(Apologies in advance this is the wrong place for this thread...)

My wife and I like to pass the time with useless thought exercises, like coming up with a plausible real-world plan for the Zombie apocalypse. And we limit ourselves to 'science zombies' here because we don't believe in necromancy, per se, but 'could bigfoot exist' type stuff is totally fair game. Anyway, there's there's prison along one of our routes that seems like a better one that the one seen in The Walking Dead, so that got us going again. But this time we hit a bit of a logical snag when trying to resolve this question -

"Would cold, hard winters kill them off?"

Here's the issue with 'science zombies' - assuming that the zombie virus kills everything in the body except the nervous system, what happens next?

It explains the hunger well enough. The body wants to be repaired, and wants fuel. But without circulation, can they digest it at all? If so, do their bowels still function? What are their toilet habits like? Wouldn't they just go where they're standing? And if it was still meat wouldn't they just turn around and eat it again?

At a minimum I would expect their stomachs to overfill and burst.

And where are all the carrion feeders in all this?

So in short, I think all this puts 'science zombies' too far into a fantasy category to plan for, even just for fun.  There's huge gaps in the physiology of the concept.

What do you guys think?

I did a '10 rules' thread on viral zombies a while back.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=20289&highlight=Rules+Zombie

Sweet.

So what's your take on cold?

I could see a zombie surviving a carefully controlled freeze and thaw, but under typical outdoor conditions,  I think it'd kill them.

And do you have a 'why' for how they're not decomposing?  I rather assumed they were, if slowly.

They're already dead so cannot be killed by cold/heat. They can be frozen solid and then re-thaw - actually that'd be a cool little adventure right there. Sort of like The Thing From Outer Space. Body found in a lump of ice thaws out to become a nigh-unkillable spreader of the virus.

As for the whys, no i didn't put that much thought into it, it was more a justification of the viral zombie trope.

The idea of science zombies is laughable, even mechanically the equipment just is not physically there to motivate a cadaver after enough rot. Embrace the supernatural on this one would be my advice.

I did much the same thing when I was trying to develop a plot for a zombie movie trilogy I was writing. My explanation was that the virus was plant based and turned the person into a sort of mobile plant that fed off of meat. It wasn't compatible with other species so only infected humans. The desire for it to reproduce, therefore, justified it going after humans.

Then The Last of Us came out and stole my concept

Quote from: The_Rooster;679134Then The Last of Us came out and stole my concept

...the very best indicator of a great idea.

The fungal infection thing from Last of Us is actually the most "scientifically plausible" cause of zombification, as it was inspired by real life examples of parasitoidal fungi "zombifying" ants.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis - Wikipedia

(Fungi are not plants, by the way.)

Quote from: HombreLoboDomesticado;679361The fungal infection thing from Last of Us is actually the most "scientifically plausible" cause of zombification, as it was inspired by real life examples of parasitoidal fungi "zombifying" ants.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis - Wikipedia

(Fungi are not plants, by the way.)

and I thought the mold in my basement was scary.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;679474and I thought the mold in my basement was scary.

The "zombifying" fungus is pretty radical and it doesn't seem likely that humans could be affected in the same way as ants, but one never knows... My wife studied mycology and told me there's some pretty nasty stuff out there that makes your basement mold appear almost cute.

Another case of "zombification" from the insect world may also be of interest to gamers looking for ideas:

Apocephalus borealis - Wikipedia

These two examples of "zombie" insects convinced me that Deep7's lighthearted Buggin' RPG *can* be played as a horror game. :teehee: