Let's take a break from the goofy-ass shit that passes for our so-called national discourse, shall we?
Cracked online posted yet another of their absolutely wonderful lists, this one being near and dear to my heart. The call it, 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly). Let's be clear here. Their reasons are not scientific. They are assumptions based on observation and known behavior of corpses. please read the whole thing, and then we can continue.
Done? Good. Let's treat with them one at a time.
1) Natural predators. Not so convincing. Many carnivores prefer fresh meat, and those that don't require such (save avians) tend to be in limited numbers. Also, it's never made any sense in the Zombie mythology that they would only eat human flesh. If one examines zombies as simply a bipedal carnivorous machine, many of the drawbacks that hinder humans in self-defense against predation disappear. We spend the first many years of our lives learning to control our natural strength; hence primates half our size appear much stronger than we are. Remove those controls, and you have a pretty dreadful diminutive form of the incredible Hulk. Now multiply those numbers ... The insect argument also holds water only so long as onme assumes natural order for a creature that is by defination, not of nature.
2) Heat. I've had a dead pig explode on me before, so I have some emotional sympathy for this one. But again, it assumes that death process is natural for something that defies the death process by definition.
3) Cold. This one has teeth, but still suffers from the same assumptions as number two. Internal heat can be generated by a variety of sources, and zombies aren't imagined as big lizards. Something animates them, and there are no guarantees of a cold constitution.
4) Biting as a spread agent. I like this one, and it has played out in movies before. Sentimentality, affection and concern all lead to the spread of disease because zombies are (or were) us. It's not that difficult to believe that biting (saliva) could be an effective agent of spread among a species which so embraces itself. Rabies spreads pretty effectively among a species population; so it isn't that difficulty to see another such plague spread equally well. The STD analogy just doesn't work here. I can bite a co-worker a whole lot easier than I can convince one to have sex, especially if I'm drooling and muttering "Braaains!".
5) Healing. Again, a fair complaint, based on the assumption of current biology working in a creature who's existence is defied by all known biology.
6) Landscape. Fair but pretty pointless. In the milieu of zombie presentation, there is no consistency concerning their intelligence, or lack thereof. They obviously recognize food from not-food, which is completely ridiculous given their obvious appetite for the 'long pork'. So, they couldn't recognize a drop from a rise? I'm not buying it.
7) This one is spot on and to the point. Not one bio-infestation on this space rock has ever been as good at the killing as Homo Sapiens. We think about it, we plan for it, we plan to plan for it. We build monolithic structures to our ability to eradicate. We are one nasty ass bunch of bipedal hominids, far worse than any corpse that dug itself from the grave. That was the view of Romero, (hallowed be his name). It was also the view of Max Brooks in his definitive description of the Zombie Apocalypse, World War Z. Brooks only got one thing wrong. He posited that, having come to the conclusion that we in America faced total war, our leadership would pull back to the defensible position of Hawaii. No. He need look no further than the Rockie Mountains. The Western third of the US would be clear of dead-walkers faster than you could say"do you hand load or buy factory?" The American South wouldn't likely be far behind us. What Cracked also got wrong is the role of the military. Unit cohesion and ROE would spread infection, and keep the military from a large initial role. After that, it's a corpse fest.
Strangely, this latest listing from Cracked seems to conflict with an earlier one, 5 Scientific Reasons A Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen. Go ahead and read that; I'll wait.
Done? Good. Notice, most of those postulations stand against the latter screed about corpse behavior. But there's a missing link there. Waaaay on back in 1954, an author by the name of Richard Matheson wrote a book he called I Am Legend. Now in that book, the 'antagonists' were Vampires. (Yes I do use the word ironically, given the point of the book and it's title.) They were not albino Satanists, or daylight hating animagus, as other movies have pretended. The undead were brought back to life by a bacillus, a bacteriological infection which sealed the pores and imbued the walking dead with a hunger for human blood. It was a parasitic form of life which defied most of what Cracked's 'scientific' complaints espouse. The behavior that we're talking about here is very much like the 'nano-bot' threat level that Cracked rates as OH SHIT!. That could well be the Zombie Apocalypse. And if it happens ...
Amanda Marcotte took a day off from railing against anti-feminists and looked at the Zombie issue as any rational person would. Her conclusion is brilliant. The stupidest thing of all about visions of the Zombie takeover is that resources would be scarce. Think about it. Everything Zombies need is contained within their shambling shells. But everything we Homo Sapien Killer Monkeys need is now unprotected, unclaimed and available for the grabbing. I agree with her. When If the Zombie Apocalypse happens, guns, ammo and food will be the least of my worries.
