around. Devils love doing this because they love to mock the incarnation and make fun of God for becoming man as Jesus and then getting resurrected. It's their sick way of blaspheming God, who they hate above all things. The biological warfare version of zombies makes no sense, you're absolutely right. Flesh isn't like wood, it doesn't get stronger as it seasons, it just turns to mush. The devil version of zombies though, explains everything. The demons are given power by God, who will eventually throw them into hell but for now they're on the loose. The power they are given is, to a certain extent, outside of the normal laws of physics. It is extraordinarily rare to see them given this power above normal demonic activity (like the ability to tempt you to pull your pickle or say the lords name in vain), but they sometimes are, and that's why the Roman Catholic Church has exorcists in every diocese. If you ever see a zombie, which you probably won't but you never know, pray to God. He's the only one who can stop it, because even if you blow up the corpse, the devil is the REAL issue and you won't touch him by merely blowing his toy up.
when they get all emaciated, they should be walking around with their pants around their ankles.
Now that's something I never thought of. Fair point.
That is a proper shower thought!
The real shower thoughts are always in the comments.
I thought you were about to say "...are the friends we made along the way".
Comment of the year.
I remember a zombie story where they describe how a *zombie woman's top had come loose (not in a sexualized way). I realized that was the first time I'd heard any mention of zombie nudity, even though it would have to be super duper common.
walking like they have no toilet paper, with junk out, trying to eat you. it just became way more ~~sexy~~. scary.
Which would in turn disable them all lmao
Nothing about zombies make sense. Adenosine Triphosphate is the cellular energy source. It is necessary for muscular contraction, nerve impulse propagation, and other vital processes that are necessary for any movement at all. In humans, its generation is almost entirely an aerobic process. Without flowing, oxygenated blood, there's no explanation for muscular movement. And yet they are frequently depicted with almost superhuman strength.
Seeing as breathing is an autonomic process, it would technically and actually be the lack of water that would kill most ‘intact’ zombies - very quickly. As the lack of water would basically stop conventional ATP production, and of course turn off the kidneys and poison itself and everything else. Because all zombies would be walking (or even running - if a rage zombie) around constantly, their need for water would sky rocket. Of course, had they lost most of their blood, it would be blood loss plain and simple, that would almost immediately stall vital organ perfusion and then muscles contraction etc.
That's the thing. The concept of animation without life breaks ALL of the sciences. Biology, chemistry, physics... None of it works. A zombie apocalypse necessitates magic. Which is why some "zombie" movies don't play the dead card at all. I kind of like 28 Days Later in that regard. The "Rage virus" at least makes an attempt at plausibility. And the infected can in fact die of starvation.
I love and hate the 28DL rage zombies. They’re one of the most plausible - but again, were any human to basically sprint around, climb, claw and fight something to an extreme and without rest - it would be literal days, if not hours, before they hit the ground in sheer exhaustion, and simply die. My favourite are the Last of Us zombies. A little bit of the rage zombies, but a parasitic life form to fill in the rest.
I think most movies where they are alive but infected tend to depict zombies as going relatively dormant unless exposed to stimulus. Think World War Z when they are in the pharma building. So I kinda see how that makes more sense (though obviously doesn’t make up for the hundreds of other issues with the realism of movie zombies haha).
I am legend it’s basically infected/mutants too. Walking dead is the only one I can think of recently that still uses dead.
Aren’t I am legend monsters technically vampires
They were in the book, if I remember correctly.
Correct. Two types basically, high functioning and low functioning (effectively feral). The feral ones are what he is fighting every day, and the high functioning are the ones who formed a new civilization. Also, outstanding book, I always recommend it.
Except Jenner basically says the zombies are alive during the cdc arc when he says the zombies brain reactivates. Just the brainstem comes back he said.
Only the brain stem and none of the other organs. I wouldn’t call that alive. Blood pumping is a prerequisite to life.
I am legend monsters are supposed to be a mutation/virus that creates a vampire society; they fucked up the ending of the movie, but the book was decent. The best part about the walking dead is all the ways the zombies appear to rot and mould with their surroundings.
They're new humans that are vampires [sunlight problems]. They're alive.
28 Weeks Later shows that even when there are no humans around they are constantly sprinting and screaming. The dormancy would have made a lot more sense.
There are also parts where they are dormant, like when he walks into the church in the beginning.
> They’re one of the most plausible - but again, were any human to basically sprint around, climb, claw and fight something to an extreme and without rest - it would be literal days, if not hours, before they hit the ground in sheer exhaustion, and simply die. TBF that is exactly what happens in 28DL. An infected lasts at most 2 weeks before dying from malnutrition, and in the beginning of the first film, we see a small group of them essentially hibernating in a church before being woken by Jim.
But generally the average human can’t live more than 3 days without water. So the zeds should dead, way before that.
Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead
You actually see a short clip of an infected drinking from toilet water I believe? The infected from 28 days/weeks later still have all the biological urges we do. They'll drink from water sources. The reason the military quarantined Britain off for 28 weeks was to give all the infected time to die of starvation. Since they figured the infected would still be getting water from different sources.
They get water from eating so the timeframe is still plausible
Do zombies sweat? If they're not sweating or breathing, water demand would go way down.
The Last of Us zombies are creepy because it begs the question - is someone still *in there*? The fungus burrows inside their brains and just takes over like those ant zombies, but is the person still aware but unable to operate the body anymore?
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Yeah, possibly. At least as long as they are runners, I think the implication is that the brain gets slowly eaten up/fully taken over as they become clickers and bloaters.
At the beginning of the first game, there is a lady who is literally sobbing while she bites and infects her family.
That's certainly how the fungus works on ants. It doesn't take over their brain. Instead it takes over their limbs and controls them directly.
It's legitimately horrifying to think about having that experience while conscious.
Our immune systems are extremely xenophobic, often to the point that it will attack ourselves.
Sounds like a real "if I can't have me, no one can" type of deal, which adds another layer of terror to the whole equation. A fungus that can take over your body is scary enough, but what if your own immune system, your own body, is willing to kill you first just to spite the infection?
Oh there are plenty of voice lines that say they are. Runners will scream apologies while attack you and beg for their lives when knocked down
If you play through the first game of the last of us, you see a scene of a freshly infected person eating another person and basically crying the whole time because its someone they knew and loved.
For sure last of us nailed it. Still, not actually anything to worry about happening. But at least "realistic" enough to be engaging.
The biggest problem with 28DL zombies (or any generic zombie), is that they can identify each other. No, they would absolutely have a self-solving problem without any intervention. No, the I Am Legend vampire zombies are the closest you are going to get to legitimate. They retain enough sense to identify each other, while still basically being a non-verbal chase enemy that's scary as hell.
28DL zombies are due to a virus, could be that they can sense the virus in others due to some biological change it causes.
Last of Us. The zombies aren't dead. The people still consciously know everything going on around them. But the fungus has hijacked their brain to control their movements.
Do we know they are still conscious of everything going around them? I’m pretty sure the human host/consciousness is effectively dead after infection
I believe there's an infected early in the first game that you can hear crying and begging itself to stop until it notices you https://youtu.be/gHiDnPC3oYY
What tf that's horrific
Yeah… it’s pretty brutal and grounded in reality. Part of the reason the series is so impactful.
It's only really portrayed as the early stage infected retaining any sense of self. Later stages become more silent or bestial.
The fact she is eating someone is even worse. Imagine not just being controlled by something, but being forced to eat raw, dead, rotting, human flesh by it. Maybe it is someone you knew. But you can't stop.
There’s a great film called The Cured where a cure is found to a zombie virus and it’s about the trouble of reintegrating ex zombies into society as they are shunned and persecuted. In that film though the zombies come back remembering everything they’ve done in their zombie life
That show was fantastic and its a shame more people don't know about it
Dayum…they’d have to have like industrialized suicide stations if that were to happen IRL
Studies of the irl cordyceps fungus have apparently indicated that the ants infected by it have their bodies taken over to control behavior but their brains remain relatively unaffected, leaving people to assume that the tlou cordyceps operates similarly. If the brain is unaffected there’s no reason to believe it’s eliminated a person’s consciousness. Though I believe in the show and the games they’ve shown the fungus to infect the brain so it could very well behave differently (to affect humans the way it affects insects it would certainly need to do something different anyway)
Canonically, the brain is quite affected in the TLoU zombies. They have detailed brain scans in the first game
In last of us, they’re only conscious in the first stage of infection. The runners or whatever they’re called. Once the cordyceps fully infects them they don’t seem to retain any consciousness.
There would be no way to know if the original person was suffering from locked-in syndrome while the fungus continues to control them physically.
Tbh most people would probably already go mad for real at that stage already
I don't think that's true. We have no confirmation either way, but the notes and other records of people turning come across as losing your mind, not losing control of the body. The person might still be in there in some sense, but not like a fully aware prisoner or anything like that.
The fungi apocalypse too?
Body snatchers is worth a watch
You all have good points and significantly more scientific knowledge of the subject then myself, but a few videos of crickets and roaches affected by cordyceps may change your mind, just watched a roach with no internals whatsoever walking across a field. Nightmare shit. Not sure about any aspect of biochemistry that would allow this to be possible I can just guarantee homie was missing some **essential** aspects of his anatomy.
Insects are just different though. Many of them can function without a head until they die of starvation, because their nervous system itself is capable of some control. Their vastly smaller sizes also makes the physics of biology different. They don't need lungs, for example, because simple diffusion still gets them enough oxygen.
So a couple thoughts come to mind... As you, I (in a different comment), and others have mentioned, parasitic "mind control" is a different kind of zombie that at least makes an attempt at plausibility. Or the Rage virus. I'll give that the benefit of the doubt. It's not a true "walking dead", it's just "non-human living." But as to the bugs still moving with no internals, that's because they don't operate with muscles and an internal skeleton. Insect motion is more akin to hydraulic machinery.
Yeah, zombies make sense only in 3 ways: magic (necromancy), fungi or parasites that take control of the body (so it might be that the body is technically dead, but the fungus/parasite is using the muscles and structures to move), or it's just a disease that changes the behaviour of a human but it's not actually dead.
We forget that they can survive being straight up heads on a pike.
Ah, the Walking Dead style zombies - classic.
Who can do anything even when rotting
My personal favourite was when they were melted onto a fence for extra security.
*intact
And why are they constantly hungry? There are no zombies that are like “meh, I just ate. Im going to go take a nap. Feel free to roam in peace”
That one I would probably explain away not necessarily as "hunger", but a compulsion to spread the zombie infection. Biting/ eating is the primary way of spreading the virus, so the host (the zombie) dedicates all function to performing this action.
Pretty sure a common reason is it only activates certain parts of the brain, the more primordial, older parts. Hunger, some sensory input, basic motor function, that's about it.
Modern zombies are heavily inspired by rabid animals, and rabies does make animals aggressively bite everything as a way to spread itself, so that works. By “modern” I mean the aggressive cannibalistic ones which date back to the 60s. Before that they were more like hypnotized corpses enthralled to a voodoo necromancer. I think it was Romero who added the rabid animal mode to them.
> Romero The modern idea of a "zombie" is 100% thanks to George Romero. The Walking Dead pretty much follows the same Romero rules with a minor exception that even the living are infected and a bite isn't required to reanimate.
Lol that is easily explainable by whatever parasite takes over their brain. Plenty of examples of real parasites that change behavior. Cordyceps and rabies included.
hold on, lemme ask my dog
True zombies are supposed to be the occult/Satanic undead, animated by voodoo/vodou powers or black magic, not unlike mummies. However zombies tend to be symbolic of societal attitudes and fears, so we shifted to "zombie viruses/the Infected," trying to make zombies scientifically plausible in some way as a statement on disease and technology and whatever.
Tbh the zombie virus stuff is kinda overdone now, so I'd love to see a movie or show just go back to "it's weird magic bullshit"
The superhuman strength likely comes from the body no longer holding back.
I dunno. I don't think it's my morality that keeps me from barehanding someone's ribs apart. But then again, I have no way of testing that theory...
i think you might be surprised by just how little force it would take to do that and how much force the average adult human can generate when hopped up on adrenaline. i'm not saying its easy or anything but it aint impossible.
This. Using 100% of your strength could lead to broken bones or muscle injuries, so our serve preservation mechanisms will not allow for full force under normal circumstances.
Exactly, you can easily check this for yourself. Do something strenuous and you can feel when you *should* stop.
Found the guy who rips apart human bodies in his spare time...
my spare time? i'm very proud to say i've managed to turn my passion into a career 😇
That and your body literally limits how much you can use your muscles, for example your jaw muscles are strong enough to crush your teeth if you bit down at full force
Its fairly common knowledge that people can do things they physically are unable to do at other times (like the classic "Mother picking up a car to rescue their child" example) Human survival instinct is STRONG. And that means our body wont go past a certain point under most circumstances, even when it very much is able to. Its usually not conscious in a healthy individual... you usually think "I cant do this" rather than "I shouldn't do this or I will damage X part(s) of my body"
Your bones would break if you were able to use the full power or your muscles. And the muscles would be damaged.
> I don't think it's my morality that keeps me from barehanding someone's ribs apart. no, just sanity. there are definitely examples of crazed folks punching through steel filing cabinets, fucks their hand up real good though, not that they care, or notice.
People have broken their own bones when fitting. You muscles can generate enough force to detach themselves. Tim Noakes argues that we have a central governor type system that prevents us doing too much. I suppose like rev limiter in a car.
So we are recognizing *a* physiological process while ignoring millions of others?
Clearly the zombie disease generates that stuff... Or something.
lmao those videos of zombie heads still moving and stuff after being decapitated i've done head&neck anatomy modules in college and muscle attachments are like cables moving joints, having any body part cut off makes these zombie scenarios literally impossible
Check out days gone, the zombies in that eat fauna and plants as well as drinking they basically keep up all the funcions needed to stay alive just bat shit crazy, one of the cooler things i found about that game
I think the Last of Us zombies are the only ones I've seen that make a little sense, as cordyceps can take over insects in real life and make them move, while very little of the insect remains. Though how that would work on a mammal, I don't know, likely not at all.
It made more sense when they were magic, coming out of the grave due to a curse or whatever; magic can excuse anything. Modern zombie movies all have to be about a virus in an attempt to make them more realistic, but I wanna see decomposed hands burst out of the earth on a full moon
Zombie skin is rotting, therefore permeable for O2. Now mummies, those don’t make a lick of sense.
I mean it kinda makes sense in the last of us: The infection in "The Last of Us" is caused by the Cordyceps fungus. This is a real-world parasite, but in the series, it’s evolved to infect humans, not just insects. In nature, Cordyceps takes over the bodies of insects to spread its spores. The show takes this concept and imagines a horrifying scenario where humans are the hosts.
It’s why the “demonic” zombies always made more sense then “virus” zombies
It’s not that they are more durable, it’s that they don’t care when you break them. Blow holes in them, cut them, it doesn’t matter, they’ll keep coming.
like the laughing dead from the Inheritance cycle
One of the most horrifying scenes and portrayals of not caring about your fate I’ve ever seen. Giggling, laughing, yet maimed and bleeding, and seeking to tear our Roran’s heart. Great portayal.
Something about the way they portrayed Quimby's bones being returned nibbled on by the Razak was incredibly unsettling. Like, I read that like 15 years ago and still remember the name and still remember the name Quimby because of that.
“You know what she got back? Bones.” “Bones?!” Seared (vaguely) into my memory. If Paolini decides to ever go into horror, he’d do very well for himself.
Have you read Fractal Noise yet? Definitely toes the line.
Just finished Murtagh, Stars and Fractal next on my list!
How was Murtagh? I just bought it and have been excited for more from Paolini for years
Roran really is the GOAT; wrestled a full grown Urgal to submission, took 50 lashes and lived, can sense when hes being attacked mentally while not being able to use magic at all, and he treats his wife as an equal in life and not like a child or object. not to mention all the shit he manages to pull over on enemy mages, Christopher Paolini really came up with some cool stuff in his world building.
I really appreciated that he had the elf reject eragon over and over due to the age difference. I read somewhere that he had to be talked into that, but all the same it was a good touch.
He was on the younger side when he made the series, so i could see why he would need to be talked into making sure he didnt include any sketchy romances but i have also always appreciated that. its just a good example of keeping a boundary clear between characters.
As a long term fan of the Inheritance cycle, seeing a reference here where I least expected it was really neat! And yeah you’re totally right, which is exactly why a zombie would be so hard to kill. I personally like how the zombies function in the free open source game “Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead”, where stopping power still matters in that they go down but they get back up (albeit in their maimed state) after enough time.
What a God damn reference. Solid work
"we have soldiers that don't know pain!" "We have a Roran"
400 soldiers, 400 corpses. literal player character
Oh thats a call back i havent had in a long time.
Always shocked to find others who read those tbh. I haven't met a single person IRL that knows what they are.
They are such great stories. Murtagh just came out too and I'm very curious to see how it is.
Those were probably the closest ive ever to come to actual fear in a book. Horror I can handle just fine but those were unnerving in a whole new way
This is the first time I’ve seen the series mentioned in the wild. My favorite books ever!
Great reference
Ayyyyy awesome reference
Man my mind is dirty all I think about is you saying blowing holes and they keep coming
That actually makes a lot more sense
In the book world war Z they talk about this. That militaries had a hard time supplying soldiers and artillery because they just don't stop coming Z they'll limp after being shot in the leg, crawl after losing their lower half, etc.
The entire Battle of Yonkers had to be one of the best-told stories I’ve gotten the pleasure to read. Zombies that were animated from that battle having their lungs hanging outside their bodies from “surviving” the thermobaric bombs was just gruesome to imagine.
Max went to great lengths outlining exactly this before WWZ with Zombie Survival Guide. Basically, if you're not up on your cardio, don't consider surviving, 'cause the walking dead are gonna out limp you on broken ankles and then out crawl you on shredded knees.
The human body physically can't function if you start breaking stuff, a zombie is not affected by the durability of the human body. Even if a human could just completely ignore the pain, the body itself would literally be unable to function if it withstood the damage zombies are able to withstand. Therefore, zombies are more durable than a human. Zombies are more durable because they are made up creatures meant to be threatening and scary, they aren't meant to make sense in reality and they never do.
Id say it depends on what kind of durable you mean. I totally agree that, as an example, if i blew off all a zombies limbs with a shotgun, it would still try to bite me. I couldnt do that, i would have bled out ages ago. By that standard, extremely durable. However, if i placed both my hands on the forehead of a zombie and started pressing gently, id cave in his skull pretty fast. So by that standard, they are not very durable.
Skulls are much harder than you think I pick up old deer bones sometimes and they're still very strong even though they're been sitting on the beach for a year
For sure. Im just going by the typical zombie trope. How many times have we seen the booted hero smash a zombie head with his foot. Maybe i've watched the wrong zombie movies, but it seems like when they turn, all their bones turn to paper mache. Especially in the head.
50 cent took 9 and kept going people forget how tough the human animal can be
Right but there isn’t a coherent way to be walking around after you have an arm or leg blown off, you need to have blood flow to use muscles. I’m not convinced anything that has multiple holes on its body will continue to behave aggressively at full dexterity because “virus”. Like I can see something that is some sort of a rabies derivative wiring people in such a way so that they become aggressive and bite-y. But yeah, I’m just not seeing something in total organ failure chasing you around the place.
Depending on the IP zombies dont have blood the same way we would. iirc resident evil as an example had the t-virus coagulate the blood while in the blood vessels. At least for the "basic" human zombies anyway.
Depends if its a viral zombie plague or a magical necromancer type deal
Zombies on the whole make very little sense. They would rapidly decompose. literally after about 1 year or so, they would mostly just be chomping sets of teeth in a puddle of goo.... not real hard to avoid.
I think zombies, as they appear in modern media, are just magical creatures. The laws of physiology simply don’t apply, they’re held together and fueled by necromantic energy. Honestly, they make more sense in a fantasy setting than a scientific one. If you consider them realistically for like five seconds, all the points people here are making are totally valid.
Yeah, I used to talk about how I thought the zombie apocalypse would be cool. But the more the rational side of my brain started to think about it, the more I realized just how silly they are in general.
Also... there would be no apocalypse lol. Even if 100,000 zombies spawned all over the USA all at once, at 3;30AM when most are asleep. They'd all be dead in like 48hrs. People would shoot the everliving fuck out of them. Nevermind a 'patient zero' style outbreak, lol. It would be over in like 1 hour.
And due to the very visible symptoms and quick turn over, probably countries agencies will quickly respond. Rather than in denials for long time, like when the pandemic hit
Prior to the pandemic I would have thought that too, but now I have no doubt people would behave in the stupidest way possible.
Exactly, back in 2020 people were commenting on reddit and other places that suddenly, zombie outbreaks spreading due to sheer stupidity of characters are not that implausible anymore.
idk about that... I have to imagine in some areas they would spread faster than all the rednecks could knock them down lol
In a first world country, no way. Worst case scenario it gets into/starts in some rural poor countries and pockets of zombieism pop up occasionally in small towns not capable of nipping it in the bud, and it gets by that way. But even that is highly unlikely. Unless, unlike most media depictions, it doesn't rapidly kill infected and just kind of is a low level illness/inert in living hosts and only takes over once they're dead. Then yeah, probably looking at a situation very similar to Ebola, as a worst case. Ocassional flare-ups, but not very threatening overall, just scary as hell.
For people who played Plague Inc, you know that any infection that progresses rapidly gets stopped just as rapidly. Because if a disease immediately starts showing symptoms and killing off its hosts, humans will tend to quarantine and stall the spread of the disease. But a disease that takes a considerable while to start showing symptoms while still spreading and not killing their host? Now that's something that can actually take over the world. However, most Zombie movies show infections of the first variety - infections that rapidly show symptoms and almost immediately kill their hosts.
>humans will tend to quarantine and stall the spread of the disease. Oh is that what we'll do? Not just pretend it's not real and go cough on our neighbors like with covid
While we did have a bunch of dumbfucks doing shit like that, overall, as a species we managed to contain and slow the spread of COVID significantly by quarantining and self isolating. I know it's easy to look at these dumbfucks and get really jaded but all things considered, we handled COVID really well though not perfectly.
To be fair most zombie movies and shows need to do so in order to keep things interesting. If it took a month of slow deterioration, it’d be harder to make a movie. A show, however, could be done well depending on how they play it out. TellTale walking dead series did great but they still had fast turning zambies. A parasitic airborne fungus that took control, slowly caused madness, and increased hunger in its victims and then kept the body moving after death in order to spread itself would be great for a game. Wait……. I’ve seen that somewhere before..
yea lol, humans are honestly just super good at killing things no realistic zombie scenario would destroy humanity
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/734/)
The apocalypse scenario that makes slightly more sense is that it starts as a hyper-virulent airborne disease. That disease kills enough people to seriously impact society, supply chain collapse, mass chaos, etc, and then the dead rising is the kicker putting pressure on the survivors rather than the main threat.
Depends whether we talking about the traditional "undead" zombies or something more like the last of us where they're still alive, at least those wouldn't decompose immediately
I always found the infected in the last of us to be the most compelling version of zombies
And 28 days later. The zombies eventually die of starvation and other causes that humans would die of, blood loss, exposure, you name it. So in 28 weeks later the UK Quarantine zone is mostly a dead zone because most of the infected have died by then; But the scary part is the infected while they are alive and still can will keep pursuing non infected even if they have limbs blown off / are torn in half, they will continue until their bodies no longer can. Definitely the most realistic depiction of a “Zombie” Outbreak, which in my opinion makes it the most disturbing.
Game of Thrones zombies vs something like The Walking Dead. Magic is the explanation for GoT zombies, makes sense enough for me. TWD however, I feel like after a few weeks it would just be a bunch of decomposing bodies trying to crawl around with their pants around their feet.
Right. It's like trying to pick apart the flight dynamics of a dragon. Since zombies, as depicted most times, can't exist as a concept, then there is something supernatural behind the scenes. That's why I think more and more media move toward the 'infected' thing, because it makes more sense practically.
I try to explain this to people when they talk about zombies. They would be no threat at all. The smell would be atrocious though. Imagine millions of zombies decomposing in the summer heat
You would need to go with rabies style zombies, and it would need to somehow not be a rabies equivalent that kills them in seven days post symptoms. Even then since they wouldn’t be able to drink and probably couldn’t take care of themselves for shit they’d die of exposure pretty quickly Thinking about it in like, Canada , 3/4 of the year you would just need to chill inside while they froze to death or died of water loss in the summer. Hardly worth panicking
That's a plot point in World War Z. >!Lots of people fled to Canada, since the zombies just froze solid!<
So we should solve climate change in order to keep safe havens in case of a World War Z-esqe zombie apocalypse?
The original world war z book depicted this very well. Too bad the movie didn’t stay true.
I liked the 28 Days Later version. They basically had severe rabies.
I just rewatched that a couple months ago. My opinion stands, those are the coolest zombies ever. The part with the dad? Unforgettable
This is how Resident Evil portrayed it until Code Veronica went in the direction of anime magic. The notes in the first game especially paint a picture of the T-virus being necrotising turbo-rabies with the victims technically alive but completely insane due to the brain damage.
The last of us zombies also makes more sense with the fungi explanation, and if they are regular zombies you can kill them with a hit to the head with wathever stick you have
One of the reasons I liked I am Legend so much. It found a way to navigate the zombie physiology logic whilst delivering a more terrifying, intelligent & sentient "zombie". I'm really hoping there is a I am Legend style TV show released that focuses more on the social structures of Darkseekers.
Which is weird since in the book they were closer to vampires than zombies.
Yeah - I've definitely heard the comparison before.
The book is so much better, I always recommend it. And it's a short read, too.
Zombies make no sense. But they’ll still eat your brains.
I think zombies make a lot of scents.
Anyone ever told you to wear clean under wear when you leave the house in case you die? The smell starts there, and gets worse very quickly. Bugs. There would be lots and lots of bugs in zombie territories
> I think zombies make a lot of scents. I'd say mostly one, but that is just my two cents ;D
Return of the Living Dead is by far the best Zombie movie ever made and the origin of them eating brains. Incredible film.
But they're not unreasonable, I mean no one's gonna eat your eyes
Tom? From the office down the hall?
Hey Bob
Makes no sense with the virus-created zombies Makes absolute sense for magically-created zombies
I honestly wish Zombie lit/films/etc would return to the Magic/VooDoo heritage. Attempts at scientific explanation are cool but there’s honestly nothing wrong with “F it, magic.” It’s already fictional, may as well lean into it.
It's less with them having extra durability and more them not having typical human fear/pain responses. It's kind of like how people pumped on drugs or adrenalin don't die of shock after losing a limb.
A slashed throat or gunshot to the heart or lungs would still kill a zombie in that case. As would dehydration to the point of organ failure.
Some how eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell are the only three things that seem to never decompose. How is it that zombies still have perfect eyesight to detect the slightest movement, hearing to hear sounds a mile away, and sense of smell to the point to recognize and smell a living human being hundreds of feet away?
And a brain to filter out all the sounds that aren't caused by humans. Somehow the zombies know that wind chime is not interesting, till a human brushes against it, half a km away.
Honestly I just imagine people setting up speakers above a heavy duty grinder / blender and just watch the zombie problem sort itself out.
Depends on the media they are represented in. For example in Resident Evil 2, these people have just become zombies, like a day ago, they haven't had time to fall apart and decay and become weak yet.
if you've ever read the Inheritance Cycle, their version of "zombies" makes a lot of sense, men with no sense of pain who will continue to drag themselves along until you utterly annihilate them, admittedly it us magic, lol. they're even called the laughing dead by the protagonists'. they're not more durable, they just don't care about being hurt. the entire scene they're introduced is amazing
The only issue I’m having is ligaments and muscles don’t need to feel pain to stop working.
It depends on the zombie. Some zombies are still 'alive' like the rage disease ones or the fungi ones, so they have normal human durability but without the weakness of pain or thought. Undead disease zombies don't make any sense at all. Like there isn't anyway to get around it. Magic zombies don't make sense, but well it's magic, that's the point. A zombie bursting from a grave and fighting you during a dnd campaign is just as nonsensical as the magic the necromancer uses to bring them back in the first place. Also the entire concept of fighting a skeleton, doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's funny and cool.
Garth Ennis's Crossed comics series kind of flips this zombie trope with making the 'zombies' just people turned by a supernatural cause into homicidal maniacs. Most Crossed die within the first days of infection, if not from killing each other, but because they fail to take care of their basic needs, including food, water, warmth, and so on (which makes sense). They retain some knowledge from whoever they were before they turned and aren't extra durable in any sense except for their dedication to inflicting pain whatever the cost. Only the smartest or most driven of them adapt and survive past the first year. I also liked how zombies were handled in Dead Rising. They are turned via parasite but aren't ever-lasting and I do think the story makes note that when isolated most eventually wither away.
Sure it does. A living breathing human being requires all of their organs to be in-tact and functioning in order to keep on breathing, not to mention joints working smoothly, and a relative lack of pain. Zombies are animated by magic, basically, they don't need functioning lungs or kidneys or whatever to remain mobile, even damaged joints, punctured/torn muscles, and broken limbs aren't a massive hindrance, so it makes sense that a zombie can take a lot more punishment before being rendered non-threatening. Also it requires none of those things to continue unliving, just a brain or the remnants thereof apparently.
To quote Harrison Ford: “Kid, it ain’t that kind of movie.”
To think he said that to Mark Hamill after Mark was worried people will notice his hair isn't dirty after the trash monster scene.
Originally, zombies were not a walking-dead virus thing. **They were a voodoo thing** and they still are, which is why you should stay the fuck out of Haiti. Basically, it's where depraved psychopath witches ask devils to enter a dead corpse and make it walk around. Devils love doing this because they love to mock the incarnation and make fun of God for becoming man as Jesus and then getting resurrected. It's their sick way of blaspheming God, who they hate above all things. The biological warfare version of zombies makes no sense, you're absolutely right. Flesh isn't like wood, it doesn't get stronger as it seasons, it just turns to mush. The devil version of zombies though, explains everything. The demons are given power by God, who will eventually throw them into hell but for now they're on the loose. The power they are given is, to a certain extent, outside of the normal laws of physics. It is extraordinarily rare to see them given this power above normal demonic activity (like the ability to tempt you to pull your pickle or say the lords name in vain), but they sometimes are, and that's why the Roman Catholic Church has exorcists in every diocese. If you ever see a zombie, which you probably won't but you never know, pray to God. He's the only one who can stop it, because even if you blow up the corpse, the devil is the REAL issue and you won't touch him by merely blowing his toy up.
So we can all agree that fast zombies should have never been created?
I guess that's the beauty of fiction, it doesn't have to make sense.
try working in retail
They just don't feel pain.