closet sci-fi fan wrote:
You might have a handgun and plenty of ammo but you're screwed if you're caught in a building with 20-30 zombies making their way in. Besides, most people won't have a handgun and you're assuming that people are going to be solely fighting agaisnt zombies. There is going to be rioting, a huge increase in murder, looting, etc. Those will become zombies.
As I said, there will be an initial population explosion, but I think natural selection will assert itself pretty quickly. People who are careless and foolish will become zombies quickly, but others will stay pretty safe. Powerful central authorities like the military will probably keep their houses in order even in the early stages.
closet sci-fi fan wrote:
You shoot little Suzi because shes dead and starting to walk about. You've just pissed off her dad who shoots you. The intial growth in zombies won't neccessarily be because of zombies. It will more likely caused by murders, etc. in the ensuing civil unrest. You're additionally assuming that, in an urban settting, that you can manage to not get swamped. There are a lot of places in a city for zombies to be lurking in. Not only that, if you've got a 100-300 zombies closing in on you from each direction, you're screwed.
Actually, you're describing an inner-city disaster situation that I personally wouldn't be facing. I live out in the country where the population density is low. It would be hell in the cities for a while, and it might well take military intervention to get them under control.
closet sci-fi fan wrote:
The numbers will get that high before all the stupid people are dead. Stupid people being the dad in the above example, looters, and people refusing to hand over their dead for proper extermination. Look at Dawn of the Dead when the SWAT team and Nat'l Guard units were forcing that housing project to comply. They were heavily armed but still ran into trouble.
True. I suppose I might be over-estimating human intelligence.
closet sci-fi fan wrote:
You are correct about deaths resulting from attempted CPR will lower greatly fairly quickly into the crisis. However, there is a great likelyhood that Ambulance Crews, etc. will still suffer heavy cassualties simply because they are more likely to be called to areas with zombies in them.
True, but to some extent they'll be better prepared to deal with them. They're at least trained to keep their heads in a crisis.
closet sci-fi fan wrote:
Hospitals are also likely to become major centers of living dead. All bitten people intially will go there. They will die and add to the zombie population. Injured and dead people go there. The dead will go into the morgue but eventually will make their way out. Those that die in the hospital can get up and attack helpless patients as well.
Many of the dead will never make it to the hospital. People who have been bitten will be getting enough treatment that they probably won't drop all at once. They'll die a few at a time, and hospitals will be among the first to realize what's happening. Some might get overwhelmed, but I think most will be able to take steps to secure themselves and prevent zombie production (when a victim is declared dead, it would be easy to do enough brain damage to keep them down without blatantaly mutilating them).
As I said, things would be ugly for a while. Days might be too short an estimate, but even with the sudden jump in numbers they'd have from the initial stages of a zombie outbreak, they're just too stupid to be a long-term problem.
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