Zombie Apocalypse

I am in Finland at the moment.

If zombies happened, I would go to Bali, Indoneshia.

I was there a couple months ago and attended a funeral, they cremate 100% of their dead, so zero chance of an uncontrolable army of dead guys.
They are also VERY superstitious and practice magick, so they wouldn't freak out as much as westerns people who would get eaten while not being able to believe what was happening. BOOM, they are hacking the zombies to shreads...then we roast a pig and get drunk on rice wiskey called Arak.

As for Zombies in Marv, Black Talon and make the zombies voodoo old school, like the 70's comic, slow but super strong and you gotta fill their mouths with salt and sew 'em shut to stop 'em.

Hmm, Finland.....
Are zombies still exothermic? Scandinavia might be a good place to regroup if zombies can be frozen into immobility.

On the other hand, zombies have no immune or healing system. So really hot, moist jungle climes might be a good place to be as the ferocious microflora cause accelerated rotting.

BTW, ever see the 1985 bio-thriller WARNING SIGN? A secret lab suffers a catastrophic release of a viral weapon. The virus infects people, causing debilitation and eventual (apparent) death. In fact the "death" is actually a deep coma that lasts several minutes. Then the infected rises with diminished intelligence and an overwhelming homicidal fury. Sounds to me like a percursor to 28 DAYS LATER.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2006 03:44PM by DavidEMartin.

Now see, that's what i have theorized for awhile now, if they are truly corpses then the environment will surely take care of them. I read somewhere it can take up to 7 years in a sealed coffin for all of the flesh on a body to rot and leave a skeleton, now......if the zombies are out in the sun, rain, cold, heat, wind, etc. then surely after a couple of years they would all suffer from the effects of the elements and the problem would be solved. Any thoughts?

We would just have a very smelly world for a couple of years to try and survive in.

If I had to fight off a zombie horde, I'd try to make it to Wal-Mart sporting goods (After getting my son of course) and stock up there. Baseball bats, machetes and guns galore!

A friend did run a zombie game in the White Wolf world. The characters were from each of the settings and I had a demon. It was going good the first game, then we each got gems that did different things. Mine allowed me to control zombies, which I did a few of them, and then found out that the limit was 1000. After that, it was too easy and I lost interest. I just don't like everything being handed to me in a game you know.

"Always do what's next."

Chance

That sounds cool, but i understand about handing stuff to the players, i make them work HARD for it but not so hard that they give up. A good zombie campaign would involve just getting day to day without being eaten and trying to live, ya know. Simple stuff would be complicated with all of the walking corpses around, kinda like a family reunion with my ex-wife's relatives. LOL. Just kidding, more like my family really. Back on track now, i wouldn't mind the smell as long as the zombie horde was under control or all gone.

Hmm, just thought of the best place to be in a Marvel Zombie Apocalypse-- the SHIELD Helicarrier!

Meanwhile I find myself wondering about Nature's own defenses agains zombies, namely scavengers. In most of the zombie flicks, the creatures ignore anything other than humans. But that doesn't mean animals will return the favor. I can see--

--zombies being whittled away by vultures and buzzards (rural anywhere)
--zombies covered in flies happily laying eggs that produce carrion-eating maggots (anywhere)
--zombies simply being nibbled on by rats, starting at the feet (urban possibility)
--zombies covered in army ant swarms (South America possibility).
--Hyenas or Dingoes tearing them apart (Africa or Australia)

Of course, as the bite of a zombie is toxic, so too would eating the creatures probably cause the demise of the scavenger. But a lot of scavengers have active control over their vomit reflex, so they might be able to spew the dead meat in time to save themselves.

Looks like someone with animal-controlling powers might have a fairly good chance at surviving, providing they can summon the right allies.

Max Brook's Zombie Survival Guide (which I highly recommend) talks about that. Says the virus that turns folks into zombies halts most (though not all) bacteria that are responsible for decomposition, greatly decelerating the rate they decay. The virus drives off all predators, too -- Zombie flesh is exceedingly toxic, and all animals know this on some deep instinctual level. Environmental factors are still a problem, though, so a zombie roaminng the cool, dry Gobi Desert will last far longer than one roaming the bayous of Louisiana.

In the Director's Commentary of Land of the Dead, Romero said his original vision was for the Zombie "Stuff" (whatever it was causing it -- space plague, radiation, Divine Retribution, whatever) affected animals as well as people. Said he'd wanted a scene with a horde/swarm of zombified rats, but there was just no way he could do so with 1968 movie-tech. Which may be just as well -- a world where all living things can become zombies (or even just all Mammals), not just people, would be well and truly fracked, since packs of zombie dogs and cats would quickly dominate/devour everything, to say nothing of rats. (Bats would either be a big problem or a minor nuisance, depending on how badly Zombie-ism affected one's agility/coordination.)

7 years in a sealed coffin? I'd heard far, far less, a few weeks at most -- many of the bacteria responsible for decomposition are anaerobic, meaning they don't require oxygen to operate. Seal a dead body in an airtitght container, and you'll soon have a disgusting chowder.

Dr Archeville Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Max Brook's Zombie Survival Guide (which I highly
> recommend) talks about that. Says the virus that
> turns folks into zombies halts most (though not
> all) bacteria that are responsible for
> decomposition, greatly decelerating the rate they
> decay. The virus drives off all predators, too --
> Zombie flesh is exceedingly toxic, and all animals
> know this on some deep instinctual level.
> Environmental factors are still a problem, though,
> so a zombie roaminng the cool, dry Gobi Desert
> will last far longer than one roaming the bayous
> of Louisiana.
>
> In the Director's Commentary of Land of the Dead,
> Romero said his original vision was for the Zombie
> "Stuff" (whatever it was causing it -- space
> plague, radiation, Divine Retribution, whatever)
> affected animals as well as people. Said he'd
> wanted a scene with a horde/swarm of zombified
> rats, but there was just no way he could do so
> with 1968 movie-tech. Which may be just as well
> -- a world where all living things can become
> zombies (or even just all Mammals), not just
> people, would be well and truly fracked, since
> packs of zombie dogs and cats would quickly
> dominate/devour everything, to say nothing of
> rats. (Bats would either be a big problem or a
> minor nuisance, depending on how badly Zombie-ism
> affected one's agility/coordination.)
>
> 7 years in a sealed coffin? I'd heard far, far
> less, a few weeks at most -- many of the bacteria
> responsible for decomposition are anaerobic,
> meaning they don't require oxygen to operate.
> Seal a dead body in an airtitght container, and
> you'll soon have a disgusting chowder.

Yeah, a world where potential zombies could be animals as well as people would be scary, cool to run through in a campaign though. I always went for the bacteria/virus angle myself in terms of what could be the reason for it all, supernatural stuff would add too much to the horror-factor for me.

As for the decomposition of a corpse thing, thats just what i heard or read somewhere, would love to know a little bit more. Anybody know a mortician we could ask?

I know several. ;-)

Take a look at DC/Piranha's The Big Book of Death. This unexpectedly delightful book includes a section devoted to corpse decay.

Getting back to the fauna affected by Zombie Stuff-- at what level does it stop? Hypothetically there could be zombie amebi crawling through the environment. In this case, the planet would be completely lost. Not only would survival of any sort be inpossible, the world would be a deathtrap for space travellers exploring the ruins millenia from now.

Something no one deals with in any zombi flick or media-- what is the effect on spirits in the Afterlife? If ghosts are generated by violent deaths, a zombi apocalypse would be releasing ghosts by the millions. It would be a very haunted world.
With humanity's birthrate dropping to near-zero, there would be no chance for reincarnation. And some of these restless spirits would try to possess any intelligent being they could enter, human or not. Like say, space travellers comne to explore the ruins....

Alternately, if the Zombi Stuff has a supernatural origin, might not more pro-active spirits be working to fight this menace from the other side of Death's curtain?

And how would a ghost react to seeing its own animate corpse? Imagine the inital shock and depression giving rise to palpable anger. A zombi world might have a high incidence of poltergeist activity.

Going back to the apparent zombi evolution in Romero's flicks-- I'm wondering if the Zombi Stuff might not have hit Earth a couple times before, say the end of the dinosaur era and the again during the age of the giant mammals before the rise of humanity. Suppose the world's lifeforms really did get completely wiped out. For an unknown interval, centuries or even millenia, only zombis occupied the Fauna category. But a limited number of the zombi-fauna evolved to a state more or less recreating their original state. And Life gradually returned to normal as the zombie came back to life, reprroduced, and died real deaths..... The Zombi Stuff is in effect a biosphere reboot!

Hmm.... something else to consider. Forget about spirits and souls, what about The Gods?????????? Gods like Anubis, Hel, and Pluto would be suspected of being responsible for the Zombi Stuff-- one or more might actually be responsible-- but such deities might be divinely enraged at the chaos being wrought on their realms. So theoretically one's zombi-fighting heroes could be working for The Lord(s) of the Dead.

That's my rant and I'm schticking to it.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/2006 09:46AM by DavidEMartin.

What I want to know is, why the guy with all the guns and ammo didn't start practicing his marksmanship skills on the parking lot dwellers.

Such a waste.

Ah well.

How goes it, David?

The effect of corpse animation on the souls of the dea is peculair form a preChristian Teutonic perspective, as there was no stark division drawn between the soul and the body. Both were perceived as intertwined.

Inhumation was the original practice of burial, and it is related to the beleif that life continues on inside the gravemound and that the spirit of the dead can continue to interact with the world of the living by virtue of it's remains.

This is behind the belief in Frey, who was believed to have been a King in ancient Sweden and to have brought great peace and prosperity to the Northlands. After his death he was buried in a mound, and the Swedes believed that the spiritual "energy" of his corpses continued to generate the luck of peace and prosperity even in death.

This is the root of the Cult of Saintly Relics, eg. bones, blood, etc. in NW Europe.

Cremation came later and was practiced as a means of releasing all of the power of the soul from the earthly coil to take it's place in one of the heavenly halls of the gods, or the ancestors.

In Teutonic legends, the walking dead were usually the product of people who had been particualrly ornery or evil in life. Where such folk were buried or, in the case of shameful capital offenders, bogged, that negative energy had the potential of "reanimating" the corpse.

Such evil spirits where percieved, in regards to the afterlife, as being wretched... unaccepted in either the halls of the gods or the halls of the ancestors and forced to wander aimlessly through the worst regions of Hell.

Such spirits, like Grendel from Beowulf, experienced pain at the sounds of happiness from the living, and were regarded as being ravenously hungry for the "energy" of life... particularly as found in blood. Thus, why the preChristian priesthood was forbidden to draw blood or even handle edged weapons... which the province of a special sub-priest known to the Anglo-Saxons as the "blotere", who was charged to handle the taboos of animal sacrifice.

Additional safeguards had to be taken wit hthe onset of winter, at the end of October. It was beleived that with the coming of winter, the power of death began to permeate the world and the gates of Hell would swing open. It was also at the beginning of winter that the Anglo-Teutonics had to thin their herds of livestock... resulting in the spilling of much blood.

I could definitely see the spiirits of death, perhaps, taking an affront to the walking dead, as it is they who have power and control over them. Garm was placed to guard the Hellway, specifically to keep the land of the living and the land of the dead seperate, to a degree, and some tales speak of a great insurmountable wall that seperates the Middle Yard of men from Hell, the land of the dead.

Of course, at the Eddaic Ragnarok, Loki is supposed to lead a host of evil dead out of Niflehel, land of the shameful dead, but then, at the point of Ragnarok all boundaries and bonds are supposed to be sundered. And of course, the cycle of the Eddaic Raganrok might merely be a glorified version of beleif that originally had to do with the annual cycle of the year.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. Junderway might get cross with me, so I'll end it here. ;-)

"What I want to know is, why the guy with all the guns and ammo didn't start practicing his marksmanship skills on the parking lot dwellers."
As I recall, Jim's original concern was simply making sure his store was secure. Like the malldwellers, he figured it was just a matter of waiting for The Authorities to come to their rescue. Simply put, he didn't anticipate no one coming to the rescue before starvation occured.
The malldwellers suffered from a similar delusion and therefore waited far too long to devise a way to get food to Jim.
Of course the mall guards did not help anything by detaining and delaying the others.

Kinda funny that the survivors were extremely patient in the mall but in a hurry once they were on the road. They're racing through streets filled with debris and crashed cars???? And why the hurry once they were safe on the boat? Even if the other boats anchored away from the shore lacked food, there was still a chance of finding fishing gear.

Hmm... stray paleontological thought-- some CroMagnon corpses were found with the limbs bound after death by the surviving tribesmen. The thinking is that primitive man had developed the idea of undead pursuing the living so binding a coirpse was a prudent idea. One could retro-con this into Earth-Romero prehistory and suppose an ancient zombie plague actually did occur. It may have caused or was caused by the extinction of the Neanderthals. And when the carnage finally played out, the surviving CroMagnons now had a very important reason to preempt any zombie attack.

Ooooooooooh, I like this. A Jean Auel horro novel!

Late Stone Age graves in southern Scandinavia show similar signs of bound corpses and/or corpses with their heads severed... presumably measures taken to prevent the walking dead.

Interestingly, if somewhat tangently, regarding Garm's role as guardian of the Hellway, dog's had a nasty habit of digging up shallow graves, or seeking out the unburied, eg. battle dead, and eating corpses. Thus, why the Eddas describe his chest as matted with blood and gore?!

Hmm, Cromagnon man and a zombie plague......i smell background for my zombie campaign. A plague that was thought wiped out but comes back.....mind if i use that info, i wont hurt it much and you can have it back when im done?
;)