perhaps a virus that re animated the braincells, while leaving the body still decaying. The brain would then be able to move the rest of the body. However, presumably as the brain has already decayed itself, it would have very low intelligence.

Regenerating dead tissue is already a goal for scientists, esp millitary scientists working with paraplegics.

It's possible. But, I think we'd see an virus that attacks the body, killing it quickly before we'd see a virus that reanimates a being.

I believe the former to be a very realistic threat. Reanimation, although terrifying to watch, seems no where near as practical and efficient at destroying life.

Imagine a contagious airborne virus that attacks vital parts of the human body. It kills the body within a matter of days. People fear it and lie when asked if they've been exposed. It'd spread quickly with few immunities, killing off nearly every human being on the planet. The remaining population fights in desperation to survive seeing as the world is no longer united. It's more likely to occur than rabies victims attacking everything in sight and further exterminating the population.

Unless spread in mass, contagious reanimation seems easily extinguished.

Outside of some sort of supernatural source, I don't really see a zombie apocalypse happening. "Zombies" can really just be split into two categories: "infected" individuals who are still alive but develop hyper-aggressive tendencies, and reanimated corpses.

In the first scenario, infected individuals would probably neglect to continue feeding themselves or attending to regular, everyday needs. They would die off in days or possibly weeks, since they forget to drink/eat/etc.

Reanimated dead are unlikely to even occur; if they did, the bodies would probably continue to decay until eventually, motor function would become impossible (due to deteriorated muscles/tendons/etc.).

http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen.html

>>4
The way I see it, there's more like five categories

Infection
Parasite
Chemical
VooDoo (they DO exist)
and Supernatural.

The Infection is pretty straightforward. Much like the Resident Evil zombies (I'm pretty sure. Never actually played the games, so...)

The Parasite is like the Flood in Halo.

The Chemical zombies are like the ones in the Day of the Dead movies, where chemicals get absorbed by a person or a body, and they are brought back to life.


The VooDoo zombies are the people (yes, just people) who are brought back from the dead. They are alive just as they would have been had they not died at all.

And supernatural zombies have little to no chance of existing ever.

What about that fungus that takes over ants?

>>56

Voodoo zombies weren't ever dead. They're people brought into a vegetative shambling state via drugs and hypnotism, they were also very open to suggestion.

The idea of infection-based zombies is more likely than you'd think. It's not a matter of a brand new kind of bug...there are several things that take over the minds of various kinds of insects, to make them do a variety of things. A strain of some bacteria/virus that self-propagates and takes over the brain...could happen.

>>227
Well sure, but unless it was specifically engineered, I don't think we'd see a virus that causes the human body to act out in the ways we've seen in zombie media (aggresive behavior). Perhaps it could happen, but I don't know that it'd be as big of an epidemic as we've been lead to believe. Maybe if it was spread over a vast area, or in multiple areas. But a few infected people would likely be squelched and studied too fast to cause a lot of damage.

>>229
The aggressive actions make sense..the cannibalism does not. It would stand to reason that the disease would attempt to propagate itself across the species quickly...As for suppression..uh. If they catch it, quickly, maybe. As a species we have a really, really bad record for containing outbreaks of any disease.

In order for a zombie to function for anything other than the briefest time, it would have to have all the same biological components as a living human - musculature, nervous system, lungs, heart, digestive tract, immune system, lower brain functions, etc. Those things aren't just in there for decoration. A decaying, "shoot it in the head it's the only way to be sure" zombie is impossible, or at best a laughably short-lived and ineffective threat.
Rabid, cannibalistic humans are somewhat more realistic, but still not very. Biting is a terrible vector for spreading disease. It would have to be an airborne pathogen, with a suitably long, asymptomatic but highly contagious incubation period, in order for it to spread to anything like the extent seen in zombie movies.
You would expect hyperaggressive infected to attack each other. For them to recognise other infected and choose to leave them alone is a bit of a stretch, but it might be a remote possibility. Without the intelligence to use weapons and tactics, large hordes of raving, deranged humans aren't going to be a match against even a small prepared military force, what with machine guns and tanks and fortificatons and helicopters and flamethrowers. Any military vs. infected conflict would be more of an extermination than a battle.
That aside, the infected would quickly die off. The majority would die of starvation and dehydration - even living humans would have a great deal of trouble surviving in any large numbers, in modern countries, without agriculture, running water and a transportation system for food and supplies. If they eat each other they might live a while longer. Once the population's been thinned a bit, by starvation or cannibalism, the remaining stragglers will eventually freeze to death in winter, or in any case will certainly die of disease.

A worst case scenario, in which the vast majority of the human race is infected, is apocalyptic, yes - but it's apocalyptic because humanity has been almost wiped out by a deadly disease. The infected are the least of anyone's concerns - just wait a few weeks and they'll drop dead. So, in short, no, zombies are not a credible threat.

>>295
This makes the most sense of any zombie post I've ever seen. Yea, you might have a bit of trouble with the odd infected for a while, but let's be honest, you don't need to destroy your stairs just yet... :P

I've heard rumours they're actually turning one of Max Brooks' shitty books into a film, this quotation regarding one of the scripts annoyed me the most; 'his isn’t just a good adaptation of a difficult book … it’s a genre-defining piece of work that could well see us all arguing about whether or not a zombie movie qualifies as ‘Best Picture’ material.'

>>302 295
Eh dunno about that biting is a great vector for disease lol. Most of the breakdown makes sense, it would be pretty unlikely for anything too severe too happen. It would depends a lot on what the bacteria or virus did. If it was like a super-virus it could code for whole new proteins that could do god knows what to the host.

Rather than zombies, think of this:

The likelyhood of zombies is quite unlikely, but a collapse of society isn't quite unlikely. Nothing threatens the world or human survival like nuclear weapons do, second is probably economic collapse next to a random global natural catastrophe. If and when society breaks down (if you read Locke and Marx you might understand) the middle class will disappear as there is no more cheap labor to exploit in developing countries.

those countries WILL develop, eventually, and if there isn't slavery instituted to keep cheap labor cheap there will probably be a large revolution as the laborers take back the means of production.


This, real humans, doing the same and more that zombies would in order to SURVIVE, scares me much more than what anyone has ever depicted of zombies

ok with a little genetic splicing with something like rabies with ebola and some reptilian DNA and stem cells that would allow regeneration and revive the basic body functions it is possible.

So lets imagine that zombies are possible, the probability of them bringing on the apocalypse is so small because of the factors opposing them. apart from the military, zombies would degrade to a state of paralysis within a week.

>>401
That's only assuming we're talking about the "undead" zombie. While popular in literature, it's not the birth of the zombie genre... And, for that matter, not true for any zombie like activity in the real world.

There are various parasites and fungi that take varying level of control of their hosts..mostly in the insect world, but they exist. Not a one of those has the "rotting" issue, as they are not dead while trying to spread the infection.

obviously they are coming, we will see this scenario within a few years, most likely the will be haitian/pufferfish types of zombies, but the condition will mutate into our more conventional zombies. Also, don't fool your selves, you are not the hero, you are not the saved one, you will most likely be zombie food, dress accordingly.

>>315
Well, on the plus side, hurray for the laborers.