Zombies, much like your girlfriend, don't swallow
what do zombies do once they have had there fill of eating? They don't digest the food. there is but so much space in the human stomach. I know it's a silly question but if any body could answer it, it's this forum![]()
Zombies don't crave food for any nutritional purposes, they simply feed because it's one of the basic human imperatives.
Well, did you ever think about what, "in universe," zombies really are? After seeing a few zombie movies in recent years, the idea popped into my head, and (as anyone who knows me knows ABOUT me) I had no real choice but to try to come up with a rational justification for what "zombies" are.what do zombies do once they have had there fill of eating? They don't digest the food. there is but so much space in the human stomach. I know it's a silly question but if any body could answer it, it's this forum![]()
Nahhhh... I just can't enjoy things that make no sense, so unless I can envision some way to make things "make sense," I'm not going to bother with them at all.^You're 'really' over thinking this. And this is from someone who semi-rationalises elements of television Vampires lol.
And that's perfectly fine if you take the "supernatural" explanation for zombies... ie, that they're some sort of demonic creature (possessed corpses or whatever). But if you want to treat them as something more... well... REAL... you've got to come up with some basic logic behind them."World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War" actually fully addresses this (as it does many other things) with the simple logical answer: as we've seen in Romero films, Zombies don't NEED to eat, they just THINK they need to; it's a mindless primal hunger.
So in WWZ, it is indeed explained that as zombies eat more and more raw meat, it just falls out the front of them.
er....also, they do say that logically, zombies stomachs burst open on their own just a few days after death, from the pent-up gases of your last meal fermenting (this happens when people die normally)
so this half-rotten away corpse is eating raw meat, and it just falls out the front of it after it swallows it
of course, NOTHING ever satisfies them
Well, did you ever think about what, "in universe," zombies really are? After seeing a few zombie movies in recent years, the idea popped into my head, and (as anyone who knows me knows ABOUT me) I had no real choice but to try to come up with a rational justification for what "zombies" are.what do zombies do once they have had there fill of eating? They don't digest the food. there is but so much space in the human stomach. I know it's a silly question but if any body could answer it, it's this forum![]()
There are really only two possible explanations... they're either purely supernatural, or there's some scientific basis for what they are.
Well, if they're purely supernatural, then there's no real point in trying to understand them or get away from them, huh? There's not much to be gained by trying to understand "magic," so I'll leave that explanation alone and go on to the "what if they existed in the real world" version.
So, what is a zombie? It's a reanimated human (or other animal) body. Well, "reanimation" implies that there's SOMETHING working there, doesn't it? There may not be life, as we think of it, but there's something happening to cause muscles to operate, to keep joints from drying out and locking up, to keep rigor-mortis from occurring. The delicate internal tissues which allow for vision, hearing, and smell, must still be functional.
And this gets back to "What is a zombie?" A zombie is a human body which has been "reactivated," but only in part. Tissues which are not necessary for continual functioning (skin, etc) decompose, but other tissues remain active and functional (muscles, joint tissues, sense organs, etc).
You'll also note that the tissues that decay, as mentioned above, seem to deteriorate much faster than they would in "real life" dead people. (Eyes, honestly, are almost always the FIRST part to rot out... while the skin is relatively unaltered except in terms of blood-based coloration.) Yet we see massive skin deterioration in "zombies" long before we'd be likely to see that in a real corpse (unless it was in a swamp, I guess!)
Now... look at the BEHAVIOR of zombies. They are driven to eat... but not to eat cows, or dogs, or green beans... or each other. They have a very simple "program" which says "find living humans, and kill them."
That's a remarkably odd behavior... something that makes no sense when looked at as a natural phenomenon. But... as a DESIGNED function... suddenly it makes a LOT of sense.
Suppose an alien species wanted to move in here and take over our planet. And suppose that they were, say, 500 years more advanced than we are. Maybe they've developed nano-technology to the point where they can have "hive" nanobots which function almost in a biological fashion. Suppose that they want our cities intact, and our environment intact as well... but they don't want US around.
Well, they could "invade" in a conventional sense, but that would be pretty inefficient and very risky. They could attempt to infiltrate, but that would be subject to lots of risk as well.
Now, suppose that they developed a nano-technology "microbe" that was able to self-replicate out of biological materials. These devices could network with each other as well... so while a single one would be quite stupid, they'd be able to form a pretty advanced "neural network" when operating in parallel.
Suppose that they were programmed not just to kill people through "disease" but to turn the "killed" persons into a more effective vector for transmission. The nanobots feed the existing tissues, maintaining operation only in the "useful" ones, while feeding off other tissues (explaining the rapid skin deterioration).
The "body" would be a PUPPET, nothing more... controlled by extremely advanced alien technology.
Now, "in-universe," you'd have seen a number of trial runs of this infectant over time. Early ones would have been slow and stupid, but over time, the technology would advance, and the "vectors of infection" would be far more effective (leading to the high-energy-level zombies seen in some more recent flicks).
They'd be programmed to survive only on certain DNA... specifically, human DNA. Once there was no further supply of live human DNA, the "vectors" would be consumed by their nanobots, and once that was gone, the nanobots would themselves shut down and decompose.
So, a year later, the "invaders" would show up, finding a ready-to-populate planet, complete with lots of infrastructure, a thriving ecosystem, no "war damage," and so forth.
An IDEAL solution... when viewed from an "invader's" standpoint... isn't it?
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