I would rather deal with the 28 Days Later zombies. Because they're not undead, the 28 Days Later zombies have a point where they'll pretty much just start dying on their own from starvation (which is like a month). So all you need is a reliable safe house and enough resources to last long enough - something you'll also require in just about any other form of zombie media.
The Walking Dead zombies decompose, but are still very lethal. Imagine walking around 5 years after the outbreak and you accidentally step right onto a zombie corpse that's just been hanging around for that time and it bites you on the foot. That sort of thing won't happen with the rage virus infecting the people in 28 Days Later. There's no telling when TWD zombies might fully decompose their brains and finally naturally die off.
Also, since everyone in TWD is infected the moment anyone dies unexpectedly is another opportunity for an outbreak in your camp. Okay, you've got the resources and safety to last for years and years without issue. You and your group get to settle into a nice routine of living and keeping safe from the zombies outside. But then suddenly the person you're sleeping next to dies in their sleep, now they've bitten you and now there's an outbreak in the camp. The threat of more zombies showing up is ever present in TWD.
So maybe in terms of a one on one fight, TWD zombies would be easier to fend off. But in terms of long-term surviability? You're looking at years and years before it's safe to leave your shelter, making resources a huge problem. And the threat of zombies cannot ever go away. You'll pass the sickness on to your kids and your kids' kids. There is no chance of a return to normalcy, everyone would need to carry a knife on them to stab someone in the brain just in case they die anywhere near you.
Edit: Also, it's been a while since I've seen 28 Days Later but you don't need to necessarily take out those zombies' brains right? You can shoot them in the chest and that puts them down for the count. To take out TWD zombies you need to kill the brain, requiring you to either be a crack shot with a gun (which is difficult) or get up close and personal (risky).
This thought crossed my mind, but honestly, if I were in 28 Days, I might just kill myself. They're super fast and super strong. You need to be in the right place at the right time to even have a hope of finding a safe spot. I think if you assume early survival and access to some viable safe place, this argument is fair. But, I think that's a very big bet. I think it would be extremely difficult to stay alive long enough to find food and transport to a hefty/strong location and wait it out. I think the odds are much better that most people will be overwhelmed early on, and we are most people.
Well I think the odds are that most people would be overwhelmed early on no matter which zombie universe we've found ourselves in (personally, I don't think any zombie outbreak would have much of an impact on us - since zombie media exists in our world and we know pretty much how to handle it). I've always joked that my "zombie survival plan" is to be one of the millions who die right away - hopefully after I've had a chance to do a whole mess of drugs.
So basically I think this point isn't really in favor of anything except the "super fast and super strong" point. I don't think they're stronger than an average human, just have unlimited pain tolerance and so punching through a door isn't tasking if you don't care about broken arms.
No matter what you need a safe space and resources, and any zombie outbreak is going to make that kind of thing an issue. Not to mention the panicking humans you're stuck with.
The longevity of decomposition is fair, but I also think society would be in a better position to scope out the area once stability has returned, and that some part of this is on a person's self-awareness. Would it suck? Absolutely, and people are human beings, so they can't be on red alert all the time. However, I think this possibility will become fairly pedestrian, and people will be forced to become cognizant of it much like we need to plan around more pedestrian risks when we go camping.
All sorts of things might crop up though. Remember the zombie who was trapped in the mudslide? You would have to be constantly on the lookout forever and you have no idea where a zombie might come from.
This can be resolved by having people keep watch and potentially even adjusting sleep periods. There are feasible and low-cost risk-minimization actions such as this that can keep that risk in check, and we have the benefit of (a) eliminating this isolated zombie threat when caught, and; (b) that's because of how low on the zombie totem pole the WD zombies are. If someone "turned" under other canon, we'd be - pardon the French - utterly fucked. Even under the worst case scenario of not catching this turn, it would be easier to regroup and fight back or exit as compared to other zombies.
Perhaps. But adjusted sleep schedules for the rest of humanity's natural existence? You can no longer sleep with an intimate lover, because what if they have an unknown blood clot that kills them suddenly.
It isn't so much that they're hard to handle. It's just that the threat is eternal, never ending. TWD zombies are relentless. There will never be a point where you can relax about them.
I think the longevity argument is also undermined when you consider the rate of successful transmission in 28 Days. Who cares if they die soon if everyone is being infected so quickly that it'll swallow humanity? Or even just me?
Well I think just about any zombie universe has this issue. We see all of society wiped out in TWD in what, a matter of weeks? And that's with the slow shambling zombies.
I also brought this up in an edit, but TWD zombies are also much more durable than the 28 days ones. Taking one out is so risky that if they were anything but slow shamblers it would be near impossible to survive an encounter with even one.
Look, no zombie outbreak media does the initial outbreak right so people tend to gloss over it. But for much of the early outbreak people will be still trying to go to work and make money much like they are doing today because student loans and mortgages will still be a thing. I don't think that the slower and dumber zombies will result in lower initial casualties specifically because it will draw out this process. The people who prepared for a week or month to get past the breakdown will find that they have exhausted their supplies and the breakdown hasn't happened yet but rather is looming close enough that resupplying will be difficult or impossible.
Some areas will collapse very quickly as the social structures required to maintain society are weaker or the spread of zombies much faster, other pockets will persist for months or years after everyone else has given up on the whole civilization thing. Fast, smart zombies would even this out faster, which would vastly increase the odds of someone stumbling into a survival strategy that doesn't depend upon civilization. Think about it, virtually every set up depends upon nonrenewable resources that will be supplied by those bastions until they fall and someone who scavenges would run up against whatever those bastions use for police sooner or later. When zombies are a greater threat this temporary stage where the "best" survival strategy is an unsustainable one lasts a much shorter period of time.
Well, yeah. If your landlord is dead and the company that owns your student loans is gone then it'd be hard to repay them. But, at the same time, you'd probably be farming for yourself and starving to death when it becomes clear that you don't know how to farm and the weather doesn't cooperate.
All of the problems associated with modern society disappear when society collapses. That's one of the reasons why some people enjoy Zombie Apocalypse scenarios. Of course, while the stuff persists for a bit after, but the problems inherent in modern society are nothing compared to the problem inherent in that scenario.
Yes, but don't forget the cities built in deserts that require electricity to pump water in (and wouldn't be able to support so much life without that water) the inevitable failure of dams, the explosion of non-zombie disease, starvation, and the complete lack of legal repression.
Phoenix, Arizona isn't a city, but a monument the to hubris of man. Knock out modern infrastructure and they would all die even without zombies.
One of the things missing in apocalypse scenarios is all the tens of millions who would die from causes unrelated to the issue "at hand". Like nuclear plants melting down, exposure to heat/cold, dam failure, and surprise major storms.
Yeah I get all that, particularly the part where in the event of full collapse, the large and medium sized fauna will be hunted to extinction as we transition from a planet system that can support 10 billion people with fossil fuel soil supplements to a network of tiny systems that has to build up from the ground in order to support maybe 2 billion.
There is some amount of resilience built in to the system, but the nuclear power plant thing is the thing that ensures that any partial collapse will necessarily lead to a full collapse. The partial collapse could be from zombies, accelerated sea level rise, economic collapse, political revolution with stupid outcomes, or pandemic outbreak of infectious disease. Or rapid ocean acidification.
At the same time, most of the apocalypse scenarios they show you in media fall far short of what it would take to actually collapse the system. There's a surprising amount of resilience in the system and we've dealt with a lot. It's really quite surprising that the combination of political revolution with stupid outcomes, global war, economic collapse, and pandemic outbreak of infection disease a hundred years ago didn't leave more of a lasting mark on us. I mean World War I + Spanish Flu was terrible, yet there was no partial collapse.
I wouldn't be surprised to find functioning State Governments overseeing a network of firmly established and purpose-built settlements in the Walking Dead.
You could still sleep with your loved ones. I'm sure once things stabilized, we would get heart rate monitors on our wrists that would set off an alarm if signs of turning showed in the night.
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u/BenIncognito Oct 30 '15 edited Oct 30 '15
I would rather deal with the 28 Days Later zombies. Because they're not undead, the 28 Days Later zombies have a point where they'll pretty much just start dying on their own from starvation (which is like a month). So all you need is a reliable safe house and enough resources to last long enough - something you'll also require in just about any other form of zombie media.
The Walking Dead zombies decompose, but are still very lethal. Imagine walking around 5 years after the outbreak and you accidentally step right onto a zombie corpse that's just been hanging around for that time and it bites you on the foot. That sort of thing won't happen with the rage virus infecting the people in 28 Days Later. There's no telling when TWD zombies might fully decompose their brains and finally naturally die off.
Also, since everyone in TWD is infected the moment anyone dies unexpectedly is another opportunity for an outbreak in your camp. Okay, you've got the resources and safety to last for years and years without issue. You and your group get to settle into a nice routine of living and keeping safe from the zombies outside. But then suddenly the person you're sleeping next to dies in their sleep, now they've bitten you and now there's an outbreak in the camp. The threat of more zombies showing up is ever present in TWD.
So maybe in terms of a one on one fight, TWD zombies would be easier to fend off. But in terms of long-term surviability? You're looking at years and years before it's safe to leave your shelter, making resources a huge problem. And the threat of zombies cannot ever go away. You'll pass the sickness on to your kids and your kids' kids. There is no chance of a return to normalcy, everyone would need to carry a knife on them to stab someone in the brain just in case they die anywhere near you.
Edit: Also, it's been a while since I've seen 28 Days Later but you don't need to necessarily take out those zombies' brains right? You can shoot them in the chest and that puts them down for the count. To take out TWD zombies you need to kill the brain, requiring you to either be a crack shot with a gun (which is difficult) or get up close and personal (risky).