Poll: Could a zombie APOCALYPSE actually occur?

[Renegade-pizza]

I've finally begun watching The Walking Dead (I live in SA, torrents is my TV) and I wondered, you read the topic. Here I assume 30 Days Later rules, i.e. infection is spread through bodily fluids.

Now, say that the disease spreads in a fairly populated area, where it can get a foothold. But, wouldn't a proper military quarantine quickly quell the outbreak, or even civilians defending themselves.

The human body can't survive without water for three days, they'd die out pretty quickly.

Sure, an outbreak could occur, but I doubt it'd be the end of the world. Thoughts?

*EDIT* Did anyone read what I said? I mean if an outbreak actually occurred, would it be able to spread like in movies and/or TV shows. Not whether or not it could occur in reality

 

[Rawne1980]

*28 Days Later.

And those in 28 Days Later aren't zombies, they are normal people with a Rage virus ... just makes them incredibly pissed off and wanting to punch shit to death.

An outbreak like that could, although highly unlikely, occur.

As for an actual zombie, walking dead style, outbreak.... Not a chance, it will never happen.

 

[Rawne1980]

If the zombie fungi that's been infecting ants evolves. We could have problems. And this thing actually exists...

Link here!
Ew, zombies [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=zombie-ant-fungus-parasite]

I've read up on that, it's actually pretty disturbing.

"Yeah, we're just going to borrow your brain little Ant, when we've got you where we need you we're going to grow out of your head and kill you ...... hope you don't mind".

 

[Renegade-pizza]

If the zombie fungi that's been infecting ants evolves. We could have problems. And this thing actually exists...

Link here!
Ew, zombies [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=zombie-ant-fungus-parasite]

I don't mean the "delivery system", I mean after initial infection occurs. Also, that fungus should be purged with fire...along with the Jersey Shore

 

[mad825]

*28 Days Later.

And those in 28 Days Later aren't zombies, they are normal people with a Rage virus ... just makes them incredibly pissed off and wanting to punch shit to death.

Rabies actually...

OT:Are we talking metaphorically or literally? If former then yes.

 

[SweetShark]

If the zombie fungi that's been infecting ants evolves. We could have problems. And this thing actually exists...

Link here!
Ew, zombies [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=zombie-ant-fungus-parasite]

So the game "The Last of Us" have a reason after all for selecting a Fungus "virus" for their game:

 

[Rawne1980]

*28 Days Later.

And those in 28 Days Later aren't zombies, they are normal people with a Rage virus ... just makes them incredibly pissed off and wanting to punch shit to death.

Rabies actually...

OT:Are we talking metaphorically or literally? If former then yes.

Nope, it's Rage.

It is one of my favourite films.

Despite his desperate warnings that the chimps are infected with a virus dubbed "Rage,"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/
http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk/

 

[Stasisesque]

*28 Days Later.

And those in 28 Days Later aren't zombies, they are normal people with a Rage virus ... just makes them incredibly pissed off and wanting to punch shit to death.

Rabies actually...

OT:Are we talking metaphorically or literally? If former then yes.

It looks like rabies, but it's actually a type of ebola according to the comic. Still, in the film it is referred to as the Rage virus.

 

[mad825]

*28 Days Later.

And those in 28 Days Later aren't zombies, they are normal people with a Rage virus ... just makes them incredibly pissed off and wanting to punch shit to death.

Rabies actually...

OT:Are we talking metaphorically or literally? If former then yes.

Nope, it's Rage.

It is one of my favourite films.

Despite his desperate warnings that the chimps are infected with a virus dubbed "Rage,"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/
http://www.28dayslaterthemovie.co.uk/

The "Rage" virus is a pseudonym for rabies. The characteristics are virtually the same, they bite to spread the virus rather than the impulse for nourishment. Even the comics for 28 days later says this.

...Even so, the "rage virus" is just some pretentious way going about it.

 

[JDLY]

*28 Days Later.

And those in 28 Days Later aren't zombies, they are normal people with a Rage virus ... just makes them incredibly pissed off and wanting to punch shit to death.

Rabies actually...

OT:Are we talking metaphorically or literally? If former then yes.

I think the idea is: "Assuming zombies become real (possibly some sort of infection). Could this actually trigger an apocalypse." As in, would a military quarantine be unable to stop it. Would it spread far and wide enough and thereby cause enough panic and anarchy to render governments useless.

OT: Assuming the only "feasible" zombie scenario being an infection we can make a few assumptions:

1. The disease would have to exist. This is of course the assumption we are leaving open.
2. The disease would have to spread quickly, or have a long incubation time during which a seemingly uninfected person could infect others.
3. The disease could be airborne. This could easily be fought with respirators.
4. A military quarantine couldn't hold it back. I find this unlikely. The military is actually very effective in dire situations.
5. A vaccine couldn't be made (or made fast enough to make a difference)

The nail in the coffin really is that countries like the USA, Canada, most of Europe, and Japan have both the military strength to hold the infection back while a vaccine is made, and the medical technology to create said vaccine.

So I find it highly unlikely that, given the event that a "zombie" disease breaks out, it would cause an apocalypse.

 

[SweetShark]

*28 Days Later.

And those in 28 Days Later aren't zombies, they are normal people with a Rage virus ... just makes them incredibly pissed off and wanting to punch shit to death.

Rabies actually...

OT:Are we talking metaphorically or literally? If former then yes.

I think the idea is: "Assuming zombies become real (possibly some sort of infection). Could this actually trigger an apocalypse." As in, would a military quarantine be unable to stop it. Would it spread far and wide enough and thereby cause enough panic and anarchy to render governments useless.

OT: Assuming the only "feasible" zombie scenario being an infection we can make a few assumptions:

1. The disease would have to exist. This is of course the assumption we are leaving open.
2. The disease would have to spread quickly, or have a long incubation time during which a seemingly uninfected person could infect others.
3. The disease could be airborne. This could easily be fought with respirators.
4. A military quarantine couldn't hold it back. I find this unlikely. The military is actually very effective in dire situations.
5. A vaccine couldn't be made (or made fast enough to make a difference)

The nail in the coffin really is that countries like the USA, Canada, most of Europe, and Japan have both the military strength to hold the infection back while a vaccine is made, and the medical technology to create said vaccine.

So I find it highly unlikely that, given the event that a "zombie" disease breaks out, it would cause an apocalypse.

Except of course if the virus is a product of a secret organisation for military use, and use it to create a mass number of zombies with it with the purpouse to unleash a giant number of them in a populated area.

Resident Evil style in other word.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Depends on what you mean by "zombie apocalypse."

If you mean the undead, slow moving, can only be killed with a head shot type zombies then no. Even putting aside the whole undead factor, the zombies are slow and easy to kill so I really don't think the zombie population would ever be able to grow large enough to be a significant threat. Note how in pretty much all zombie fiction you never see how the zombie apocalypse occurred. Typically you might see patient zero attack someone, but you never see how the virus is able to spread through the population and convert so many people, you only get to see the after effects where the majority of the world's population has already been converted. This is usually because people don't know how to convincingly show how these slow moving zombies managed to kill so many people while they were still a small group.

If you mean the 28 Days Later rage "zombies" then I could see that happening. I mean, those rage zombies are typically shown to be infected by some kind of virus similar to rabies, just a much more virulent and powerful strain. It's completely possible that at some point someone will create a virus like that in a lab, either on accident or on purpose to be weaponized. Then again, this would of course depend on how virulent the virus would be, how quickly it would convert people into rage fueled killing machines, and how long those kinds of "zombies" would be able to survive. Realistically speaking if these kinds of zombies did somehow occur the entire "apocalypse" would probably burn itself out within a couple of months at most. A lot of people would die, especially in highly urban areas, but it definitely wouldn't be the end of the human race, and would in fact probably not have as big an impact as zombie media would have us believe.

 

[uzo]

I voted no, but not because I didn't read OP and presumed he/she was saying 'hurr durr peeps come back to life and bite noobs - is real? and who is phone? lulz skellingtons...'

I voted no because 'we' (the uninfected) would win. It may cost possibly millions of lives initially however - the police and military are not prepared for this kind of fight. That holds in all countries - from Norway to North Korea - no nation's military nor police force is trained, organised, or has experience, in dealing with hordes of flesh eating monsters.

That said, a realistic 'zombie' outbreak would burn out quickly - humans, minus their intelligence, die very quickly - we're really not that hardy considering an uncontrolled fall from natural standing height can kill (consider all the guys who get sucker-punched, crack their head on the pavement and die). Also, considering zombies aren't interested in tactics, nor are they aware of the importance of infrastructure, the damage post outbreak would be relatively minor - this is a foe that kills people, but does not blow up bridges, target oil refineries, bomb factories, etc. Any infrastructure damage would most likely be as a result of us herding them.

So yeah, I don't think we'd be looking at 'the End of the World'. We'd be looking at TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It), but we'd survive. The virus would burn itself out, we'd get smart to the zombies, and we'd persevere.

I'd consider it as Europe was post-Black Death. If a third of all people were killed (2 billion or so), the main problem is that the economy would start doing strange things.

Oh, and 2 billion people would have died horribly. That too.

 

[jackinmydaniels]

The only feasible way I could see a zombie apocalypse actually occurring is if it happened Romero/Walking Dead style. Everybody that dies, now matter how, comes back and kills. Ya know that car crash that killed a family of five? Five more zombies to contend with. But even then it's a bit of a stretch.

 

[Jiefu]

If the zombie fungi that's been infecting ants evolves. We could have problems. And this thing actually exists...

Link here!
Ew, zombies [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=zombie-ant-fungus-parasite]

I've read up on that, it's actually pretty disturbing.

"Yeah, we're just going to borrow your brain little Ant, when we've got you where we need you we're going to grow out of your head and kill you ...... hope you don't mind".

The thing with ants is that the notion of an individual worker's life as meaningful is ridiculous, though. An ant colony is essentially a pack of wolves - amalgamations of thousands of ants are like individual lions; the queen and drones are like the breeding pair of alphas (some ant species have multiple-queen colonies, but the metaphor still works). Thus, ants generally don't have very complex nerves or robust immune systems - they're basically equivalent to section of tissue in a mammal. Lots of parasites (and of course viruses and bacteria) can already hijack portions of human tissue. However, hijacking something as complex and as large (usually over 3 pounds - your brain outweighs a kitten until it's 12-14 weeks old) would be considerably more difficult.

 

[SweetShark]

The only feasible way I could see a zombie apocalypse actually occurring is if it happened Romero/Walking Dead style. Everybody that dies, now matter how, comes back and kills. Ya know that car crash that killed a family of five? Five more zombies to contend with. But even then it's a bit of a stretch.

You raised a good question:
In Romero movies, How the people becoming zombies again? I don't remember it was actually a virus, it was something else......or am I wrong?

 

[FalloutJack]

Well frankly, if it's the Pittsburgh area, they NEVER get a foothold. Because if the walking dead somehow take US by fucking surprise in Zombie Capital, USA, just say goodbye to the rest of the world.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The only feasible way I could see a zombie apocalypse actually occurring is if it happened Romero/Walking Dead style. Everybody that dies, now matter how, comes back and kills. Ya know that car crash that killed a family of five? Five more zombies to contend with. But even then it's a bit of a stretch.

You raised a good question:
In Romero movies, How the people becoming zombies again? I don't remember it was actually a virus, it was something else......or am I wrong?

Romero movies never actually say what the cause of the zombies is, they tend to just show up. In Night of the Living Dead it was implied that it was some kind of cosmic radiation but in all the successive movies it's just some kind of unknown pandemic.

 

[lechat]

The only feasible way I could see a zombie apocalypse actually occurring is if it happened Romero/Walking Dead style. Everybody that dies, now matter how, comes back and kills. Ya know that car crash that killed a family of five? Five more zombies to contend with. But even then it's a bit of a stretch.

You raised a good question:
In Romero movies, How the people becoming zombies again? I don't remember it was actually a virus, it was something else......or am I wrong?

Romero is standard. infection that kills then resurrects the dead


i agree that what you need is for anyone who dies to instantly come back to life. the initial confusion at hospitals should be enough to start a spread and we all know how hard it (seems) is to kill zombie family members.
failing that what you need is a large incubation period followed by a quick change to zombie status allowing the infection to spread before having a large out break.
anything less than that and you would prolly only have a single town infected since the distance between the next batch of zonbie food would be too great