7 reasons the zombie apocalypse wouldn't happen! (According to Cracked)

[Punisher84]

7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly) | Cracked.com

Pretty funny, took a little umbrage at the last one about gun owning rednecks, but overall it makes some valid points.

[mikegideon]

I'm a gun owning redneck, and proud of it

[Punisher84]

I'm a gun owning redneck, and proud of it

I'm a country boy.

[mikegideon]

I'm a country boy.

That's only if all your stocks are made out of wood. If you shoot skunks with an AR15, you might be a redneck

[kwe45919]

Man....people have no imagination do they?? Geeze.......first off, the "diease" that creats zombies starts off with sometype of military science expirament exploding and releasing a toxic cloud that floats through the air and mass populations get infected while sleeping or doing their daily chores with out knowing it. Pretty simple and very easy for it to happen, They just breath the air like normal. then approxmatly 24hrs later.....BOOM.....man, woman, child, military, police, who ever is in that area is now a zombie.

As far as the weather goes, rain sleet and snow wont kill or hurt zombies because they are already dead. Their bodies are rotting in a sedated style therefore allowing them to remain "undead" for months on end. Due to the mysterious zombie virus, the normal effects of weather will not hurt them for quite sometime.

Animals refuse to eat the rotting meat called zombies. Why, because most animals know when something is "infected" or wrong when it comes to meals. They don't want to die or turn into them so generally they leave the zombies alone and continue hunting "live" prey as usual. Besides, in the long run, with man mostly gone there will be a lot of species that will be able to "regenerate" their numbers.......wild animals will continue as usual and will avoid the zombies.....

The only gaurenteed truth the artical had is the sheer number of firearms here in the U.S and all over the world. There's just to many people who could and would blow the ever loving hell out of a zombie and I'm sure NATO would have no issues nukin' a city quarintened with infected zombies.

The only reason a full scale world zombie domination would/could never happen......is us. Citizens. We are the future and we will fight proudly....zombies or not!!

[JAB]

Man....people have no imagination do they?? Geeze.......first off, the "diease" that creats zombies starts off with sometype of military science expirament exploding and releasing a toxic cloud that floats through the air and mass populations get infected while sleeping or doing their daily chores with out knowing it. Pretty simple and very easy for it to happen, They just breath the air like normal. then approxmatly 24hrs later.....BOOM.....man, woman, child, military, police, who ever is in that area is now a zombie.

As far as the weather goes, rain sleet and snow wont kill or hurt zombies because they are already dead. Their bodies are rotting in a sedated style therefore allowing them to remain "undead" for months on end. Due to the mysterious zombie virus, the normal effects of weather will not hurt them for quite sometime.

Animals refuse to eat the rotting meat called zombies. Why, because most animals know when something is "infected" or wrong when it comes to meals. They don't want to die or turn into them so generally they leave the zombies alone and continue hunting "live" prey as usual. Besides, in the long run, with man mostly gone there will be a lot of species that will be able to "regenerate" their numbers.......wild animals will continue as usual and will avoid the zombies.....

The only gaurenteed truth the artical had is the sheer number of firearms here in the U.S and all over the world. There's just to many people who could and would blow the ever loving hell out of a zombie and I'm sure NATO would have no issues nukin' a city quarintened with infected zombies.

The only reason a full scale world zombie domination would/could never happen......is us. Citizens. We are the future and we will fight proudly....zombies or not!!

Good points. Also, the whole rotting and maggots thing was overstated. It takes two days for a fly to lay eggs and those eggs to hatch. This is pretty well documented and maggots can actually be used to determine how long a corpse has been 'in the field' as it were (two days for flies to lay eggs and those eggs to hatch then the maggots grow approximately 1mm per day up to 14 days when the crawl off to begin the metamorphosis into flies.) That is at least two days for the original infected to infect more before the first maggots even appear. Depending on how long it takes for an infected person to become a zombie, you might even have third or fourth generation infected by the time the first maggots even hatch, much less have time to incapacitate the original zombie. In a populated city, two days - especially those first two days when no one is yet sure what is happening - could mean a whole lot of infected people. As those infect more, you'd have an ongoing supply of new zombies to replace those that might, eventually, rot or be eaten away by maggots. Also, maggots generally begin in dark, wet places - either open wounds or in bodily orifices - and spread from there. They don't generally hatch just anywhere on the body.

Further, I have been to the facility commonly known as the Body Farm while in a class taught by Dr. Bass back in the 90s. It was a warm day in April and there was one cadaver that had been there about a week. There wasn't even any obvious bloating at that point and other than his eyes being glazed over and a few maggots working in his ears, he looked as if he could have gotten up and said, "Hello." As a zombie, he would have been far from incapacitated. Further, this was an unmoving corpse, not even an animated one, and it hadn't exactly been devoured by all those wild animals, bugs, etc. that the Cracked article seemed sure would have done the job. In fact, the only evidence of any macroscopic predation was one embalmed body that had its forearm chewed on by groundhogs.

Speaking of embalmed bodies, that is something else the article overlooked. In some zombie flicks, even the embalmed may be reanimated. Why not? It isn't like zombies are using their blood, etc. anyway. An embalmed body, for all intents and purposes, will never decay. Maggots don't eat them and I'd be willing to bet that embalming fluid wouldn't freeze as easily as the blood and water it replaces. An embalmed corpse will likely eventually dessicate but that will take quite a while. For instance, a person who had known the owner of the previously mentioned embalmed body - a body that had been at the facility and totally exposed to the elements for over a year at that point - would almost certainly have instantly recognized him. He still had his beard and hair.

As for predators, most wild animals have learned to fear humans. Sure, there are still attacks from time to time but you don't exactly hear of people being devoured on a daily basis in the Smokies or even in the Rockies. Zombies, for all their being slow and dead, would still look like humans to bears, wolves, etc. It isn't like those critters are going to see a zombie and think, "Hey, that thing looks like a human but it's really a zombie. I'd bet it would be an easy mark." Not unless the same thing that causes the zombie outbreak suddenly gives animals the power of higher reasoning.

That leaves all the aforementioned guns, etc. and the people who know how to use them. The unfortunate fact that the article overlooked there, however, is that the places where the outbreak would spread easiest are big cities - places like New York, Chicago, L.A. and so on. Let's see, other than extremely dense populations creating a virtual victim buffet for the living dead, what other characteristic do those places share? Oh, yeah - it is very difficult if not impossible to own a gun, much less multiple guns. Also, people there are largely conditioned to let the authorities (cops, etc.) handle their protection so it isn't like most of them would suddenly become zombie killing machines. I don't know about you folks but in the event of a zombie outbreak - or any other kind of disaster - I ain't heading to any big city for any reason, much less to try and take care of their undead problem for them. It isn't like the gangs, etc. that do have access to firearms would be banning together to protect the masses, either. Yes, the government might make the tactical decision to nuke those cities and destroy the zombies but there is no way to guarantee all of them would be destroyed - and the destruction of such centers of trade (Wall Street), the destruction of major ports connected to those cities and the like would cause further problems and make dealing with 'surviving' z's and the victims they turn even more difficult. Oh, and along those lines, what is another densely populated area where owning guns is difficult - another place that might have to be abandoned and nuked? Yes, Washington D.C. - further complicating the idea that the government could organize an ongoing response to clean up the zombies that shambled away from the first, major strikes.

Finally, let us not forget that there are entire countries where owning personal firearms is difficult or impossible. We might be 'equipped' in some areas of the U.S. but what about Mexico and Canada where, again, ownership of personal firearms seems to be more restricted and less common. Anyone think the drug cartels and their people are likely to risk their lives coming to the rescue? Hell, the cartels would probably find a way to capture them, gut them, stuff them with bags of cocaine and use them as mules to get their stuff into the U.S. (imagine if the drugs became contaminated - there is a good zombie story for you, whole shipments of coke that give an incredibly intense high but eventually transform the user into zombies.) We'd have the same problem with zombies that we have with illegals - after their own countries were trashed, they'd start flooding across the borders. We see how well our government deals with illegal immigration. What makes anyone think they'd be any more efficient in dealing with reanimated corpses crossing the same borders?

Edited November 30, 2010 by JAB

[mikegideon]

Let's focus on some common ground. They're fun to shoot. That's all there is to it. I keep wondering when they're finally gonna show up. Just stubbed my big toe on a pile of ammo.

[Guest SMZRU275]

That list is pretty inaccurate on A LOT of it's information.

[Spiffy]

It there is a Z Day, no one will think it is Zombies outside of the truly prepared. All these "reasons" fail when the sheer terror that The Dead Walk!!! hits.

[Punisher84]

Guys you know it's from Cracked right? It's in jest. Some of the stuff is true more or less, but I just posted it in humor. I didnt mean to crush anyone's zombie apocalypse hopes and dreams.

[mikegideon]

Guys you know it's from Cracked right? It's in jest. Some of the stuff is true more or less, but I just posted it in humor. I didnt mean to crush anyone's zombie apocalypse hopes and dreams.

Didn't crush mine. I'm gonna buy more ammo

[shortround]

The Zombie Apocalypse is a serious topic, and should not be joked about.