1 – The survivors have made an airport their base of operations. Do the have a plane? What about a pilot? I’m not talking about anything big that would allow for escape, but a little two seat prop plane type deal. It could be used to keep track of zombie movements and natural resources. I would have just written a story, but I feel that this would have consequences for the zone that are too far reaching for me to have made the decision unilaterally
2 – Zombie shelf life. I know that the zombies we are dealing with right now have a slow rate of decomposition due to the Solanum. How slow is slow? Are we talking a year, two years, ten?
3 – Zombie dentition. The human dental pattern was developed for a generalist and omnivorous animal. How does that translate to zombies? Human teeth are small in size and lack roots deep enough to allow them to sustain heavy impacts. There is a reason we only use our teeth to chew food after we have first prepared it. Try bitting into a raw steak and trashing it as hard as you can with your hands. We also lack any kind of dental battery that would allow us to replace missing teeth. My point is that if you have all these former humans running around biting still living humans and animals they would soon become toothless and no one is afraid of a zombie that needs dentures.
“WATCH OUT! THEY MIGHT GUM YOU TO DEATH!”
9 responses to “Three Issues”
Obviously Hancock has several small planes, but I think that the fuel needed for any flight would ba a waste of the fuel that’s needed to run any sort of generator or any groudn vehicles in use in the zone and the clearance needed to take off or land would be difficult in a small airport being used to house what remains of central new york and also acts as a base of operations for survival. I’d think the runways would already be in use.
As far as zombie decomposition, I think that jsut trying to “wait it out” isn’t going to work. The issue witht hat is that we don’t know exactly how long they’ll wander for, but they do increase in number constantly. All it takes is one bite to turn another and increase our wait time. The DMV is nothing in comparison.
As far as toothless zombies. Scratches can become infected as well, so our only hope is to kock all their teeth out and then unleash the manicurist hordes and hope that none of them get scratched in the process.
Thank you for this it actually made me think and use that problem solving thing we evolved that allowed our teeth to become small and fragile.
Aviation fuel is of a radically different chemical composition as opposed to plain old gasoline. I doubt it could be used to fuel a generator or a car.
My point about the decomposition is that when they start to fall apart there is absolutely no way that they can turn enough people to make up for loses. There just aren’t enough people left. Zack will be losing individual zombies by the thousand and million while perhaps infecting only a handful of the remaining humans.
The pandemic will burn itself out, the only question is when?
We don’t have a pilot, yet. Anyone could write a story where one of the characters is a pilot. We should probably keep the planes on the ground to conserve the fuel. There could come a day when the whole zone needs to evacuate, and the only way out is in a plane. We probably shouldn’t host scenic tours of Central New York.
Well, what kind of planes are do we have? Small prop planes, big jetliners, small business jets, cargo planes, etc.
Anything big enough to go west would have gone. Think of the evacuation of the Indian ship graveyards–they were taking hulls into the water.
If anything, we’d be lucky to be getting supplies from the west. The 28/10 runway will be kept clear no matter what. They come to us; we don’t go to them.
Thanks for asking in advance about adding a plane–I just don’t see it. It’s an airport because it’s the best possible resource.
Timelines on zombie decomposition are kept deliberately vague. ZSM, page 10 says that the lifespan is 3-5 years due to inhibition on rotting microbes by the Solanum virus: “Almost all the microbe species involved in normal human decomposition have repeatedly rejected flesh infected by the virus, effectively embalming the zombie” (ZSM 10-11) seems to indicate a frustration with the lack of complete empirical data as to which kinds of decomposition work at which rates. You can’t really be upset by this: research before the Panic was really limited and research after the Panic tended never to be published or inaccessible to researchers. ZSM was written before a Class IV outbreak struck the planet, and it remains the best resource that we have, even with its limitations.
Kindly remember that the entry for Earth in the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy is two words.
Teeth do not decompose, nor do bones, nails, or hair (ZSM 10). Freezing “could allow an undead specimen to function for decades, if not centuries” (ZSM 11). Don’t forget that the island of Iceland remains a white zone even after the liberation of North America (WWZ np). Greenland would be worse if anyone cared about Greenland. Central New York will take a long time to clean up because of the outbreak and our winters. The author acknowledges by “long time” he means ummm, thank you, next question.
(Stepping out of character for a moment, please note that while I try to model good behavior for my students by using MLA format, I have used a title instead of the author to avoid confusion with Mr. Brooks’ other title, World War Z, cited as WWZ. This is a complete total, screaming red pen no-no in MLA, and I apologize. However, since no other author need be cited on this website, using a title seemed cleaner than using Brooks 1 and Brooks 2. Don’t ever do this on a paper that you hand in to a teacher that asks for MLA format.)
If the decomposition time table is three to five years then there is no possible way a specimen could function for longer than that. While bones and teeth will remain there will be no muscles left to move them and as those same muscles rot the creature will become progressively weaker. After a couple of years it would be so feeble that a human need not fear it because they could just kill it with their own hands.
Any time that Lois Lane is falling, and Superman rushes up to catch her, wouldn’t his arms just cut right through her body? Don’t overthink every detail, it takes away some of the fun. You bring up some good points, but don’t over analyze every detail
And anyway, if we’re outnumbered 100,000 to 1, even if they lose half of their numbers we’re still outmatched.
outnumbered doesnt necissarily mean outmatched. Numbers never one a war. ” Spartans! Prepare for glory!” god I love that movie, oh and a litle off topic but. Im writing this in JFK airport, Im back from Florida… needless to say I cried myself to sleep last night in the hotel.