Basically this is one giant spoiler

I kind of wish Axel had survived the Prison.

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I hope there is never ever a notation after my name that reads, “Presumably eaten.” Unless it’s followed in parentheses by “(By bears.) (Just like she always wanted.)”

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I stopped reading after issue 5. I can not conceive how the world can fall to Zombies.. especially slow moving, stupid zombies.

Its like losing a war to senior citizens who rely on walkers.

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When I was a kid, I always used to do charts like this about who was a current Avenger. Do things like that exist on line somewhere?

To Zenrage – the “world” (just the US it seems) falling to slow moving stupid zombies is surely a comment on the passivity of most people? Those who fell early failed to take responsibility for themselves and relied on others (“the government”) to protect them.

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Well jdR, it would take a fictional apocalypse for the right wing-wing libertarians to finally be right about anything.

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Actually, they did mathematical simulations and unless the zombie infection is caught very early, the whole “infect the living” turns out to be effective. Humanity is doomed. (Unless their assumptions in the math are wrong.)

http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf

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doc, those assumptions are way off

First it assumes that in a conflict between zombie and a human, that everything is equal – resources, intelligence and wit. This is obviously not the case. Not even visually. As far as the ability to pick them out of a line-up, zombies rank somewhere between Nazi gestapo and Killer Klowns from outer space. As Bill Murray found out, you pretty much have to go out of your way to dress like one in order to be confused for one.

Second, it assumes other people will not intervene with the zombie hordes and only wait to be attacked and that anyone who dies by zombie attack becomes a zombie.

Third, it assumes that zombies can infect faster than they can be killed. This is wrong. Zombies, like everything else they do, kill slowly. George Romero zombies can only grab, tear and bite. and once they bite into something, they usually don’t stop biting until they’ve had their fill of brains and other organs. And if one zombie makes a kill, that will not stop other zombies from stopping to have their fill of that same person.

This third assumption also contradicts with their second assumption. If zombies eat their victims and tear them apart, the victim can no longer be effective zombies. The only way a person can be turned into an effective zombie is if they are attacked, bitten, and either was able to get away or had other people intervene.

This also assumes that the people who intervene don’t have the sense to put the bitten person out of their misery immediately and either burn or behead the corpse immediately.

They also will chase down individual people in large numbers. This is not efficient tactical behavior. Not to mention that zombies will each, individually continue to give chase regardless of what happens to other zombies.

If a person came across a mob of a few dozen zombies, it would be all too easy to lead said mob across a football field laced with landmines and gunmen in the stands getting them in their crossfire.

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Zenrage,

Something to consider re: the impossibility of a zombie apocalypse is that, even in most zombie movies, the situation rarely devolves into an every-man-for-himself scenario. For instance, in Night of the Living Dead (both the original and the remake), a citizens’ militia quickly rounded itself up and started taking out zombies pretty well on their own; the situation only looked so bleak because the movie was told from the perspective of one group of isolated and bone-ignorant survivors. Even when the zombies are fast, as in 28 Days Later, the devastation was confined to England (and NEVER spread to the rest of Europe in the sequel, because that movie DID NOT HAPPEN). Hell, even in the “Living Dead” series, where the zombies are not only fast, but SMART, and even tougher to kill, the zombie rampages are pretty much limited to small towns or small groups of people, and the zombies themselves quickly wind up getting contained by the military. Finally, in “World War Z,” where the zombie plague does spread to the entire globe and seriously threatens the survival of the human race, the zombies are ultimately put down and humanity adapts.

Zombie situations like The Walking Dead are outliers, in other words. Plus, as ChimpZ pointed out, the zombies there have a decided edge in that anyone who dies, for whatever reason, becomes a zombie. Also, in the series it’s pretty clear that the zombies don’t follow the rules you’d expect in terms of decaying or freezing in the winter. I dunno what rules they *do* follow, but they’ve got enough in their favor that I think the situation in that series is plausible, given what’s been shown about the zombies. (Also, as the series points out time and time again, the biggest danger to the survivors isn’t the *zombies*, but *the other survivors.*)

Cheers,
–misterguy

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