I need help to understand Zombies.

Best thread ever!!

USA zombie media have too much philosophy and survivor ponderings. UK has gone too far with the comedy. Korean zombies are the best - Last Train to Buscan, Alive and the series Kingdom are amazing.

A few thoughts.

1. There are Zombie animals in some of the stuff. The dog in I Am legend turns into a zombie dog. In Pet Sematary Two the dig also turns into a zombie of sorts.
2. I suppose they need to eat to keep the virus alive, as even though the animated body is technically dead, it is the virus which is animating the body, and the virus is still alive and needs nourishment.
3. Cutting off the head isn't enough guys! It's been made clear in many movies that a zombie head can stay animated and pose a danger even if separated from the body. You need to destroy the brain! Honestly, you guys wouldn't last a minute!
4. Some zombies are content with biting and infecting others, other zombies feast on the flesh and innards of their victims. That victim will go on to become a zombie no matter what the state of devourment, assuming that the brain has not been destroyed.
5. Some people can seem to 'resist' the virus if they have enough willpower - see films such as Return of the Living Dead 3 where the love of the couple stops her fully turning, or Cargo, where the love of a father for his daughter stops him eating her.

Also why do they bleed?

If your dead there is no heart pumping and the bloody would just pool in their lower limb and turn gelatinous.

And the zombies are always at different stages of rotting corpse so clearly rotting away, but do they ever just get to skeleton? Then what? Because presumably if the rest of the body has completely decomposed, the brain will have too so they're not a zombie any more?

You need the textbook if you really want to understand zombies OP:

www.goodreads.com/book/show/21981632

The Walking Dead pretty much answers all of your questions in seasons 1 and 2 🤷‍♀️

What I don't understand is, if they are dead, they don't need to eat to survive. A zombie with no limbs is unlikely to be able to catch a living person to eat, so what happens to them? They don't die of hunger, they are already dead.

I selected my house on a peninsula to protect from zombies. Block entry onto peninsula with big iron fences (we know they get stuck and angry behind them) and protected by cliffs and sea otherwise.

Then I saw The Walking Dead series where the fuckers had learned to swim.

Had to move house

I just want you all to know these posts have made tonight’s sleep deprivation easier.

If a zombie bites you and you get away, you are infected. So you become a zombie.

If you cannot get away then I suppose it will depend on how much of you the zombie devours.

Now, we all know that zombies have a preference for brains ...and you don’t require a brain to go on to become a zombie.

If the zombies become frenzied and attack the body and limbs, I suppose you could become one of the unlucky - undead, who perhaps are immobile and in need in assistance. Which is why you don’t see much follow up of these zombies and their personal stories on screen.

No mortal human is going to lend their assistance to a zombie, and all of the other zombies don’t have functioning brains, so are unable to identify the zombies who need additional support.

I hope this helps.

I've often said that I'll feel quite protected in a zombie apocalypse as my DS is quite the expert in killing them! He goes straight for the head. If my dog turned into a zombie, we'd stand no chance though.

@Mypathtriedtokillme Apparently toxoplasmosis can also affect peoples brains, making them less risk averse statistically and even more likely to engage in sexually promiscuous activity. Some research even suggested it makes men less attractive and women more attractive (possibly because of the sexually promiscuous bit), although I dont know how reliable that research is. It could be for other reasons than cause and effect - maybe risky people are more likely to eat rare meat/less likely to wash their hands etc and therefore catch the parasite but its interesting.

I reckon whatever infection it is that turns people into zombies, also makes them offputting to flies and some other post death critters. They can sense something is wrong. Even if not all of them were deterred the absence of many would affect the decompostion process since it is usually something which happens in stages - the absence of flies laying eggs/maggots etc for example would make it harder for the bacteria to follow them to gain a foothold. Also maybe a zombified body is an anaerobic envrironment somehow? That would delay the decomposition greatly so they dont turn to much that quickly.
As far as how do they walk.attack with limbs missing or chunks bitten out etc etc versus why do they move so slowly/clumsily. Surely those two questions answer each other???

Liv doesn't bite. She's my zombie hero. She eats cadaver brains

Zombies bite because the virus compels them to, as it's the way it spreads.

If they are rotting corpses why would they need to eat?
You also never see one getting out a water bottle or a cold beer. We can't survive without fluids.

In iZombie they're pretty limber, some of them regularly use the gym and they seemed quite able to have sex.

The rule there seems to be a cut or scratch or something that wouldn't be fatal to a human can turn you. Also is sexually transmitted

Everything depends on the source of the zombification. In early zombie lore a person was raised from the dead by a medicine man and did his bidding, so it could attack and kill people but may or may not eat them, and didn't create other zombies.

In Romero films and assorted media, the source is hinted at being some sort of alien radiation. Some zombies are hungry and eating human flesh, others are just malevolent and want to kill people and use tools to do so. They don't always leave enough of a person left to turn but when they do, that person is infected.

In fast zombie revival films, the zombies appear to have some sort of rabies-like virus that make them self-destructive as well as other-people-destructive, and staying intact long enough to turn yourself depends on how many zombies are attacking you. They seem to give up and run off to find a new victim when the old one stops moving, so a lone zombie will attack you until you bleed out and then feck off to attack someone else.

In the Walking Dead and other related media, everyone is infected (airborne pathogen?) but living people are asymptomatic, it only reanimates once the person is dead, and getting bitten gives you a dose of the active virus that kills you. The virus probably repels maggots that would normally eat the flesh.

The real-life fungus Cordyceps is the inspiration for The Last of Us and a few other zombie-related media. Its spores infect insects and caterpillars and grow over the brain, influencing the affected creature to do things beneficial to the fungus and eventually killing it and feeding on its corpse.

Other misc sources are self-replicating nanomachines, demonic possession, evolutionary kill switches, brain parasites and voodoo curses.

Plus you never see zombie cats? But I'm guessing that's because they're just quietly sitting and plotting world domination for when they evolve opposable thumbs. It's probably the cat apocalypse vs the zombie one that we really need to worry about.

Well, they will pop too if they don’t poo Snuggle

Poo not pop