Nagging questions about zombies

[shannon.archer]

Considering the multitude of different Zombie movies i shall give a few reasons.

1. Zombies are toxic. Zombies only react to warm flesh. The virus/parasite responsible for reanimating said Zombie will only attempt to continue it (virus/parasite) survival therefore will not attack other Zombies as in each Zombie is a multitude of itself.

2. I believe that Zombies only have basic instinct of survival i.e. to feed. Hence only those senses needed to accomplish this goal should be active i.e. called efficiency. For fast crazy 28 weeks later zombies they are consistently angry hence adrenaline which blocks pain.

3. The only fast Zombies are technically still alive. Even in resident Evil particularly 5 the fast Zombies are due to a virus manipulating brain function and inducing other physical qualities.

4. Err... Resident Evil 5... And generally in other media depicting Zombies it is usually used as a biological weapon. Placed to just cause shit load of damage and death :S.

5. And no. Should read into it more and try answering your own questions.

 

[Veret]

1) Zombies do attack each other on occasion, like in L4D (as mentioned above). They just don't do it on a large enough scale to wipe each other out, because then that would remove the threat, and with it the whole point of the story.

2) If there's some reanimating pathogen that's been unleashed upon an unwitting populace, it would probably affect its victims randomly; we just choose to make games/movies about the ones with interesting results. Also I think the concept of zombies originated in voodoo legends, where the zombie master (see below) would magically reanimate corpses to do his bidding. In that case, the master would choose undead servants that could effectively carry out orders, but remove unnecessary obstacles such as pain.

3)Rigor mortis is not a permanent condition; the body actually goes back to being limp and flexible after a day or so (not sure about that time frame, but it's ballpark-accurate). If they were reanimated while RM is still in effect, they would be completely unable to do even the traditional zombie shuffle, as the limbs are pretty much completely stiff and even brittle during that time. As for why the fast ones exist: Zombie flicks are supposed to be scary, and fast zombies can do that in spades.

4) If I'm right about the above voodoo thing (see #2), then zombie masters existed first and then went out of style. Maybe audiences found the threat of an unholy pandemic more realistic than the idea of an evil sorcerer or scientist who can bring bodies back to life.

5) Thinking is fun! If the number of replies in the past hour is any indication, I think a bunch of us were glad of the opportunity to ponder our brain-eating brethren.

Edit: I see I am not the only person who de-lurked to post here, as I just got ninja'd by KyntFyre. Welcome to the forums, oh fast-typing one!

 

[GrandAm]

Seeing as somebody made a thread questioning vampire lore, I decided to do the same for zombies. There are a few things that nag me about them.

1. You don't see lions attacking each other. Or alligators. Why attack another of your own when they can help you capture prey. The bigger question I have is why you don't see zombies attacking animals other than humans. I would love to see a scene in a movie where a human throws a Mr. Whiskers or Fido to a group of zomies as a distraction to get away.

2. If you haven't eaten in two or three days and saw a rabbit; you would chase it because you are hungry. I would. If I was very hungry and I brushed up aganst a bush or cactus chasing it, I wouldn't notice. I would even consider larger dangerous prey with large deep penetrating claws like a couger. You know, older single chicks in bars that make their sexual advancements obvious. As I have a fridge full of food, if I bumped my toe in the middle of the night going to the bathroom; I would cry like a little girl with a skinned knee. And I am a manly man with power tools in my garage.

3. I agree, undead should be dealing with rigor. But in recent years, zombies in movies are not always "dead." 28 Days is a good example. It was just a rage virus. They made a point to say that without food the zombie will die. Also Southpark, but instead of food it was "change."

4. Don't really remember a "zomie master." Is that something like a "head vampire?" I always hated the concept of a "head vampire" in vampire lore/movies. They got bit, why would killing a specific one destroy the others? Just me. I understand plot convienience, but come'on. How about the "cold master." If you kill the first guy that had the cold it does't magically destroy all the others infected by it.

5. Yes and no. Zombie lore as well as any other lore is open to inerpratation. And can be debated. All this makes you is a nerd

 

[Nevar18]

the zombie survival guide

 

[KnytFyre]

Oddly enough I found myself continuing to ponder these questions today at work. During that time I remembered that in "Return of the Living Dead" the zombies were at least low level intelligent and one teen boy that was turning undead slowly was able to explain what it was like. Explaining that being dead was very painful and that only consuming a living human brain would ease the pain for a while.

Also in the Marvel Zombies series, the effected meta-humans mention an all consuming hunger they have to fight and often loose to. They also retained full intelligence and could speak and reason and did attack each other. Spiderman actually used part of his power-cosmic (obtained after being one of the meta-humans to consume Galactus) to remove part of another meta-humans skull and expose brain...which doesn't even phase him. Also in the series the Invisible Woman mentions that the pain makes it hard to stop feeding when Reed Richards urges caution in the consumption of Tony Stark. If too much was eaten, Tony would die, just like the rest of the "normal" people. In these situations it would seem that the zombies may in fact feel pain, but that the need to feed is stronger than the fear of pain.