Zombie Question? 💋 (1290 views, 85 replies)

This is from a past forum of mine but I thought of 2 newer movies that keeps my confusion on this topic going. Which I will list at the bottom.

I have a question for zombie lovers. Don't get me wrong I love TWD and I love the 28 days/weeks movies. But zombie genre isn't my favorite horror sub genre. Anyways my question is? I don't get how the theory of how zombies work?? How come they eat some people and some they just bite which in turn turns them into a zombie. Even on TWD Rick's wife's body was consumed by a walker after she gave birth and the son shot her in the head, it showed it sitting with bloated belly. I mean is there any rhyme or reason why this isn't ever explained. I like the 28 days movies bc it is more of a "rage" virus and it spreads immediately after being bitten. So the zombie in it are more biting, hitting etc. But the rest of zombie movies they want to bite and feed on you. They need brains as sustenance. I mean you have werewolf genre they bite and if interrupted in attack they will run off and you are left bitten so you will also change during full moons. With vampires they either drain you dry or they turn you by choice.
So I was just wondering if this zombie issue bothers anyone else??
Thanks everybody.....I love you all smiley

(Sorry for the spoilers captions but don't want to spoil movies if you haven't seen it yet)
Patient zero
dosmovies.com/watch_movie/Patient_Zero_2....
The zombies kill but still just bite some. Stanley tucci is bitten and becomes a zombie and [SPOILER] keeps his intelligence but decided to brutally kill and eat his family who admits that he had loved[and/spoiler]

The Cured
dosmovies.com/watch_movie/The_Cured/?ref....
In this one it is the same kind of dilemma I have as in Patient Zero
Conner [spoiler] actually chooses Senan to bite instead of eating ...

Again I was wondering if this conundrum gets to any other horror buffs!

Teeny💋
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Oops part of the end was deleted somehow probably by me.
The other movie is

The Cured
dosmovies.com/watch_movie/The_Cured/?ref....
In this was Conner actually[SPOILER] picks Senan to make into a zombie but kills most everyone else

Teeny💋

Here's another zombie conundrum that puzzles me as well.

If zombies are sposta be brain eaters, how come they never seem to crack open a cold one once they're dead and do so? 'Course the next problem would be if they did eat their brains, the victim wouldn turn since killin their brains is also the only way to kill a zombie.

i won't bore you with the old superstitious voodoo crap, we're talking the much cooler zombies or living dead from George Romero and onward. Night of the Living Dead never made an absolute conclusion as to what was bringing back the dead; they suggested it might have come down from a returning Venusian space probe, but that was never made certain. in any case, the overall cause was something unknown that permeated everywhere. the original Dawn of the Dead introduced the pathology of some infection that occurs when people are bitten, and most films of the genre have followed suit ever since; probably because it made more sense than something unknown, and a little scarier because nobody wants to get bit.
unless they specifically tell the audience about another cause, as in Night of the Comet (1984, radiation and only the living were affected, the dead stayed dead) or Zombie (1979, a witch doctors curse), the consensus is usually a biological infection that caused it.
... i think this genre has become largely a parable of humanity and how people can either unite or disperse on their own during crisis situations. same for the huge alien invasion movies. the genre always had a thread of this until The Walking Dead came along and hit people over the head with it. the topic has been done to death so much, which i think is why people are going in these weird directions now, with zombie co-workers dating and stuff interesting ideas but the filmmakers aren't obligating themselves to the traditional standards of zombiedom per se, just enough to tell the story they wanted to.
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I'm way more into the 28 days later/rage virus type of movies. I was never a huge fan of the mindless shufflers. The way I always figured the zombie virus was spread was if someone just got bit but got away. The zombie would eat you entirely if given the chance, but sometimes the zombie is killed or the person simply escapes--only to turn into a zombie shortly thereafter.

Different zombie movies play by different rules. So I don't think there is any definitive answer to any Zombie related question lol

The first Zombie movie 'White Zombie' was way back in 1932 - and that was a voodoo master making slaves to do his bidding. Zombie superstition and myths of slavery after death can be trace back hundreds of years.

Between Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (its first screenplay was called 'The Last Man on Earth' and starred Vincent Price) and Romero's Night of the Living Dead is where we first really get to see zombies as we know them today.
Romero's early Z's are probably the most closely related to TWD universe really, since you don't have to be bitten to be reanimated after death.

Zombie don't need to eat, they have no working digestive system. Doctor Logan (Dr. Frankenstein) in Romero's '85 Day of the Dead tries to explain it a little.
They only have small sections of their brain reanimated.
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The motor cortex: Makes them move
The sensory cortex: Sight, sound, smell
The hypothalamus: Gives them the impulse to eat

Nowhere in Romero's zombie world do they eat brains. First mention of brains was in Return of the Living Dead in '85 (not connected with Romero)

Romero zombies also used tools, had some memory and from Day of the Dead onwards, showed more and more cognitive abilities.

I'm not so much a purest, but 28 Days are infected, not dead. They starve to death in about 5 weeks.

In the original World War Z there are parts that talk about the zombies eating so much their bellies split open, spilling their own guts as well as what ever they'd eaten.

Patient Zero is just another step in the evolution of trying to bring something new to the genre.
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Thanks a lot for your suggestions! of course I am going to consider them, I want to know the origins of zombies ;)

consider if you will World War Z ... the zombies only purpose was to spread the infection to healthy hosts, not really about eating.

The whole attraction I get for TWD is in the study of how humans react to such an overwhelming new world brought about by the zombie apocalypse.

Its study of a different view of humanity and really how we are all driven to survive, sometimes with total disregard of our fellow humans is fairly spot on in my view.

Though I hope humanity never has to face a similar societal breakdown on such a level, if it ever were to happen it seems like we'd see far too many Governors and Megans.

The criteria doesn't bug me because every director makes their versions different.

It's really impossible to come up with a standard set of rules for zombies with there being so many different movies/series/books and so many different writers/directors/creators etc. Each movie/series/book is really gonna have it's own set of rules.

I have no suggestion for the original question, but as it's about Zombies I have something that bothers me about TWD.
I don't get why they are still walking and have not rotted away. I know new ones are made, but the 'herds' are clearly remaining from the original outbreak (or whatever it was) just because there are so many of them. And occasionally you do see one that's pretty much falling apart and unable to even stand.. so why not all of them? Especially considering how long it's been, and the last series jumped a few years into the future as well.

The one thing all zombie movies really have in common is showing us that humans are morons lol.

I said in another thread about the new Black Summer Netflix series that zombies act as just the catalyst. They could be anything... spiders, robots, ravenous bugblatter beasts of Traal. It's more about how we react/interact with those still living.

This is what Romero had in mind for Night of the Living Dead. You don't see much zombie action at all really. It is mostly survivors arguing and bickering about who should be boss and whose idea is better. Only when a common enemy shows up is everyone on the same side. That enemy could be zombies or another person/group. As soon as that enemy is defeated, we go back to squabbling.

TWD plays this out every single season. There are very few Z movies/shows where that formula doesn't play out.

I agree with Jane, zombies are quite ridiculous lol. But they aren't any more ridiculous than a werewolf, vampire or poltergeist.

Ok one other thing that bothers me but not on the same exact subject but does had be to do with zombies:
One of my favorite Horrors, Houses October Built. In it Mike Roe who is also director, writer and plays himself in the movie, says to his brother "there are no movies where a zombie shoots a gun"! I can't believe he says that as someone who boasts film school, is a director of a horror film and horror lover. He should know in Land of the Dead a zombie watches humans and learns to shoot a gun! I'm sorry I'm a horror movie snob and Everytime we watch that movie my husband and I are yelling at the TV your wrong! I do love the 2 HOB movies but he is my least favorite character in them.
I really just had to get that off my chest...lol. They are still great movies.

dosmovies.com/watch_movie/The_Houses_Oct....

dosmovies.com/watch_movie/The_Houses_Oct....

dosmovies.com/watch_movie/Land_of_the_De....
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Teeny💋💋
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I want to thank everyone for contributing and just having fun with this forum. It has really been enjoyable seeing everyone respond to this. I hope you all enjoyed the conversations as well. Any other thoughts, opinions it comments....keep them coming!

You all made my day with your responses.

Your friend
Teeny💋💋💋💋💋💋

Zombies of any sort are highly illogical.

Wade Davis was an ethnobotanist and traveled to Haiti and claims he met with Voodon practioners who gave him a compound they had devised.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Dav...

This compound allegedly acted as a hypnotic agents (see anethesiology and drugs) which is typically given to prevent patients from remembering should they wake from surgery. Meanwhile this substance was supposed to act to suppressed normal behavior and allow a form of subservience and thus a zombie was merely a heavily drugged person.

According to the legends, a Voodon practioner would drug the person so deeply that it caused intense respiratory depression so others presume the person is dead. Then after burial, give an antidote, the Voodun practioner extracts them from the coffin and enslaves the by repeated dosing.

Now in film/tv there are two main immediate issues besides many others.

For your body to work, human beings consume food AND oxygen. The food is digested into simpiler elements through acids and enzymes. Proteins become amino acids. These then go through the citric acid cycle and undergo oxidative phosphorolation.
... en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_a...

Your mitochondria are required to function and use oxygen for this process to work. And that results in ATP which is adenosine triphosphate. That is the actual main energy unit of the body to do work. Glycolosis does a tiny fraction.

In the TWD show, zombies don't breathe. That means there is no intake of oxygen and no release of carbon dioxide. This means they have no way to create energy to do work.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical...

Besides this HUGE issue, zombies' brains don't function except allegedly the thalmus. Were that so, then NOTHING would work on the cortical homunculus. Look at the diagram in the link. Zombies could not smell, bite, walk, grasp,move their arms, or see. Ever if they could breath and make ATP, they would be helpless and comatose.

Additionally zombies never seem to rot/decay yet human beings are full of bacteria, particularly LETHAL anerobic gut bacteria. In death this speeds decay. Between that and flies, massive systemic infection would result in death.

And then massive septicemia in the blood and lymph, hemorhage, and cardiac arrest. Not to mention zombies should be dehydrated, never control water intake to restore fluid loss and total blood volume and never make new red blood cells, various white blood cells for infection, plus platelets.

There is no clotting cascade that is functional thus they should bleed to death just like any hemophiliac.

Most people don't know this, but the opthalmic artery is tiny. That means as soon as there is loss of blood pressure, the first thing to fail is eyesight. Even if everything else worked, since zombies don't drink water, then they could not maintain blood pressure and so would all be blind.

After 3 days with no water, most cannot function and slip into unconsciousness. Under rare conditions when totally sedentary, one might last seven days without water, but be horribly weak to point of respiratory failure. There are a couple of rare cases where under extreme cold, people survived longer than seven days.
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Zombies in film and in myth were derived from the very real fear of Haitians that they would return to a political state of slavery and oppression. That fear persisted all across Voodon (an outgrowth of African beliefs inserted into Roman Catholicism ie syncretism.

The Voodun shaman threatens with a power once held by of European ancestry.

The central theme therefore is the loss of free will and is related to demonic possession as some oppressive force perverting the natural state of freedom through autonomy and self-determination.

George Romero took the old theme and turned into a political commentary on American consumerism. Zombies are the end result of capitalism where people mindlessly buy things they don't need and for no reason. They are the ultimate dumbed down beings who eat food they cannot digest and keep doing so, shambling around creating new mindless zombies in an endless cycle.

TWD is clueless entertainment made for those who are oblivious to the original themes.
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Consider not only the ignorance of the medical aspects but the philosophical and political themes.

It gets worse in TWD, as it reveals Americans have no ancestral skills to raise food and gather water, but have to flee to a Georgia farm where a veternarian (medicine) who owns a farm (ancestral skills) and is a Christian (philosophical/spiritual) uses country wisdom to help the others survive. It's so obvious.

And yet it takes YEARS for that to evolve on show. See present day. Neegan was the consumer who stole from everyone who was producing even though he didn't need these things. Neegan moves to a location where his group cannot produce due to the carrying capacity of the land. That is a return to the Romero idea as Neegan and his group are the real zombies once more.

In 28 Days Later, the political/social commentary is on violence as being inculcated by watching mindless tv/flm. Then violence so bred incites sociopaths/psychopaths to steal, commit mayhem, rape, and murder and to act as mobs of furious people. This barbarism allows soldiers as a political tool to be unleashed by those in power. Thus 28 Days later is about mad scientists selectively mutating a rabies virus which then concludes at a military facility. Then ends in 28 Weeks Later with soldiers killing off infected civilians.

This is what Hollywood does. It's subversive entertainment that perverts the normal mundane aspects of life and then openly mocks the consumers purchasing it. It's not just creature features in the horror genre.

Wake up zombies.

In the ultimate sign that people are obtuse, those being mocked even identify with zombies and dress up for zombie crawls. This would be akin to African Americans dressing like the depictions from racist films of the past.
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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_s...

Let's try to form an epidemiology theory for TWD.

In the show, it's revealed at the end of season one that everyone worldwide is seemingly infected. Then when they die or are bitten, they turn into zombies.

Is this plausible? Vaguely.

With HSV in general than it is easily spread by a mechanism not totally know. HSV-1 is spread by social contact and 67% of the world carries it. Say you kiss someone who has it. You get it and then it goes dormant. When you get a cold/flu, then you also get a cold sore or fever blister. Or say when going to a job interview, stress activates the dormant herpes virus.

Similarly HSV-2 is spread by secretions of bodily fluids that contain virons. If you have unprotected sex with those who have it, particularly when they have small gental sores, then you get it. 1 in 6 Americans has HSV-2 and may not know it.

Okay, let's presume a HSV-3 as an unknown variant and somehow by the vector of air transmission ends up infecting all. Waterbourne transmission is plausible but would never end up infecting all due to desert people or mountains.
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The typical vectors of insects, avians, mammals especially pigs, rodents just are not plausible

Then say that the zombies induce a violent surge in anyone who is infected. Their bite acts as a catalyst. Is there is anything in microbiology/immunology with a similar analogy?

Yes. With certain types of influenza, which normally attacks infants and elderly with higher morbidity, instead some variants like H1N1A has TWICE caused strains that induce CYTOKINE STORMS. What happens is very healthy young people with robust immune systems overrespond and the overreaction ends up being lethal in an abbreviated time period.

Epidemiologists have proposed the 1918 3 wave pandemic influenza may have induced cytokine storms in young healthy people.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine...
So say the zombies bite, it causes the proposed dormant HSV-3 to then have an overwhelming cytokine storm reaction. That would then kill the infected in 24-36 hours.

The rest is nonsense. Your blood has various means to attack pathogens and then isolates them by body compartmentalization. Then in a weakened state, it goes systemic and causes septocemia. Then causes organ failure. Then death.

Death is the end without recusitation. Once the brain dies, it's over. Scientists are experimeting on pigs and trying to use methods to zap the brain and bring them back, but likely with severe neural damage. They would have inevitable oxygen loss and that deprivation has finality as it cannot be repaired. There are several kinds of neural tissue and supportive tissue like oligodendricytes. Only a few types of neuronal tissue can regenerate.

The cortical homunculus is the biggest impediment as with failure the zombies at best would be comatose and rather helpless.

Now 7 billion rotting bodies would be an ecological nightmare as the bacteria would flood into groundwater and so every urban zone would be uninhabitable. The vermin issues of insects and rodents would be monumental and catastrophic. They would additionally inflict diseases as vectors of transmission.
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Zombies' bellies would split because with severe dehydration and only eating "meat" which is full of anerobic bacteria (the zombies eat intestines and visecra), then severe cramping would occur and eventually massive methane release causing severe bloating causing abdominal distension. In a decaying body, this would burst.

Soldiers and bushcrafters are taught not to eat unless they address water intake. Dying patients are given water but not food as a way to "pass" without abdominal discomfort.

At a time of vast issues of obesity in western civilization, the theme of cannibalism is subversive as Hollywood leftists' commentary. They are saying that western civilization is not only destroying other cultures, but on the practical level like vegans buying ethnic food in diverse places like quinoa and driving up the prices so local citizens cannot afford it. They are saying that western civilization are obese cannibals. You just fail to acknowledge you are being mocked.

How funny. You support a highly illogical concept subversive leftist show that then openly ridicules western civilization! Some dolts even dress as zombies.

The enduring desire for post-apocalyptic genre in film and television is the exposure of the innate fear that urban dwellers lack ancestral skills. Then should an apocalypse of any kind occur, the vast bulk of humanity in lacks the ability to find water and purify it,build a fire, find wild edibles and medicinals, grow crops, raise livestock, create useful items from clay, fiber, wood, bone, and stone.
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It's dread and angst and existential fear. These are the emotional buttons the Hollywood leftists are pushing.

An enlightened literate person realizes their feet can no longer touch the Earth's flesh and bones through bare feet or a mocassin as stated by Tom Brown Jr, a noted bushcraft teacher of great renown. Thus the awakened soul relearns the ancestral skills that sustain humanity's ancestrors like the hunter-gatherers and the agrarians herdsmen.
www.trackerschool.com

Native American elders warned Euro Americans about this way before Tom Brown Jr.

The boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men, and no one taught us; we just learned by doing what we saw, and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls.
Black Elk

I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured, it was the power from the Outer World; the visions and ceremonies only made me like a hole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through.
Black Elk

Rural folks embrace this daily. Urban folks ignore and even belittle their ancestors as primitives. That is the practical history of the 12,000 years up to the industrial revolution coupled with urbanization.

That is the very basis for the zombie genre. Look it up in critical analyis by film and tv critics.

You think zombies are entertainment. Wrong. It's there to take your money and impart a lesson: those who watch the show and live vicariously are actual zombies.
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I can't believe how many comments been posted for this. I for one, always enjoyed the Romero movies then TWD. Here lately, I've been losing interest with the TWD. I read the comic every month though. I heard a sequel to World War Z is in the works. That's a world that I'd never survive. Zombies be slinging their bodies towards helicopters, off buildings. Piling their disgusting rotten bodies to reach high elevations. So when it comes to zombie standards, I'm going more for TWD. I just couldn't handle zombies getting smarter.

In med school, the mneumonic is called point and shoot. A male when their parasympathetic (rest and digest) system is active, they point. When their sympathetic system is active, the possibility exists to "shoot".
en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/USMLE_St...
Zombies can do neither as only the thalmus is operating.