Speculate: Would zombies REALLY take over?

BTM · January 29, 2006, 05:00:53 PM

Okay, okay, suppose we suddenly ourselves in a Dawn/Night/Day of the Dead type situation: the dead are coming back to life within five or so minutes or of dying and eating people. Their bites' infectious, causing you to waste away and die within a few days, thus joining their ranks.

Here's the question, do you really think they'd completely take over and ruin society as depicted in many of the films?

Me, I don't know.. I'd have to go with a "no" on this one. I mean, yes, I'd believe there'd be a lot of mass panic and a bit chaos at first, but here's the thing, the real world would have resources that NO horror movie (unless it had a HUGE ass budget) would ever be able to portray. I mean, we'd have armies of soliders with automatic weapons, rocket/granade launchers, flame throwers, you name it. Not to mention tanks, jet planes, and (if worse comes to worse) nukes at our disposal. I mean, heck, ONE tank with a full tank of gas could bulldoze right through a crowd of zombies (and that's without even any ammo.)

Plus I'm not really sure if society woudl collapse as quickly depicted. I could see some riots and chaos, but I'm not sure it would get that bad (now, in some areas I could see it.)

I know you might site the chaos of New Orleans as an example, but there's some things you have to remember about that... for starters, believe it or not, the vast majority of the looters were NOT Louisiana citizens. Most of the them were gangs from out of state, who knew the hurricane was coming, and they had boats, teams, communications equipment all ready to storm the city and take what they wanted as soon as the hurricane cleared out. For the most part, it was not just random unorganized theiving. And second, the police force in NO was (and probably still is) highly corrupt and unprepared. They only had like ONE working boat on staff to begin with and many of the officers turned a blind eye to gang activity. (In fact, of the 3,000 or so looters, they only arrested a few of the locals.)

So, yeah, I can see some areas like that collapsing and adding to the chaos, but the whole world?

What do you guys think?

dean · January 29, 2006, 09:36:57 PM

You know, depending on the area I could believe it happening, especially now that we have the new and improved [and let's face it, much more dangerous] running zombie rather than the slow and steady approach of years gone by.

It all depends on population density I guess: the effect would spread really quickly in a densely populated area.

Of course, realistically whilst things may get out of hand quickly, one would like to assume that it would slow to a halt once the army stepped in: mowing down hordes of zombies would eat up a lot of ammo, but there would be [hopefully] less moral qualms about re-killing them, than in a normal war situation.

Of course, all of us here would be sitting pretty either way, given our extensive training in zombie prevention and protection [unless of course you did really bad on that online test someone mentioned a while back.]

Fearless Freep · January 30, 2006, 05:30:22 AM

The real difficult is that you don't want to kill the zombies, as they would just come back. You need tp either contain/control them, or utterly destroy them. Both much more difficult then simply killing them

odinn7 · January 30, 2006, 11:34:19 AM

It's an interesting thought. I suspect that in some places they would be able to take over but in the end, the humans would probably be able to win it all.

LH-C · January 30, 2006, 02:26:27 PM

To tell the truth, this was one of my biggest fears growing up. I couldn't watch any zombie movies at all for years because of it. Could they take over? Who knows? What I do know is that the situations would be different in different areas.

BTM · January 30, 2006, 02:53:21 PM

Actually, I forgot to mention running zombies... I was mainly focusing on the slower GAR types... Now, I could see humanity going downward if we had the "hyperactive, don't feel pain" type zombies in either the remake of Dawn or 28 Days Later (although with 28DL, zombies (or "infected") aside, I really don't buy the concept of a virus that only takes 30 seconds to activate and completely take over your system.) I know, I know, nitpicking reality in a thread about zombies is a bit silly, but still...

Course, you know what I wonder? (And I'm gonna show my political bias a bit here.) I wonder if maybe we'd have nutballs like the ACLU and certain media types DEFENDING the zombies, saying they're just doing what comes naturally for them, and even trying to SUE private citizens who shoot zombies without "just" cause.

Silly, you say? Well, yeah, but I've heard of stuff just as dumb that's really happened. (Not involving zombies, though..:)

BeyondTheGrave · January 30, 2006, 07:04:18 PM

I think place like small towns in the middle of nowhere would be taken over. Big Cities would have problems if zombies are not contained early,

raj · January 30, 2006, 07:20:38 PM

Won't our robot overlords protect us from the zombies?

BeyondTheGrave · January 30, 2006, 07:31:44 PM

raj Wrote:
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> Won't our robot overlords protect us from the
> zombies?

Of course not. Our squirrel overlords will be protecting us.

Scottie · January 30, 2006, 09:33:24 PM

The squirrels won't protect us unless they get clearance from the Masters of Space. And you know how hard that is.

odinn7 · January 30, 2006, 11:26:54 PM

rich andrini Wrote:
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> I think place like small towns in the middle of
> nowhere would be taken over. Big Cities would have
> problems if zombies are not contained early,
>

I think small towns in the middle of nowhere probably would do fairly well for the fact that there's probably plenty of gun nuts there that are just itching to shoot things in the head.
Cities might be in trouble early on due to the fact that in many cities, owning a gun is very limited so you would need to rely on the police and there's only so many of them to go around.

Just Plain Horse · February 02, 2006, 01:16:17 PM

No. Although the infectious nature of the whole concept is extraodinarily dangerous, the dead, by very definition, do not walk, move, attack, bite, eat, cause havoc, ect. (And they sure as hell don't get stronger the longer they've been dead! Do people get stronger the longer they've been alive??) Unless they infect normal people by expelling some sort of gas that contains contaminants during an autopsy, it'll never happen. However, just to be on the safe side, necrophilia could be classified as "risky business" :P Honestly, if it didn't make Jeffery Dahmer a zombie, what chance do average people have?

peter johnson · February 02, 2006, 11:25:16 PM

Hell, they're already in charge at Vectra Bank in Colorado --
peter johnson/denny crane

The Conqueroo · February 24, 2006, 02:58:52 PM

If Al Gore or John Kerry had won instead of G.W.Bush,they coulda been President!!!

The Conqueroo · February 24, 2006, 03:08:31 PM

That Would Make a Good Special For Fox:"When Zombies Attack!!".Plus,Think About The Fun They'd Have With It On Talk Radio!!Bill O'Reilly Would Claim That "The Zombies Are Destroying Family Values!!First It Was Murphy Brown;Then Gay Marriage;Now Zombies Are Attacking!!The Zombies Are Weapons Are Carrying Weapons of Mass Destruction!!".Then Al Franken Woukld Have A Rebuttal on Air Amerrica Claiming That"First Of all,There Is No Proof That Zombies Really Attacked!!It's Just More Hysteria From The White House Beating The '9/11'Drum Like They Did in Iraq!!Secondly,Zombies Have The same Constitutional Rights as Any Americans.Just Because They Rose From The Dead Doesn't Mean That They Should Be discriminated Againsty In The Job Market and In Finding Fair Housing!!"".Them Meryl Streep Would Make A Movie About Them And She'd Say "The Zombies Fed My Baby To The Dingoes!!"and Win An Oscar!!