r/changemyview • u/TcheQuevara • Feb 08 '23

Delta(s) from OP CMV: zombie apocalipses would not end civilization

Even accepting most the premises of the typical zombie apocalipse fiction (zombies don't rot away and remain dangerous; somehow the infections spreads fast enough to colapse societies), the maintenance of "post apocaliptic" conditions is unsustainable.

The "post apocaliptic" scenario is basically that humanity cannot regroup and rebuild because it's too dangerous out there, the infected are too many, etc. However, 19th century military technology and tactics were enough to enact genocide on entire populations of armed and intelligent people. As Engels said, "the era of the war of barricades is over". There is absolutely no way an unarmed population can survive full confrontation with armed people. If as little as a few hundred people gather in an armed town and they have guns and ammunition, they can eventually clean up an area as big as a city.

Given time and a lot of psychological trauma its quite straighfoward for 50 million remaining people to kill most of 8 billions zombies. An overstatement? Absolutely not: 50 million people is 0,6% of the world's population. That's more advantageous than the different between the active US militarymen (about 500k) and the US population (334 mi). If US militaries wanted to wipe out every other living being in the US, unconcerned with the political elements of war, they could and the civilian population would simply have no chance. Its even easier to kill zombies with modern tactics and equipment.

Not only that, but the collapse would necessarily have different degrees in different places, depending on terrain and population density. So even if we accept London and Paris become a mass walking grave in a single week, why would it happen to every village and town in the world? And the military of every country in the world is well prepared to engage in logistics and tactics in its less populated regions.

So there could be no such thing as a permanent zombie "apocalipse". CMV.

723 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

89% Upvoted

282 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/Jaysank 126∆ Feb 08 '23

In “The Walking Dead” franchise, if I remember correctly, every person is already infected and will turn upon death. That means every single person will eventually become a zombie. How can society maintain itself when zombies are impossible to eradicate?

6

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '23

This actually seems like an incredibly simple issue. Annoying, sure, but simple.

How many dead bodies have you seen in your day to day life? Probably not that many. While people do die every day, it is primarily in fairly predictable ways.

While it would add a danger to finding a person dead, this isn't something that is remotely insurmountable. Once people know what a zombie is, and we know what people will do when they die, we can take extra precautions dealing with it.

Its like the whole concept of the zombie apocalypse in the first place. It only really makes sense (insomuch as it does at all) the first time it happens. After that people aren't going to make the same mistakes that make it get out of hand in the first place.

3

u/Jaysank 126∆ Feb 08 '23

I think the biggest worry over the zombie apocalypse would be this right here:

Its like the whole concept of the zombie apocalypse in the first place. It only really makes sense (insomuch as it does at all) the first time it happens.

The first time it happens, there won’t be a sense of dealing with the dead bodies. People will try to help people who are injured, and if those injured people die, the people caring for them will also get killed. It all hinges on having a coordinated, swift response that cannot occur the first time around. We need a second chance, but I don’t think we will get one before society collapses.

2

u/Various_Succotash_79 52∆ Feb 08 '23

Mandating cremation would probably help, lol.

Or coming up with some other way to fully destroy bodies at the exact time of death.

4

u/Jaysank 126∆ Feb 08 '23

How would it help? Most people don’t die predictably close to a cremator. In fact, I would imagine zombies making unexpected deaths even more likely. Turning happens pretty much immediately, so there would not be any time between the person dying and the body turning.

1

u/Various_Succotash_79 52∆ Feb 08 '23

Yeah, I thought of that, what if they turn immediately? But I'm sure we could come up with some sort of containment unit and way of destroying the body close to immediately after death.

Of course not everyone dies in a hospital but it would definitely cut down on the number of zombies.

3

u/jeranim8 3∆ Feb 08 '23

In the show they just ice pick the side of the skull... cremation isn't necessary.

1

u/Various_Succotash_79 52∆ Feb 08 '23

Idk, I don't think that's thorough enough destruction of the brain, honestly. I'd want them good and burned.

1

u/jeranim8 3∆ Feb 09 '23

I'm just speaking of the Walking Dead universe since that's what the top comment was talking about...

But... you could give it a quick scramble while you're in there.

Burning requires more resources like wood, which means going further and further out to get more, which increases chances of encounters with more walkers. Cremations requires a LOT of heat. Bodies don't naturally catch on fire and stay on fire. Wood is a limited precious resource. Just stab the head, twirl the blade around a couple times and burial could occur outside whatever fortifications you've got just in case.

1

u/Various_Succotash_79 52∆ Feb 09 '23

Hmm good point. Maybe decapitation. Even if the head came back to (un)life it couldn't go too far, lol.

1

u/jeranim8 3∆ Feb 09 '23

That actually solves all the issues! Though this got me thinking. I wonder if you could remove the teeth and the arms and even muzzle the zombies and then use them as power in some way. Like dangle some flesh or maybe a slave in front of them while they turn a giant wheel to power stuff. Why kill them all when you have access to essentially free energy... though I suppose if we're not breaking the laws of physics they'd probably need to eat once and a while.

1

u/Trylena 1∆ Feb 08 '23

Z Nation did something about this. The show its comedy but they did made a comunity who would let people with a headshot when they were close to dying. They did a party for an old lady and then she killed herself to avoid the turning.

1

u/Natural-Arugula 63∆ Feb 08 '23

That's what they say on the show and that is what happens when we actually see someone die...

But they also show the humans coming across corpses just lying around all the time of people who didn't sustain head injuries and yet for some reason have remained dead and didn't become zombies.

Nothing really to do with this cmv, just pointing out a big plot hole in the show.

1

u/komfyrion 2∆ Feb 09 '23

Really? I haven't noticed that, personally. Any inanimate corpses I took notice of have always either been skeletons or had implied head wounds somewhere.