Human zombies vs Sapient animals

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Though it should be pointed out that in this scenario, by far the biggest winner is the oceans in general:

1) No more fishing.
2) The zombies in this scenario pose no threat to sea-life.

Result: Massive explosion of population levels in the oceans once people are no longer killfucking all the whales, fishies, and whatever.

<snip a page and a half of text that basically amounts to, "Okay, I'm not really that familiar with the zombie genre, and having zombies being able and willing to eat each other was a bad idea.">

Well if you 'don't care'... why the fuck are you making this scenario in the first place, and why were you implying you have knowledge of some of the running themes of the zombie genre? A brief crash-course in the zombie genre: It doesn't make sense. Don't expect it to make sense. These are walking corpses with a hankering for flesh we're talking about here, there is little to no way to make it make scientific sense and most everyone who's tried has ended up effectively stating, "God A wizard The Plot did it."

Invertebrates are exempt from the uplift, and now that I think of it, fish ought to be as well.

Oh yes, I know that. The thing is, though, that these things don't need an intelligence boost to immediately take massive advantage of a world without human civilization. A good chunk of technological effort is directed towards erecting barriers to keep insects out of our hair, with limited success. Remove human intelligence and drive to eradicate creepy-crawlies and they will thrive far more than they already do. As for the fishies: The biggest threat any number of fish, whales, and a lot of other sea life faces is human fishing. Again, with the fishers gone, they will thrive. And your zombies will most definitely not be able to catch any fish... if they can get into the water at all.

[TithonusSyndrome]

<snip a page and a half of text that basically amounts to, "Okay, I'm not really that familiar with the zombie genre, and having zombies being able and willing to eat each other was a bad idea.">

Oh come on, you know what I said and that wasn't it; I expected everyone to bear in mind that zombie are by default cooperative, as is the norm, and would only eat one another under special circumstances as a last resort to prevent rapid zombie starvation doing all the work for the sapient animals. After all, they're their own easiest prey in every zombie franchise and it doesn't happen, so aside from the fact that I've explicitly removed an unstated and contrived plot device that disinclines them from devouring one another, what's different?

Either way, if it was a problem, we've clarified it and that's all I'm concerned about; I'd rather play these scenarios loose and fast and agree on amendments later, rather than labor on an OP forever to circumvent any possible misinterpretation or semantics issue.

Well if you 'don't care'... why the fuck are you making this scenario in the first place, and why were you implying you have knowledge of some of the running themes of the zombie genre?

Because I'm casually interested in devising a scenario for the zombies in which they'd have a chance, which in my mind amounts to giving them opponents that are cohesive enough to be considered proper resistance to them, but weak enough to not use weapons to any great extent that doesn't involve retreading the post-zombie apocalypse scenario. As for passing myself off as a zombiologist, I wasn't aware that I needed to have a lot of credentials; I've seen Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later and been exposed to some cultural osmosis on zombies, and if that isn't sufficient, then... sorry? I gather that zombie-bashing is going to be looked on as a tedious pasttime for milwankers here sometime soon, so never let it be said that I didn't try and spitball ideas for more compelling zombie conflicts rather than just flog a dead horse.

A brief crash-course in the zombie genre: It doesn't make sense. Don't expect it to make sense. These are walking corpses with a hankering for flesh we're talking about here, there is little to no way to make it make scientific sense and most everyone who's tried has ended up effectively stating, "God A wizard The Plot did it."

Alright, good enough for me; what in your opinion is a better premise for this scenario; "freegan" cannibal zombies, or foodless zombies?

Oh yes, I know that. The thing is, though, that these things don't need an intelligence boost to immediately take massive advantage of a world without human civilization. A good chunk of technological effort is directed towards erecting barriers to keep insects out of our hair, with limited success.

Oh I see what you're saying. Agreed.

Remove human intelligence and drive to eradicate creepy-crawlies and they will thrive far more than they already do. As for the fishies: The biggest threat any number of fish, whales, and a lot of other sea life faces is human fishing. Again, with the fishers gone, they will thrive. And your zombies will most definitely not be able to catch any fish... if they can get into the water at all.

I intended to keep the non-mammalian marine life non-sapient for the purpose of ensuring that fish-eating carnivores would have access to a ready supply of food that doesn't have ethical dilemmas around it, not for any reason directly related to zombies. A significant portion of the conflict in this scenario would come from factions of uncooperative carnivores who consider it below them or simply unappetizing to barter zombie-killing services in return for prepared zombie corpses, fish, etc, and would rather form bandit companies to hunt other sapient animals in the feral way while ensuring their own safety.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Alright, good enough for me; what in your opinion is a better premise for this scenario; "freegan" cannibal zombies, or foodless zombies?

Okay, with the expectations that they be a valid threat to the new furry world? I'd go with the foodless ones. If your new furry nation is intelligent and the zombies can starve, they'll quickly realize all they have to do is get to the high ground, drag some food with them, and wait it out while the zombies eventually starve. With the foodless ones, your furries are eventually going to have to take them out because they're not going to go away on their own for the foreseeable future. This would likely make a more entertaining scenario.

Even so, the zombies are still at a horrible disadvantage. Human teeth and jaws are just not that good at gnawing through flesh. Human flesh takes some extended work, and it's considerably softer than, say, your typical dog, large cat, bear, or practically any prey animal. For an animal to even be slightly at risk, the zombie would have to get a grip and gnaw away for at least a few seconds, if not a minute or two. This doesn't even take into account that non-humans generally have a lot less areas that are conducive for human jaws to even get a grip on, not a lot of excess flab or easily grabbed fingers poking out.

Basically in anything less than a packed crowd of zombies, an intelligent mammal the size of an elk or bear could just repeatedly butt/swipe zombies, breaking legs and cracking skulls. As for larger swarms? Your furries are intelligent, they'll quickly figure out ways to draw individuals out from the crowd, or lure them off of buildings/cliffs, or lure them up a hill before pushing large rocks and/or logs down at them. The problem with making this scenario 'challenging' is that the average large mammal comes with its own full-body leather armor and superhuman strength, combined with the ability to survive indefinitely in the wild. Add to that a decent supply of intelligence and most any stereotypical zombie is killfucked.

I'd suggest making the zombies blatantly supernatural, and not having them rely on killing animals at all. Just make them have stronger teeth/jaws and a constant hunger for normally inedible plant-life, creating swarms of human locusts devouring all the trees and grass, leaving blasted wastes behind them. This presents an immediate threat to your furries that cannot be combated with avoidance.

[SeaTrooper]

Go the Raccoons! They are already highly intelligent, inquisitive omnivores, and they have HANDS! Sure, I've only ever seen them on Attenborough, but they sure impressed the hell out of me. In this scenario, whether we can let the Zeds starve themselves to death or not, having furry little gun-wielding ninjas has got to be of value.

[Zixinus]

How I would change this RAR:
- Zombies are supernatural and have herd instinct. They are tireless, unable to rot, can go and survive underwater, even without breathing. Dehydration may slow zombies down, but not disable them. Freezing only if the ice is strong enough and envelopes them enough to not allow moving.
- Mutations will occur with some zombies depending on the state of the body. Think L4D style specials. Add to that zombies that still have limited tool-using ability and more environment-given advantages. Zombies will not acquire magic powers (ie, no telekinetic zombies) and cannot ever approach human-level intelligence. Also, they will always be hostile to living humans and animals.
- Zombies are fast, able to run, swim and climb. Once alerted to prey, they will prefer to go as fast as possible.
- Their senses are highly lifted. Their smell is especially acute to humans but can sense anything alive (however, it is not where near as a dog's, they can't really track except perhaps clear and strong scents). They can see in darkness and hear quite well.
- Zombies can hibernate and in this state, they are indistinguishable from dead but not-rotting bodies. They can be woken if stirred and do so very quickly, especially by the cry of other zombies. Certain special zombies can even mask their smell further.
- Transmission goes trough any bodily fluid. Blood, snot, saliva, anything. Water does not neutralize but the virus will die in water after a time, from boiling to freezing. In general, once the virus leaves the human host, it will die in time and due to extreme environment (high or freezing heat, extreme pressure, high sunlight, radioactivity, etc). However, while in a human body, the virus can even survive high levels of radiation (up to levels that no other bacteria or virus can).
- Zombies are attracted to loud noise, bright and moving objects and fresh smells of organic origin (sweat, blood, feces but care less about dead tissue like leather). Some may cry to attract the attention of other zombies if they sense prey. A gunshot will attract zombies for a long time.
- Only destruction of the brain results in inanimation. Severing of the spine will only result in limited ability to move. Any other organ or tissue damage only effects the immediate area.
- They will attempt to consume any flesh, primarily preferring human. Some may attempt to eat fleshy and common fruits or vegetables (rule of thumb: anything that can be found in a supermarket). At no point will they attempt to eat trees or grass.

Humans: There are groups of immune human survivors. These survivors are immune on a genetic level and cannot be infected. There is no such immunity for any animal. They are aware that they are immune. The survivors are not aware of animals becoming sentient and cannot learn any sapient-level language.
However, any human can learn up to a level that a human can learn a the language of a non-sapient version of said animal (ie, you can still read animal body language fine).
There are also exceptions of certain people who may be able to learn, people who have extensive experience communicating with animals (think dog trainers) and certain children.

Animal changes:
- Animals all get their own version of a language, per species. Related species share many similarities and can understand each other (differences manifest as things like accents and different words). It is possible for one animal to learn another's language completely, if with limited speaking ability (depending on the anatomy of the animal, a rabbit for example can speak cat fairly well). Unless the species are capable of performing it, there is no written language. Language may be vocal or sign (as in sign-language), according to the anatomy of the species. For the sake of argument, language compression if pretty good (dogs can bark shorter sentences).
- Only mammals and avians become sapient, even then only those above a certain brain mass (say, the higher end of crow species). When animals become infected they just die (with the exception of insects that are immune).
- Animals have native knowledge of local language, including reading and writing but not things like culture, geography or operation of machinery.
- Carnivores can ingest zombie meat without risk of infection. However, the meat will taste bad (it gets better once the infection in it dies) and likely to upset a stomach (this aspect disappears once the infection in it dies, then it is like it would be non-infected).


Would this be a better scenario? I for one would happily write a "A boy and his dog in the zombie apocalypse" if I had enough experience with dogs.

[Rossum]

Okay:

The human zombies in this scenario can starve to death but are unable to breed. They are therefore doomed to extinction no matter what happens. The fact that they are retarded and unable to develop sustainable agriculture is just one of many nails that hammers their coffin.

At the very least, Australia or some other island ecosystem would result in animals beating the zombies due to zombies dying from their own inability to survive. ONce all the Australian zombies are gone then australia lives on with intelligent animals... unless the zombies can swim across the ocean or build trans-oceanic ships out of eachothers corpses then Australia is totally okay. Same for any other location that favors animals over zombies.

As long as the animals are smart enough and fast enough to outrun zombies then they just have to run away and hide until the zombies starve or eat eachother. If a few grizzly bears start playing soccerball with zombies faces then things just speed up a bit more.

Regardless, if ocean mammals become intelligent then they are automatically immune to danger from zombies (unless they are nearby when a bunch of zombies fall in the water and somehow in fect the water with their blood).

Humans are on top of the food chain because we are intelligent tool users, zobies are stupid and would die horribly.