• DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, the bite version just doesn’t play out, but if there’s one thing COVID has done it’s prove we’re toast if zombies can just cough on you.

      Side note: absolutely love when zombie survivors are covered in zombie blood and guts, scratched all to hell, wiping black corpse gunk out of their eyes, but it’s fine because they didn’t get bitten.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    If a zombie apocalypse ever happens

    I won’t be worrying about the zombies … I’ll be in more danger from other healthy people who will all be going bat shit insane and want to kill me, the neighbor and everyone else around for food and supplies because they all want to live five minutes longer than me.

    In the end the survivors will probably kill more survivors than the zombies will.

    • Hegar@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      In actual disasters people spontaneously self organize to help each other. That’s far and away the most common observed behavior.

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I’m indigenous from northern Ontario. My parents were born and raised in the wilderness and the first ten years of my life were partly spent on or near the wilderness.

        Yes people do help one another in times of need … but only if the people helping have a surplus to share. But when people are on their own without outside resources, food quickly becomes scarce.

        My parents and elders told me lots of stories of famine in the wilderness in the 40s and 50s. When everyone is hungry and everyone is facing death … people start doing some ugly things to one another … murder, sabotage, lying, cheating, stealing, abandoning children and just plain letting people die. Being an orphan back then was a death sentence for children. The elderly were on their own and just expected to die when they no longer could keep up.

        And that is just a thousands of years old traditional culture living in their normal environment.

        I can’t imagine what would happen to people living today if they suddenly had to face death, starvation and extreme poverty. The first hundred years would be a huge adjustment for humanity and after that I expect the survivors to be more like the hunter gatherers of North America like my ancestors … or those of ancient Europe.

    • WYLD_STALLYNS@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Exactly, I’ve spent my entire existence doing the right thing, the second it hits the fan I plan on going the Dexter route and letting loose and taking down the crazies.

  • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    A zombie outbreak would end in a few days by itself. In Africa, in a few hours.

    In the winter, between the cold destroying nerves and incapacitating movement and corpses getting waterlogged by rain, which would accelerate rot, zombies wouldn’t last long.

    In the heat, zombies would be quickly turned into maggot meals by every fly available. Add bloating from the heat and the entire situation would sort itself out quick and dirty.

    And let me just add another thought: our main advantage is our brains. Zombie crave for it but are not particularly known for using it. Any zombie trying to attack a wild animal would end up made in pieces. Bears would have a field day. Imagine the carnage by pigs and cows. A single wild boar would be capable of plowing through a horde. At some point, even dogs would turn feral and attack on sight any two legged figure.

    • Punkie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Zombies have a unique problem where their only means of reproduction are also their top predator and only food source.

      • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I’ve read authors where the virus is able to jump between host species.

        But given the classic approach, that is a problem.

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The threat of infection via parasite or latent virus would be scarier than a shambler

    • Hasuris@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      A walking dead version? Sure. 28 days later? Nah. If those fuckers run like that, we’d be done for.

      Yes I realize 28 days later technically has no zombies but it’s a more probable scenario to have a virus infect people and make them mad than actual corpses walking around.

      • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Confession: I do not like zombie movies or series. Too much eye candy, too much gore, too much too much.

        I do enjoy zombie/apocalypse like books.

        28 days later was where the infected acted like rabid mobs, running around in groups?

        If that was the case, a virus capable of super charging the aggression mechanism of an organism, two infected individuals would charge each other. If it’s agression based, pure, blind, agression would end itself by being too successful. Even if a groups of individuals somehow managed to maintain some sort of group mentality, any prey would be rendered to pieces. End of the line, no spreading.

        • Hasuris@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Yes that’s 28 days later. But they made them only act aggressively towards noninfected. So supercharged zombies in a way but they’d die after some time without food.

          • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            I won’t assert it as fact but I think rabid animals can’t distinguish between healthy and infected individuals. If not, the infected would just tear each other apart. It’s a desease; group instinct requires higher cognitive capability.

            And our bodies can last for about 3 weeks without food, assuming we are doing our best to conserve energy. Again, last 28 days and your chances of surviving go up.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Zombies might be a threat for the first days or weeks. People aren’t used to killing, especially not things that look human, especially things that might look like a friend or family member. People would hesitate, or screw up, or think they were safe, or whatever.

    But, after a short time people would either learn to fight zombies, or they’d become zombies.

    Good zombie fiction isn’t really about the zombies, it’s about the breakdown of society. Bad zombie fiction has people still fighting zombies multiple years after the outbreak started.

    The thing I wish you’d see sometimes in zombie fiction is no zombies. Like, a few months after the outbreak, a group of humans completely eliminates 100% of the zombies from a big island or peninsula so people within that area can live normally. It might require killing a million zombies, but that’s only 1000 zombies each by 1000 people. That’s only about 30 zombies a day for a month per person, which should be pretty easy for a dedicated, competent zombie killer. Instead, the most you get is a small walled town with countless zombies on the walls.

    It just makes no sense that you typically see every survivor killing dozens of zombies per hour every day and they don’t seem to be making a dent in the local zombie population.

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      If you.hqvent read the stand, you should. It’s excellent.

      It’s not zombies but a flu, but the “breakdown” and then the “after” are as you describe.

  • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    i remember there’s one popular piece of zombie apocalypse media that portrays it more like it would actually go down: people just briskly walk away from the zombies and the only threat actually posed is that you can’t really stop for a long time nor truly relax.

  • unalivejoy@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    What, you expect the military to do extensive zombie outbreak war games and not be prepared for a zombie outbreak? smh

  • rtxn@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Did we all collectively forget that far too many Americans were willing to spread a deadly illness, deny its existence, spread conspiracy shit about the vaccine, and host literal mask-not-allowed COVID parties, while people were dying as their lungs melted, just to oWn ThE LIbS?

    Even the best military response can’t defeat the collective willful stupidity of citizens.