Question about the Zombie ApocalypseFollow

I need some outside opinion on a debate raging between nerds.

I think the clusters are having issues.

Git has it right. The definitive guide to surviving Z's tells it how our resident Mexican busboy said it'd go down. Mr. Romero would obviously concur.

Totem

I keep thinking about frozen mammoths. Those are pretty dead.

See the thing is that when you freeze solid ice crystals form causing damage at a cellular level. The reason why cryonics doesnt work. Fish or amphibians that can be frozen and then come back produce a cryoprotectant such as a glycerol which allows the lowering of temperature without the formation of ice crystals. Which is also basically what is needed to keep frozen eggs and sperm alive.

So if the brain recieved the cellular equivalent of a bullet to the head, then wouldnt that be the end of said zombie?

FICTION! It is all true, it can't possibly be fiction! Now excuse me while I put on my tin foil hat and crawl into my bunker to prepare for the coming Zombie Apocalypse.

~Rock

I've always wondered how zombies perpetuate themselves if the key to their survival is their brain. In order for zombies to survive, they need to eat brains, so then why do people who's brains are eaten become zombies?

If you go with the "Return of the living dead" mythology, then Zombies only need to eat brains to survive, but they don't need a brain to be a zombie. The zombification comes in the form of a plague or virus, if you are bitten by a zombie, you become one. Also, if you breathe in the ashes from a burnt zombie, you are infected that way as well. Or, in the case of "Return of the living dead" if zombies are cremated, and the ash and gases that are released mix with the air, and can become rain, which will also infect you.

You don't need a brain to be a zombie, so, freezing a zombie wouldn't necessarily kill one just because you destroy the brain cells.

Yeah. If you're going to start with the premise that the dead fUcking walk, you're going to have to allow that the things which would kill the living will not kill the dead.

Cellular damage? Please. That's pie to a zombie. He'd smile at that, assuming he has a lower jaw.

Day of the Dead suggested that only a small portion of the brain was required for the zombie to continue. They had that zombie with most of the brain removed still moving. I suggest that so long as the areas for motor function and connection the the spinal column are intact the zombie can continue to function. Headshot = kill only if it takes out the needed areas of the brain.

I've always figured it was the primitive brain which kept a zombie going--the brain stem and cerebellum which regulate autonomic functions, and maybe the primary motor cortex of the cerebrum (located in the parietal lobe, iirc--which I may not, since I just woke up.) The rest of the brain in a zombie is just so much gelatinous matter which would explain the lack of higher functions, but damage those, and the zombie is incapable of moving and operating its body. And a zombie incapable of moving = a genuine, unanimated corpse.

So, yeah, it makes sense that brain damage would need to be severe enough to take out those specific areas parts of the brain. And freezing would do it. It's not the cellular damage that's so much the problem, it's the liquification effect that would follow the thawing, when (unless preserved with chemicals) a great deal of the brain would lose cohesion as the ice crystals damaged the tissue, and just run off--possibly enough to impair those particular areas needed for zombie functioning, though I can't be sure--I'm fresh out of brains to experiment on.


And apparently I'm not alone in this reasoning--Bloodwolf made his post as I was typing this


Edited, Jan 4th 2007 11:57am by Ambrya

If I ever become a zombie, I'm eating your brain first.

Heheh, RACK Sammy.

Totem