Zombie Apocalypse? Oh, Well, It’s Not the End of the World

[sour_idealist]

Everyone loves a good zombie apocalypse AU, right? Or story, if we’re talking origfic. After all, it’s a cool idea, inherently dramatic - our intrepid heroes trapped and desperate as they fight off hordes and hordes of monstrous, mindless, slavering, hungering, rotting mobile corpses -

Wait. Rewind that a bit. No, no, past there:

Rotting.

Okay, hold that thought. Now: how do you kill a zombie?

Answers vary - fire, various religious methods, cut off its head, et cetera. Most agree that the last works, though, or at the very least that caving in the brain will do it. No more brain equals no more zombie, just a lump of now-harmless flesh. (Yeah, don’t eat it, don’t go near it, but it won’t jump up and eat you anymore.)

Okay, now back up to that thought you’re holding. Zombies are rotting. All of them - including that very vital brain. Shambling around will most likely not slow down this process, and many forms of zombie apocalypse don’t re-animate the normally dead, which means that they won’t be embalmed. Sure, some variants of the virus that cause zombies to exist will also slow down decomposition, but they can only do so by so much. After all, they aren’t very good zombies if they aren’t rotting.

Say the embalmed come back to semi-life. Say the virus slows decomposition. Say the infection takes a while to spread around the globe. I’d still say that within ten years at the absolute outset - with a little luck, maybe within less than one -  every last zombie will have rotted to a pile of bones.

Survivors, the world is yours. And given that your apocalypse was zombies rather than bombs or war, then there’s probably a fair bit left - buildings, roads, cars, et cetera. Is society as we knew it going to be immediately restored? If we got the the apocalypse stage, then eh, probably not. Is the human race as a whole fucked? It depends on the numbers of survivors - I don’t know enough about genetics to say how many you’d need - but I’d put my money on a bounce-back, there. Even if not, said survivors might just have a decent while left to live and find each other, might even be happy. And the rest of our planet’s flora and fauna, well, according to the rules of most zombie viruses then they’re fine. (They kind of have to be - imagine if you had to worry about zombie bugs. Or even mice. You ever try to keep mice out of a
place when they really want to be in there?) Who knows, the bears or the dolphins might develop sentience.

I still don’t want to look out my window and see zombies, but I don’t think it would be the sign that it’s time for the species to throw in the towel.

Comments

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

I honestly never looked at it this way, but you really do have a point. I guess it would depend - I know some viruses have the victims going mad first, so they might wreak more destruction that way, but even so, if there were enough survivors, things could work. The trick would be their managing to find each other, since if the infection goes worldwide - and it could, in today's world of speedy travel, since infections spread pretty damn far long before that - the survivors would, in theory, be really spread out.

Actually, that might make a good story, the idea of seeking other survivors after a zombie virus in order to start again. Hmm. Has that been done yet?

[sour-idealist.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree that the survivors might be spread out. But you know? The zombies aren't gonna touch the satellites. I don't know a lot about radio programming, but I imagine that once they zombies are gone it wouldn't be too hard to use whatever technology remained (probably most of it) to jury-rig a radio and get some signals going around the planet to the general effect of: HEY, WE'RE ALIVE OUT HERE, ANYONE ELSE?

And yeah, I'd love to read that story. I'm thinking of doing it, if I can pick what or how, but you should totally give it a shot too!

[simply-shipping.livejournal.com]

Well, all of the original zombies will be dead. One about the people they infect? They manage to infect someone right before they decompose to the point of uselessness. Now you've got a very fresh corpse, not embalmed but with decomp possibly slowed by the virus, who can then infect however many other people before succumbing to decomposition and so on. You'll still need the bullets/fire/religious methods/decapitation to stop the cycle. Though it does mean that if you can gather all of humanity into safe zones and camp out for a few years, you're fine.

[sour-idealist.livejournal.com]

Oh, things are definitely temporarily fucked, but even the second and third waves of infection would eventually drop off. Zombies can't self-propagate except by biting, and so if you manage to stop that then eventually you'll be all right. So basically, yeah: my point is that the safe zone plan will work, not that the stabbing-corpses-every-few-minutes-as-you-trek-desperately-about part will fail. The latter part will definitely still happen in these stories, but it won't be the permanent state of affairs for the planet, you know?

[simply-shipping.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

*practices stabbing corpses, just in case*

[wake-the-dragon.livejournal.com]

It depends.

First, you're assuming the outbreak would be slow. What if it isn't? In World War Z (God, I love that book) a zombie first developed in China and the government chose to cover it up; then despite the fact that they knew they had an outbreak they still didn't stop black market organ donations to around the globe; some of the organs were from infected people who hadn't turned yet, so the zombie virus showed up in a lot of countries.

Second, you're assuming that only special dead (those who had been infected by zombies) are the only ones that could rise. In the Walking Dead comics (I don't think the TV show has gotten to this revealation yet) it's not just people who were bitten that can rise; everyone who dies becomes a zombie. So that means deaths from natural causes, murders, suicides, etc. all come back.

Third, methods: Fire would probably work but it would be slow; so now not only do you have a zombie coming after you, you have an on-fire zombie coming at you; zombies are also incapable of feeling pain so they'll keep coming at you. Decaptation/headshots will definitely do it but for decapatation you'd have to get close which could be very dangerous and headshots are not easy to do. Even people who are trained to use guns could find making headshots very hard.

Fourth, there's also good old human panic that could make the situation worse. Denial, mass hysteria, etc. could potentially get a lot of people killed. It only takes one infected after all to infect a group of people.

I could be wrong but I don't think zombies brain actually function; well, at least they don't function like human brians since zombies don't need most life functions anymore.

[sour-idealist.livejournal.com]

Well, if the outbreak is fast, then that actually hastens the eventually collapse of the apocalypse: less time for all the zombies to rot. It might lower the chances of people initially escaping, but they don't have to fight off the zombies for that long. If everyone's infected within the first six months, then the time to no more zombies is six months plus decomposition time (around two months), so that would mean the zombies would be gone in under a year. And if everyone comes back as a zombie, then it becomes procedure to cremate your dead immediately, strapping the corpses down to do it, and life can still go on although more hazardously.

As to three and four: yes, there would definitely be panic while the zombies were there, and you'd definitely have to fight them off, I'm not arguing that. And yes, a lot of people would probably die. But there's an end to that stage, you know? There's a point within a few years when you stop fighting and start to rebuild. The world isn't permanently zombie-ridden, and I bet it would be possible for a group to outlast them.

Decaptation/headshots will definitely do it

The only reason for this to work is if the brains are a key part, even if they aren't functioning normally anymore. Otherwise, what are you removing with the decapitation? And even if they don't, in fact, need the brains anymore, ligaments decompose too, and nothing's much of a threat when your bones aren't sticking together.

A zombie apocalypse would definitely suck and involve a lot of fighting and desperation in the short-term, though!

[wake-the-dragon.livejournal.com]

What if the virus stops rotting? They wouldn't be falling apart, so there wouldn't be a time limit. Also, what do you mean by if everyone's infected? Most of the population, a city, what?

It's not just painic. It's the cults, megalomaniacs, and just plain people who've snapped you'd have to worry about. In World War Z there were a ton of these: Fundamentalist religous groups who thought zombies were a sign of the Rapture; crazy environmentalist groups who thought zombies should kill humanity off because they'd be friendlier to the environment; warlords became a problem in some countries because they didn't want to step down once the danger was passed; Last-Man-on-Earth types who would set traps around where they holed up that would activate and kill other survivers. There was also a condition (which I can't remember if they named it or not) where people became so despondant/depressed/hopeless that they would die from it; they'd go to sleep and then never wake up because they just completely lost the will to live.

Misinformation over how to kill zombies would also be a problem. In World War Z again there was a ton of misinformation: There were some countires (which aren't named in the book) where people thought raping virgins would stop the zombie infection. Others that thought sacraficing people would stop zombies.

Decapatation/headshots if they don't kill a zombie could at least extremely damage it's ability to kill people. How else could they track down survivors? It differs from media to media but I've seen zombies who tracked by sight, by smell, or by sound, all of which would be stopped without a head. Also, they would no longer be able to bite people (I don't think the head would be able to move by itself). It would also be easier to completely dismember and then set on fire or something.

I definitely think the human race would survive and be able to rebuild, just not without a lot of deaths.

[sour-idealist.livejournal.com]

I... agree that there would be a lot of deaths, actually, I never said there wouldn't. Things would suck for a while, and a lot of people would indeed die. But I've seen a lot of stories wherein the zombies stick around for generations, or otherwise where it's implied the world is permanently and entirely doomed, and they just... massive plot holes.

Things would definitely suck in the short term, though, I agree.

[wake-the-dragon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I see what you mean. The sticking around for generations thing, could be stupid, but I've seen it done well once where according to the story throughout history there have been periodic outbreaks of the zombie virus. (In the comic, there was this great scene that had Romans vs. Zombies)

[wake-the-dragon.livejournal.com]

I was also mostly playing Devil's Advocate. Which I probably should have said before...