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7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail
Whether they spoil in the heat, freeze in the winter, or get taken out by a human-friendly venue of vultures, a zombie outbreak is unlikely to succeed. Here's 7 reasons why we should stop worrying about the shambling dead and start concentrating on a real threat: sparkly vampires.
Problems with this sunny optimism:
1) "Zombies would get eaten by insects, flies, bacteria, etc."
This doesn't corroborate with any zombie flick I've seen. For the undead-variety zombie, it can be assumed that whatever supernatural force keeps them animated, it also keeps away the worms. For the infection-variety zombie, there's no reason that a zombie would attract insects and such any more than a casually ambling human. The infection-variety may be just as susceptible to micro-organisms as we are, so you might have some attrition due to staph infections, but localized infections aren't going to slow it down.
2) "Zombies can't take heat."
This is just a repeat of the above, only dealing with the normally benign intestinal microbes. There's no reason why an infection-variety zombie would have a problem with this, and a supernatural zombie has a supernatural immune system.
3) "Zombies can't take cold."
Possibly valid for supernatural-style zombies. Alaska will be very well defended in the winter. Zombie outbreaks are really more of a summertime pandemic.
4) "Biting people is a terrible way to spread a disease."
Yes, it is. On the other hand, there are a few elements that make it viable. For starters, what does a normal human normally do after another human bites them? Seek out other people. Without prior knowledge of the disease, it grows exponentially---and the hospitals are one of the first places where an outbreak will start. The guys in biohazard suits don't come until later, if they haven't already been taken out in their normal, here's-some-antibiotics lives.
None of this has anything to do with supernatural-type zombies, anyway.
5) "Pain insensitivity is a bad thing."
If you're a human. If you're a zombie, as long as you can physically move (and bite), then it's A-OK.
6) "The landscape is full of zombie-proof barriers."
Okay, this guy has never seen a zombie movie. Don't you know that when zombies have an obstacle with people on the other side, they can execute complex plans? Or that that door will not hold forever while the undead pound on it? Or that you'll run out of food and have to come out eventually anyway... Zombies are not smart, but they're not completely stupid either---they have object permanence, for one thing, which puts them above a small child. They don't randomly go careening into rivers; there is a certain animal instinct to them.
7) "We have guns."
That you do. The US military has all sorts of nifty weapons, too, that should give them the absolute advantage in any military conflict with a developing nation like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam....
At least they didn't do it when the majority of their readers were at work. That site is highly addictive and it's likely that no one would have gotten any work done for the rest of the day. Of course, there might be a large chunk of the workforce that goes into work tired tomorrow because they get to sleep late...
I especially like the point about the sheer number of armed individuals. Makes me think the only semi-viable zombie outbreak scenario is something like Highschool of The Dead, where an outbreak occurs in urban Japan.
But even in Japan, I don't imagine an outbreak would last very long.
I doubt the zombies have much to worry about from the Japanese police though, they've already had an aversion to using their guns ingrained in them through training. Add to that the stress and sheer 'omgwtfbbq'-ness of the situation, and I think it'd be more likely to see many of them either completely freaking out, or making an ultimately futile effort to use batons and riot shields against the zombies. And even the ones that actually use their firearms against the zombies will quickly go through all the ammunition they have access to and be screwed.
I imagine the JGSDF would fare a lot better, even with the psychological factors. The question is, how badly outnumbered would they be by the time someone thinks to officially mobilize them?
But hey, if all else fails, the US military presence in Japan could probably take care of it themselves. I wonder what kind of legal and bureaucratic messes would be involved in mobilizing the US military for actual combat operations on Japanese soil, even in an emergency...
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Actually, my neurobiology professor (who has a definite knack for explaining complex ideas in everyday language) gives a great lecture on Haitian zombies from a neurobiological and athropological perspective.
Basically, some Haitian (or more commonly, a bunch of Haitians) gets really pissed off at a person, and hires a witch doctor to "curse" them. The curse turns out to be slipping them some tetrodotoxin (better known in popular culture as "the thing in blowfish/fugu that paralyzes you"), which then... paralyzes them to a state in which they can be mistaken for dead.
Most probably die. It's a pretty good poison. But once in a while one of them, after being taken for dead for up to a couple days, actually "comes back to life". This of course freaks everyone out (and gives the witch doctor some major cred). And now this person was officially cursed by the witch doctor, and came back from the dead. He's a zombie! Everyone in town is now both disgusted and somewhat frightened of him, and he starts to believe the stories (and conform to the stereotypes/myths). A zombie is born!
Vampires are ancient, evil, debauched, blood drinking, monsters who turn to ash in the sun.
Fairies are youthful, amoral (note the difference), sparkly, supernatural beings who turn children away from their families and gain strength from human emotions.
Twilight is about fairies. Really lame fairies.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Large groups of pathetic unthinking masses trying to kill all non-them. At the accelerations of stupidity coming into conservative America via. Fox news using false analogies, I would say arm yourself hard right now, because in about 1-2 years, they will have degraded into manic destructive psychotic mobs. Hell, they are already bringing guns to protests and protesting several parts of the constitution. I have been attacked for being an atheist, despite all the good things I have done for my society, by people who find nothing wrong with cheating, stealing, lying, or hating. Give it a couple months. Although living zombies only take dismemberment before dying. undead zombies on the otherhand would most certainly be devoured by vultures (just look at the vultures following armies in the civil war, due to the high amount of death and long time fighting).
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
It all went down hill with Muffy the Vampire Layer IMHO