Can Zombies "starve"

[Crossroads Inc.]

SO I found myself watching numerious Zombie clips on youtube last night, most of them from the remake of "Dawn of the Dead"

I watched the massive crowds of Zombies with a curious question... If yo ujust waited long enough, could the 'die' out? Whatever bizzare process fuels an 'undead' body, it CANT last forever. It wil leither decay, or run out of energy.

ANy thoughts from the Zombie inclinded out there?

[Ted C]

Well, when they move around, they do work, so they must be using energy. Presumably they digest in a vaguely similar manner to what they did when alive, but they actually have fewer energy needs, so they can go longer between meals (like a cold-blooded animal). Presumably they can starve to death, but it would probably take a while, especially since they can cannibalize any of their fellow zombies that drop.

[tim31]

28 Days/Weeks Later has shown that the infected population(yes, I know they're not zombies) starve out due to the fact that they simply don't eat. modern Dawn of the Dead zombies weren't actually shown to be eating anyone as far as I recall, and no resource intake means no energy. What I'm more interested in is whether they're attempting to stay hydrated or not; lest a human body, infected or not, become unsustainable after a few days.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

SO I found myself watching numerious Zombie clips on youtube last night, most of them from the remake of "Dawn of the Dead"

I watched the massive crowds of Zombies with a curious question... If yo ujust waited long enough, could the 'die' out? Whatever bizzare process fuels an 'undead' body, it CANT last forever. It wil leither decay, or run out of energy.

ANy thoughts from the Zombie inclinded out there?

As much as it does violate the rules of reality, zombies typically aren't depicted as being able to starve to "death:" usually they persist and remain active until they decompose to enough of a degree that they're immobilized, which depending on the depiction can span weeks, months, or years. Zombies usually don't eat for actual sustenance, but only to satisfy their overpowering craving for flesh.

[petesampras]

Well, when they move around, they do work, so they must be using energy. Presumably they digest in a vaguely similar manner to what they did when alive, but they actually have fewer energy needs, so they can go longer between meals (like a cold-blooded animal). Presumably they can starve to death, but it would probably take a while, especially since they can cannibalize any of their fellow zombies that drop.

Given that their hearts are no longer beating, it is extremely unlikely that their digestive systems are still functioning (and even if they were it is hard to see how nutrients are going to get utilised without a circulatory system). Thus zombies, likely, do not gain energy from eating.

Having dead tissue walking around and attacking people is not biologically feasible, anyway. The zombies are clearly powered by some unknown 'force' which is supplied energy by some unknown mechanism. I don't think you can reasonably treat zombies as viable animals that need to acquire food.

[Big Orange]

World War Z touched on the topic of them starving or supposedly eating each other - they could force through food matter, without really processing it they oddly don't smell of anything (according to a blind Japanese man). The other "zombies" they devoured were deranged humans who somehow regressed into a zombie like mindstate and were nicknamed "quislings".

[Lazarus]

The answer is it depends on the type.

28DL-type starve in normal human time - if they don't eat, they die, just as we do, and it takes more or less as long. They aren't actually undead though, so it's slightly different.

Romero-type do not starve or run out of energy apparently - indeed, they do not even seem to rot as such. They do have bodily damage (missing parts etc), but many seem to be in a condition similar to a couple-day-old corpse (the horde in Day of the Dead for example, or Big Daddy from Land of the Dead).

DotD04-type are not shown actively hunting humans specifically for consumption; the use of biting seems to be more as a means of aggression. At any rate, I'd say the characters were in the mall for at least a month or two, if not longer, and the zombies did not seem to be starving or weakening at all, so I'd say they can't starve.

Resident Evil-type... is difficult to say, I'm not aware of an outbreak of the T-virus lasting long enough to find out.

Solanum-type do not starve; they do not eat for nutrition, the parts they eat sit in their digestive tract until they are forced out through the stomach wall.

[Junghalli]

Resident Evil-type... is difficult to say, I'm not aware of an outbreak of the T-virus lasting long enough to find out.

RE zombies aren't supernatural, so the laws of physics should still apply to them. So I'd say probably, yes.

[Solauren]

Supernatural zombies - probably not
non-supernatural zombies - probably. There still 'living' beings of a sort. (Functionally braindead maybe?)

[Ford Prefect]

RE zombies aren't supernatural, so the laws of physics should still apply to them. So I'd say probably, yes.

If the laws of physics actually applied to the zombies in Resident Evil, they wouldn't be doing anything except lying inert on the ground.

[Ryushikaze]

Well, RE Zombies are basically jump started fresh corpses. Like reviving the legally dead, but with far more brain damage.

That said, yes, Zombies starve in RE, just at a much slower rate than a standard living person would.

[Lazarus]

Is there any source concerning RE zombies starving? I figured they might, but the T-Virus somehow reanimates dead cells, so it can draw energy in some way, which probably removes the necessity of food intake...

[TheMuffinKing]

Is there any source concerning RE zombies starving? I figured they might, but the T-Virus somehow reanimates dead cells, so it can draw energy in some way, which probably removes the necessity of food intake...

How would they get energy, magic? The RE zombies are probably running off the victims body itself and if given long enough should wither away to unpowered husks. Has any of the Resident Evil fiction spanned enough time to cause starvation?

[ANGELUS]

Shouldn't this topic be on "Fantasy" rather than in "Other Sci-Fi"?

[frogcurry]

Resident Evil zombies will "die" from decay eventually, although not perhaps actual starvation. As I understand it, the T-virus is effectively metabolising all their remaining tissues as part of its function.

[Gil Hamilton]

As much as it does violate the rules of reality, zombies typically aren't depicted as being able to starve to "death:" usually they persist and remain active until they decompose to enough of a degree that they're immobilized, which depending on the depiction can span weeks, months, or years. Zombies usually don't eat for actual sustenance, but only to satisfy their overpowering craving for flesh.

Well, they have to metabolize something, because they need to get energy from somewhere. Muscles don't move themselves, after all.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Which is why I said that the typical depictions of zombie "lifespans" often violate rules of reality.

[Death from the Sea]

just to correct those in here the Dawn of the Dead '04 zombies were eating the people and each other in some cases.

When Michael (Jake Weber's character) was searching the mall for zombies and he found the one in the closet in the sporting goods store, that zombie that attacked him was eating on another zombie that was apparently unable to get up off the ground.

The zombies that killed Bart, Tucker and even the ones that were biting on CJ before he suicided, were actually eating their victims. So the DotD'04 zombies are not just attacking to be aggressive, they are eating.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

The problem is, a vast majority of zombies, in order to even exist, violate quite a few known laws of physics/thernodynamics/biology/etc.

Since they already don't conform to the known bounds of reality, why should we assume they follow the same rules regarding metabolism, respiration, and general energy-intake that the rest of life follows?

My answer is, until proven otherwise on a case-by-case basis, no, zombies cannot 'starve'.

[Gil Hamilton]

The problem is, a vast majority of zombies, in order to even exist, violate quite a few known laws of physics/thernodynamics/biology/etc.

Since they already don't conform to the known bounds of reality, why should we assume they follow the same rules regarding metabolism, respiration, and general energy-intake that the rest of life follows?

My answer is, until proven otherwise on a case-by-case basis, no, zombies cannot 'starve'.

Let me ask you a question. Say you have a zombie and a living human being who weigh the same. They both run up the same stair well. Which uses more energy to get to the top?

Besides, I'm curious as to which law of Thermodynamics zombies actually break. They don't change the amount of energy in the universe and I can't see what exactly zombies have to do with entropy. Besides, I think it's a moot point whether or not zombie entropy approaches a constant at absolute zero, since they are pretty well frozen by that point. Further, they aren't doing anything particularly supernatural, aside from continuing to move despite having the handicap of being dead.

However, I propose an experiment. Let's get two zombies, right, and lets put them into zombie equilibrium with a third zombie. Then we can see if they are therefore in zombie equilibrium with each other.

[Lisa]

what about marvel zombies? They seem to be just hungry, and not as dumb as the average zombie