You vs. the Living Dead...

[Crayz9000]

Three words....
Hail and Kill!

I have to say, there's nothing like listening to ManOwaR while going on a zombie-killing rampage in They Hunger. In particular, Swords in the Wind and Warriors of the World make great zombie-smacking background music

Then there's Fear of the Dark, by Iron Maiden, which is perfect for those dark parts at the beginning

[Antediluvian]

I should add that wrestling zombies might be a bad idea. In Romero's universe zombies seem to get stronger the longer they are around. In NOTLD, they weren't too strong, but in Day of the Dead they were ripping people apart. Grappling might be a bad idea.

Eh. I'm talking about mobile, shambling corpses. If they were animated mystically to the point where they could tear you apart with hands and teeth, ala cauldron-born, okay. If they are Resident Evil The Movie zombies who only need to scratch you to turn you, okay. I haven't seen Romero's movies, so I don't know how tough they are.

On principle, I'd be more likely to use my woodshed axe. I wouldn't trust, say, a kitchen knife to the head. But I'm big enough to swing a big woodchopper like a Q-tip, and lop off heads, arms and hands like a thresher taking up wheat.

Okay.

I didn't know you hadn't seen the Dead Trilogy, sorry.

Romero's zombies are more or less like the zombies from Resident Evil. If they bite or scratch you, you're infected.

[Coaan]

Three words....
Hail and Kill!

I have to say, there's nothing like listening to ManOwaR while going on a zombie-killing rampage in They Hunger. In particular, Swords in the Wind and Warriors of the World make great zombie-smacking background music

Then there's Fear of the Dark, by Iron Maiden, which is perfect for those dark parts at the beginning

Ahh...now there's taste in music

[Ted C]

I think rioting, panicking, etc. would send the zombie population into uncontrolable numbers. The government would have to goto door to door to ensure that all dead bodies are disposed of. People will resist and gunfights with the gov't will break out. Lots of people will die then, adding to the zombie population.

It's not going to take people very long to figure out that head shots are the solution to the zombie problem, and there are enough pragmatic people in the world to start applying the solution. There will be an initial zombie population explosion, but I think that the numbers will quickly level and then start to drop.

Most people won't be willing to take the steps required to snip a zombie apocalypse in the bud. They won't properly take care of the bodies resulting in more people getting killed and infected. You're going to run into situations like this:

Many people will be unwilling, but large numbers won't really be necessary. You can get within five feet of a zombie without significant risk, and it's pathetically easy to outrun them. All you really need to do is make sure you remain aware of your surroundings so you don't get cut off. One person with a handgun and a good supply of ammunition could easily eliminate scores of zombies.

You see your wife on the floor unconscious. She does not appear to be breathing nor does she have a pulse. You have two options:
a) cap her to make sure that bitch doesn't get back up
b) adminster cpr, call emergency services, etc.

The zombies aren't bright enough to just lie in wait. As soon as the "activate", they get up and start looking for food (victims). If you wife is lying still, it's almost certainly safe to approach and attempt CPR.

How many people are going to select option a? Not a whole lot, not at least until everyone that refuses to acknowledge the fact that the dead are rising is dead. People are going to try adminster cpr, which is going to result in chewed off faces. The first-responders in the first week or two are going to be hit extremely hard intially.

Very few people are going to get attacked as a result of attempting CPR. If it were to happen, word would get around quickly and people would quit taking the risk.

Yes, there will be a period of chaos, but it won't last. The zombies are not smart enough to remain a threat for very long.

[Ted C]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Crayz9000]

Ahh...now there's taste in music

You can't go wrong with heavy metal

[Crayz9000]

Realistically, my house is practically down the street from an old 1930s graveyard. It's not too big (compared to, say, Forest Lawn or any commercial mortuary/graveyards) but it's not too small, either. A few blocks in the other direction is the local mortuary, which is still in business and would thus have a lot of fresh zombies in the event of a hypothetical outbreak

However, seeing as we've got a lot of rednecks in the area, it means that there are a lot of gun owners. We might be able to organize (I'm talking 1970s off-road trucks and Jeeps, heh) and head up across the San Gabriels (not by the major thoroughfares--those would be jammed to the point of insanity; I'm talking about the Angeles Crest Highway, which is mostly unknown) and toward the desert. Going through the California high desert, there's Fort Irwin and Edwards Air Force Base. And if you can keep going, you'll head into Nevada, home of the legendary Area 51

I think I'd be OK.

[Vympel]

There are no firearms where I live. However, downstairs, I do have a replica of Alexander the Great's sword.

Who's played Eternal Darkness

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

If it happens like night of the living dead, the dead will rise almost all at once. All the guys in the morgue will get up and attack everyone in the hospitals. DoAs, etc. will get up and additionally attack people in the hospitals. A zombie will wander into the coma ward. They'll get up and nibble on someone else in the coma ward. The guy in the coma will die, get up and nibble on someone else. 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 4, 4 becomes 8 and so on. There was a retirement home close to the subdivision I used to live in. Someone dies in their sleep in the retirement home. They get up and partially eat another senior citizen. That senior citizen will get up and partially eat someone else, etc. Soon you could very well have all the residents in the retirement home wandering into the subdivision, breaking into homes and consuming their inhabitants. Soon you could have a subdivision full of zombies. Only a few could escape and the responding police, not even realizing that you have to nail headshots, could be partially devoured too. When it eventually gets out that the dead are rising and that you have to get headshots to kill them(it took a day to figure it out in notld), you could have a pretty good sized chunk of zombies. Combined with rioting, murder, looting, etc., you'll get a whole lot of zombies that can overwhelm infantrymen with rifles, etc. The only real way to nip this in the bud is to goto extremes like incinerating the cities with fuel-air explosives. Thats probably not going to happen because those in charge won't realize how bad it really is until its too late.

Just wonder:

Will eventually **all** people in U.S. turned into zombies, then? If that so, can the infection spread to Canada or Mexico? How about Alaska? How about countries in South America like Argentina or Chile?

Let say the whole American coninent is infected with zombie plague. Is it possible for the zombies to CROSS THE OCEAN and spread the plague to Europe and and other places?

[Ghost Rider]

unless they are particularly resistant to that much pressure...given they can only walk and such...somehow I'm doubting it.

[Kurgan]

That's the thing.. they're pseudo-mystical, because as we know, corpses that are decaying can't run around and fight you (they can maybe squirm around due to gasses being released and that sort of thing, but that's about it).

In the Living Dead movies (by George A. Romero, not the "Return of the Livind Dead" spinoffs) its established that if you "kill the brain, you kill the ghoul." It was theorized in the first movie that radiation exposure from a returning Venus probe re-animated the dead (though with the supposed collapse of the government, nobody seems to have been able to prove this... about the radiation).

Anyhow, its also established in the films that ANYBODY who dies.. for any reason, after the first Zombie appears, becomes a Zombie, unless their brain is destroyed (its suggested that all dead bodies be cremated). Even a decapitated Zombie can still move its eyes around or move its jaw!

Being bitten by a zombie just accelerates death, after which you "wake up" as a mindless zombie, which goes after human flesh, even though it doesn't really "need" nourishment.

Only certain Zombies (like "Bub") seemed to have any shred of real intelligence, but its supposed that they might have parts of residiual memories (like the Mall zombies... they were going someplace they remembered in life...).

I thought the whole salt thing (in legend, not in the Livind Dead films) was if the Zombie was created by an evil wizard. You put salt on the Zombie, and he goes back and kills his master, rather than you. ; )

[Ted C]

I thought the whole salt thing (in legend, not in the Livind Dead films) was if the Zombie was created by an evil wizard. You put salt on the Zombie, and he goes back and kills his master, rather than you. ; )

The salt legend is a voodoo thing. If you feed a voodoo zombie salt, it will realize that it's dead and try to return to its grave.

[Steven Snyder]

Okay, people, drag this thread back towards reality. Every fifteen-year-old who suggested that they would fly a bomber or drive a tank into the legions of the undead should re-think their plans.

I mean, come on. You're in your house. The walking dead arrive at the wonderful pace of a shambling eighth of a kilometer per hour, body parts falling off and ruining your rose bushes. You do NOT have a tank parked in your front lawn. What do YOU do?

Here is what I do...

Phase One:
I get my:
Bolt-Action Hunting Rifle
Shotgun
.22 Semi-Auto Rifle with Scope (Great for head shots)
7.62x39 Assault Rifle
Glock 32
Sword

Get into the fenced backyard and use my ladder to get on the roof of my home. Once there pull up the ladder so that it can't be used to gain entrance to the roof.

Phase Two:
Eliminate as many zombies as needed and establish a safe-zone around the home. Being on the roof gives you great visibilty and will keep you safe from the slow moving undead that will take forever to make it up the house.

Phase Three:
Gather up as many surviving neighbors as possible, they are mostly rednecks who will be equally as well armed, if not more so. Gather up as many supplies as possible and load up the vehicles for an extended camping trip.

Any adult who cannot adequately defend themselves, due to physical impairment or lack of a basic survival instinct will be left behind to fend for themselves. This includes the first guy to grab a beer or the woman who can't stop crying and deal with the situation. I have no pity for weakness.

Phase Four:
Make way to a secluded area like a deer lease and setup a camp there. From this point thing change depending on how long the zombies are walking, if it follows the movies and is only temporary condition then you will not need to create a permanent settlement.

[Ted C]

So, to update the plan...

1) Stay away from major population centers.

2) Locate handy weapons.

3) Eliminate or evade any zombies posing immediate threats.

4) Contact and organize neighbors.

5) Attempt to determine chaos levels in surrounding areas.

6) Secure supply lines. Take steps to resist looters and other opportunists.

7) Establish strict procedures to prevent further zombie production.

Systematically expand zones of control, eliminating zombies along the way.

9) Attempt to monitor activities of central authorities. Contact and assist them if they're behaving sensibly.

I think rural areas will calm down pretty quickly, but I could have that impression just because of the way NotLD ended (the 1990 version). Armed rednecks already had the area pretty well pacified within a few days in the film. I don't know if the ending was similar in the original (although I don't see why it would be much different, since it had the same creator).

I think that civilization would be dealt a severe blow, but it would recover. Life would be changed substantially (since there was no indication that the zombie trend was going to stop, so anti-zombie protocol would become a way of life), but it would go on.

[Necro99]

Alright then! No Military Weapons!

1. Take my Lee. Einfield Rifle, the Mauser 98k and the machete.
2. Take the machete and lay them waste, Renaud style.
3. Find the key to the weapon locker and the code for the safe.
4. Take the Browning HP, the clip and all the ammo.
5. Call kevin and tell him to lock and load.
6. Put all weapons, ammo and food in the Van.
7. Go get him with the van, clearing all OPFOR on the way.
8. Fill fuel tank of the van.
9. Secure all close family.
10. Barricade house like Fort Knox.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

If it happens like night of the living dead, the dead will rise almost all at once. All the guys in the morgue will get up and attack everyone in the hospitals. DoAs, etc. will get up and additionally attack people in the hospitals. A zombie will wander into the coma ward. They'll get up and nibble on someone else in the coma ward. The guy in the coma will die, get up and nibble on someone else. 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 4, 4 becomes 8 and so on. There was a retirement home close to the subdivision I used to live in. Someone dies in their sleep in the retirement home. They get up and partially eat another senior citizen. That senior citizen will get up and partially eat someone else, etc. Soon you could very well have all the residents in the retirement home wandering into the subdivision, breaking into homes and consuming their inhabitants. Soon you could have a subdivision full of zombies. Only a few could escape and the responding police, not even realizing that you have to nail headshots, could be partially devoured too. When it eventually gets out that the dead are rising and that you have to get headshots to kill them(it took a day to figure it out in notld), you could have a pretty good sized chunk of zombies. Combined with rioting, murder, looting, etc., you'll get a whole lot of zombies that can overwhelm infantrymen with rifles, etc. The only real way to nip this in the bud is to goto extremes like incinerating the cities with fuel-air explosives. Thats probably not going to happen because those in charge won't realize how bad it really is until its too late.

Just wonder:

Will eventually **all** people in U.S. turned into zombies, then? If that so, can the infection spread to Canada or Mexico? How about Alaska? How about countries in South America like Argentina or Chile?

Let say the whole American coninent is infected with zombie plague. Is it possible for the zombies to CROSS THE OCEAN and spread the plague to Europe and and other places?

A good deal of the population, mainly cities, would end up as zombies. I'm sure a portion of the population would survive by setting up settlements in rural areas. Those areas are far away enough from cities that most zombies won't find their way there and those that do will be in small enough numbers to be manageable.

Canada and Mexico will probably have dead people rising up just like us. Even if they don't, they share pretty big borders with us that the zombies can make their way onto. From mexico, the rest of south america will be affected. Assuming that dead people getting up it limited to the United States, the rest of the world might be safe. You *might*(small chance) have dead bodies floating on the surface of the water and washing up on foreign beaches. The greatest chance of infection will come from people trying to escape the plague on big cruise ships, people bringing infected people over on airplanes, etc. etc. Think: derelict cruiseship washing up onto beach. Stumbling people falling over the railing and plopping onto the beach. Those peope get up and attack sunbathing people, etc.

I think(according to Day; I could be wrong) the problem was global. However, if it wasn't, Europeans, etc. could survive as long as they quickly eliminate threats such as the ones I've just described. All it would take, however, is one country that borders the water to drop the ball. Imagine Chinese zombies making their way into Russia or African zombies making their way to the middle east. From either point, Europe could eventually become infected.

Phase Four:
Make way to a secluded area like a deer lease and setup a camp there. From this point thing change depending on how long the zombies are walking, if it follows the movies and is only temporary condition then you will not need to create a permanent settlement.

Actually according to Day of the Dead, its not temporary. You would be better off setting up a permanent settlement.

I think the survivability of other continents accross the sea (like Eurasia, Africa, etc) depends on how slow the zombies ploriferate. If they're spreading slow enough, the zombie plague will be quite a global news so Europe and rest of the world will be aware about the fate of American continet.

I wonder, though, about their reaction. Will Canada, Mexico, or the European contry react properly to prevent the plague? What will be the most proper action?

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

And I wonder how big is the possibility of the whole earth infected with the zombies, with no humans left. Will it happen like Planet Of The Apes, but we have zombies instead of apes?

[Kurgan]

Let us assume for a minute, that the theory for the origin of the zombie plague was radiation from the returning Venus probe as suggested in the original (1968) film.

Now I could be wrong, but I assumed that the probe crashed someplace near the US (I'd need to watch my dvd again to be sure) and thus the plague began there.

In the other movies (especially Day) it's implied that the effect is global, meaning perhaps the radiation had been blown around the globe. The radiation is what's waking up the dead, though one wonders how long the radiation will stay around before it disipates (maybe years?). As long as no radiation made it to the other countries, it would rely (as others have suggested) on fleeing people, or bodies washing up on beaches.

Places with a high death rate would be the most dangerous then, and the population centers. People would have to be organized and quick thinking, assuming they already knew about the infections and the head-shot aspects of zombie physiology.