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A Mathematical Model For a Spreading Zombie Infestation
cloude-pottier writes "What do you do when zombies attack? Turn to a mathematician to come up with a model for the spread of a zombie infestation, of course! Students at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa have published a paper in a book titled Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress detailing how to model the spread of a zombie population and various complications in managing the spread of the infestation. They even give humans a fighting chance in some cases! The original paper (PDF) can be found at their professor's website."
Prior art: http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/
I am officially sick of the concept of zombies. Yes, they used to be cool and frightening, but nowadays, they're everywhere. In video games (Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Plants vs. Zombies (what the heck?), etc.), lots of movies (movies about Nazi zombies, Woody Harrelson versus zombies, even another Romero movie), comics books (Marvel Zombies), and even classic literature (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?). Now they're in math too?
It's time that someone called for a moratorium (no pun intended) on zombies in the media.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Somebady got too much time on their hands....
http://xkcd.com/135/
In case you wanted to know _exactly_ how screwed you are.
This is just posturing - when the zombies come the mathematicians will be the first to go - the human race will be repopulated by whoever can run the fastest
Many of today's top models look like zombies. :-p
I have had many zombies on my unix systems and Wikipedia here shows how to kill them..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process
Not as satisfying as Left 4 Dead, but it does the job.
Until we manage to create real zombies and release them on the population, we'll never be able to test the model.
It grow fast but always is limited by the absolute numbers of installed windows PC.
The zombies are already here - only in this case, they spam racist troll bullshit instead of eating brains. I'd rather have the brain-eating, thank you.
Your sig sucks and so does mine. Now watch my videos.
Similar work has been done previously with vampires: See http://www.hphomeview.com/Tips/Vampire%20Ecology%20in%20the%20Jossverse.pdf which uses vampires functioning in the Buffyverse.
...it should make zombie movies more interesting, not to mention more scary. Human brains (at least the ones not eaten by zombies) are usually fairly good at determining when something is logically consistent.
If Shaun of the Dead (movie) is any indication, being aggressive and fast isn't the way to go about defeating hordes of zombies.
1) Relax, ignore them at first. Be completely oblivious, not knowing they're even around is useful.
2) Once they can't be ignored anymore, stand back a little and have a pleasant conversation with a friend about it if you have any left. Maybe throw a few vinyl records.
3) Don't try to survive by staying somewhere safe like a hi-rise flat, head to the nearest pub with easy to break windows and poor locks.
4) Walk, don't run and bicker a lot with the other survivors, shouting helps.
5) If someone gets bit, keep them around a bit, even drive with them or hug them if you can.
6) Try playing dead, moan and walk like a zombie this always tricks them.
7) Wait for the calvary to arrive, your government is probably playing it cool. They'll be around in due time.
In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.
Hummm so the moral we should all take from this is if you are in an area with a zombie outbreak you should get the fuck out before the nukes start falling...
Good to know...
The key difference between the models presented here and other models of infectious disease is that the dead can come back to life. Clearly, this is an unlikely scenario if taken literally, but possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties, or diseases with a dormant infection.
Did anyone else RTFA? Note the bold part... I always knew there was more to political fandom than met the eye. Apparently it involves your brain being consumed...
(Okay, yeah, tropical zones, waves of reinfection, etc. But there's a reason zombie movies always take place in the summer.)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Once we get done reforming healthcare, perhaps someone could pass this up to Obama and get a plan for a zombie infestation drawn up. Never a bad idea to have one of those...
Unfortunately, after reading this study there seem to be several missing elements:
1. zombie speed and effectiveness. Are these 28 Days Later psycho zombies or Shaun of the Dead shambling loser zombies? And sure, they modeled an "encounter" but it's a simple one-on-one winner takes all. Any good zombistician knows most zombie encounters are between a small band of survivors and a horde. It needs to be modeled!
2. It appears that any individual can transition between the "Zombie" and "Removed" state. There needs to be a 4th (end) state: "Brains Splattered By Shotgun".
3. Bruce Campbell.
Don't feed the trolls.
Do you have your Redeker Plan ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The senior author is a professor at the university I attend--he is a super nice guy and does very interesting non-zombie related research too.
Consider a spherical zombie in simple harmonic motion...
are about 7000/5 be on a wrong your spare timE parties, but here
Thanks, until I read your post the universe was starting to make sense. I'm going to go crawl into a corner and cry a little now.
http://www2.colum.edu/course_descriptions/52-2725J.html
There is a great book called The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo. The author was the guy who conducted the Standford Prison Experiment a few decades ago. The book discusses that experiment and how it relates to other well-known acts of evil that have occurred, such as massacres during war, genocides, and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
In the book, the author argues against the idea that some people are intrinsically good and other people are intrinsically evil. Instead, the evidence from the Stanford Prison Experiment indicates that if you put good people into an evil situation then they will behave in evil ways. Of course, this viewpoint is exactly the opposite of the assumption made by the person who wrote the AI program in the article.
Modelling a zombie outbreak?
That's entirely similar to the work I've been doing for the last year, modelling the spread of a disease among an animal population. I've been trying to work out under what situations culling will lead to an increase in the number of infecteds.
So, if I name the particular species I've been working on "zombies", and adjust some of the parameters, I've got an SI model that is not only very similar to this, but also includes spatial structure and stochasticity, which is crucial for describing the stability of the disease, and modelling the spread when the population size is low.
...from computer simulation, that this year is going to be the year of Zombies on the Desktop !
Segmentation Fault in "Life, Universe and Everything" at line 42. Don't Panic.
Nothing scientifically interesting here. This is just basic 101 mathematical modeling, straight from the text book. They start with the most basic SIR model, building it from the elementary reactions and do the basic analysis: solve the equilibria and determine their stability with eigenvalues. They have just renamed the generic "infected" as "zombies". We did these calculations for dozens of different models as part of course exercises. For some reason, they don't do phase plane analysis, which is a very basic method, for any of the models, which is a bit strange.
I don't see why any scientific magazine would publish such basic text book stuff, except for fun. Sure, it's fun.
One of the best scene in the film 'The Thing' (1982) was when the scientist realizes that they are dealing with an alien foe who can replicate and imitate other species. He rapidly writes a computer program and creates his own equations within it to accurately calculate, based his cellular observations of the alien organism, the best projection of how quickly the alien could take over earth's population should it reach mainland (they are stranded on an arctic base with the alien creature).
Below is the IMDB link to the movie (and as a /. user if you haven't seen The Thing yet please deactivate your account and hand in your geek card) and the exact start of the scene in question courtesy of YouTube.
http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=the+thing&x=0&y=0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUxPer4lmGo&feature=related
Okay, I know the first rule of slashdot is that you don't read TFA. But I did, and they messed up. On p. 135 they describe a process that occurs at rate alpha where normal humans decapitate or destroy the brains of zombies. This reduces the population Z of zombies, and increases the population R of "removed" individuals. But they also have a process that occurs at rate zeta, where "removed" individuals are resurrected and become zombies. No way! Once you decapitate the zombie or destroy its brain, it can't be resurrected! R should just be the group that's dead with an intact brain, and then the R'=...+alpha SZ ... term shouldn't be there. There should only be a -alpha SZ term in the Z' equation.
Find free books.
But possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties
As I suspected, he was under contract from Obama to develop this.
Meh. Zombies are mostly a problem due to horror movie tropes like "running away never works", "the authorities are useless when it comes to anything important" and "nobody in the movie has ever seen a zombie movie". Chances are it wouldn't get beyond a small initial outbreak.
Even if they get established in a city, once the military gets called in, tanks and other armored vehicles will make short work of the milling throngs - if the "zombies are attracted to noise" rule is in effect, you could get them all by just driving tanks through the streets constantly for a few weeks.
Modern zombies pretty much always stem from a single case 0 and don't have an airborn infection vector, so unless you get really unlucky, you're looking at losing one city at most.
That said, if animals can spread it, you're hosed. Forget about packs of zombie-dogs, what you'd have to worry about is crows...
What do you do when zombies attack?
Most people buy popcorn.
You might be the best realtor in the world, but you'd probably never guess that the homebuyer was looking for zombie attach defensibility. Probably would never ask.
...
"better" in this sentence: "A better way to deter burglary is to remove the motivation for burglary, but that would most likely mean additional taxes"
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac