BRAINS - It's What's For Dinner!
Aug. 2nd, 2004 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqI've been thinking a lot about zombies recently, what with my buddy ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
garething writing a short story series of novels about them called Rise. Go check it out, it's cool.
Before I get into this, understand that I've been a gamer (what the kids call table-top RPGs now - and don't get me started on how we were here first) and I bring a gamer's eye to the situation.
What in holy hell is that thing
It's a zombie, as in, the dead are back and they're ready to party. Party favors include bite-sized chunks of you.
There are lots of different types of zombies in fiction, I'll concentrate on the ones ingarething's story Check it out .
I'll add another point here that needs to be said
If the zombies consume their victims completely, then there are no new zombies.
They don't breathe and they don't eat - what's fuelling their muscles? If there's no electrical activity in their brain, how are there nerves working? If they don't drink fluids, what's keeping them from drying up? The human body is a complex machine that needs everything to work just right - zombies fly in the face of that. What's making them move? I'll get to this later.
Ahhh! Get it off me, get it off me
I guess you shouldn't have let them get you then. I'm not going to get into a big long discussion on anti-zombie combat tactics except to say that you should flee to cover and attack them with ranged weapons.
UHHH (or, the zombie brain, and why it's your best friend)
Instead of working, I made this little flowchart to help you keep from being eaten.
As you can see, there's not a lot to it. However, like the complex flocking behavior of birds can be simulated with three rules, we can squeeze a little more out of this.
First, zombies are going to clump together. Their shuffling and uhhh-ing will attract other zombies. Eventually they wander around in crowds of smelly awfulness. Like Gen-con without the dice bags.
They must have some way of telling the difference between dead (but still warm) humans from other zombies. Figuring out what that is would make an excellent defense. Like shuffling along and chanting "Imhotep Imhotep".
The larger clumps will be louder, so they will feed back on themselves, becoming larger still. The good news is that they'll be easier to detect. The bad news is that when you stumble onto them, you've got a huge problem.
It also means that with a little time and preparation, you can do in large numbers of zombies. Simply lure them into a big warehouse and set fire to it. Or lure them onto a boat and sink it. or... Well, you get the picture.
Zombies can't reason. This means if your up on the roof when a hoard of zombies come, you can kick the ladder away and they can't get you. The only way they are going to reach the roof is if enough of them are bunched around the base of the build for the outer zombies to scramble to the top - at no time will a zombie reset the ladder to climb up. This doesn't just make them dumb, it makes them dumber than a lot of animals.
Hello, is there anybody alive in here?
Nope. We're all in easily defended islands, military bases and shopping malls. Didn't you get the email?
I have a problem with a lot of zombie fiction. It's the assumption that society would be destroyed and all that's left is a small, ragtag group of survivors struggling to survive. Now I'm going to say something that is going to sound like the height of stupidity, but hear me out:
What would really happen? First stage people would panic. That never lasts long. Next they hide. This keeps the problem from getting bigger. Then they start to organize and think. Some people push back and these groups become larger and larger as the merge with other groups. zombies are pushed back to the fringes and are either eventually wiped out or become just another background danger. The closest real-world example I can think of would be a large population of rabid people living on the fringes of society. Now how long do you think the authorities would put up with that?
As another data-point consider real world sieges. The people inside the wall survived a long time against a foe that had considerably more resources and smarts than your typical zombie hoard. If they could do it with medieval technology, you should be able to do it with an Abrams tank. If your not up to I'm sure a couple battalions of PPCLI are.
Two stories show the extremes. Neither has zombies, but they're both post-apocalyptic and have a lot of the same themes and elements of zombie fiction. The first is Reign of Fire, the second is Day of the Triffids.
Reign of Fire is about dragons wiping out humanity. Except that the dragons are basically big dangerous animals. At no point in the movie do they show any intelligence beyond the average predator. Plus, while they do have thick skin and a certain amount of native toughness, they aren't indestructible.
The only way the dragons could achieve the superiority they have is if every single person on the face of the earth forgets how to use a gun. This is an example of an unbelievable story.
Day of the Triffids (the novel and 1981 mini-series, not the 1962 movie, which sucked) is about how mobile plants take advantage of the majority of Earth's human population being rendered blind, and how the few non-blind human survivors cope with it.
John Wyndham basically made a zombie story in a day and age when people didn't like being grossed out. He kills the population with the blindness and had the plants take the place of the shuffling undead hoard relentlessly pursuing our heroes.
And what do the characters do in Day of the Triffids? They learn to cope with triffids. They barricade, organize, arm themselves and bide there time looking for a solution. By the end of the novel the plants are merely a dangerous nuisance; the real adversaries are other humans who see this as an opportunity to set themselves up a feudal lords.
My fourth-level fighter swings his +5 long sword at the undead fiend
I guess I don't mind you wiping out humanity if the point is a character study. If you want to put a dozen people into a shopping mall surrounded by the undead just to see who breaks first, hey go for it.
You can even role-play this if your goal is a one-shot. As a campaign it leaves a lot to be desired. Because zombies are so stupid they become tiresome adversaries really quickly. I prefer the "cosy calamity" version where the slate of civilization is clearered away and it's up to the characters to make something out of the ashes. Zombies in this setting simply become a catalyist and eventually a dangerous, but manageable, part of the background.
In a (ho ho) realistic zombie background I would expect large pockets of unzombified resistence around every island, peninsula, military base and port. Desparate survivers and refuges will be a bigger threat then the shuffling stupids.
God hates us all
In such a setting, there will be enough people not reduced to moment to moment survival that research will happen into the why of zombies.
So why are there zombies? As I mentioned earlier, there's just too much that's impossible about reanimated corpses for it to ba anything other than completely supernatural. Oh, some people dress it up with a virus or some other contagion, but that really ignores what virii do. Zombies behave like a virus in how they spread (and even that breaks down when you notice that people can't see a cloud of virii coming towards you from a mile away).
Really, you need magic, or some kind of super-science (which is another way of saying "magic") to make zombies. Or you can say God did it. Magic is the least satisfying. Super-science at leasts let you explore themes of scientific hubris and how man has gone too far.
If God did it, then it really is the end of the world. The dead rise and the fact that it looks like zombies spread like a virus is simply an illusion. Car accident victims rise too, but you're not as likely to notice that and make the connection to polyester seats cause zombification.
You can even explain how society collapsed so completely so quickly - the zombies had a helping hand from the almighty. It's would be amusing for all of the characters to hit upon the secret to survival - "You're Episcopalian? I'm Episcopalian too!". Now you're in a really gross version of the Left Behind series.
Well that's enough for now. I'll add more later if something occurs to me. Like how tanks are the ideal anti-zombie weapon.
garething writing a Before I get into this, understand that I've been a gamer (what the kids call table-top RPGs now - and don't get me started on how we were here first) and I bring a gamer's eye to the situation.
What in holy hell is that thing
It's a zombie, as in, the dead are back and they're ready to party. Party favors include bite-sized chunks of you.
There are lots of different types of zombies in fiction, I'll concentrate on the ones in
garething's story Check it out .1) They're dead.So what does this mean? Well, you've got a thing that is trying to kill you. It doesn't need you for food, so we can assume that it's only motive is to infect others. Being dead it doesn't have the liabilities of the living. Pain and injury (short of destroying it or rendering it immobile) will not stop it. It doesn't sleep and it doesn't get bored.
2) And yet still surprisingly active.
3) Being dead, they lack the weaknesses of the living.
4) They're not super-humanly strong or fast.
5) They don't have super senses.
6) They can still see and hear well enough to spot you though.
7) They hunger for your flesh.
8) If you get bit, you'll die, either immediately from your wounds, or in a few hours as you get infected by whatever it is that spreads the zombie goodness around.
9) They're smart enough to move, but they aren't smart smart.
I'll add another point here that needs to be said
10) Zombies do not obey the same rules of biology as the rest of us.I don't just mean the obvious things, like being dead, but also not. I mean, what do zombies eat? It's tempting to say us, but that's just to spread the infection. You never see carcasses stripped to the bone in zombie movies. At most, you see someone overwhelmed by zombies (who all bite a few times and then the camera moves back to our heroes). You never see a zombie taking a dump (and for that I am eternally thankful).
If the zombies consume their victims completely, then there are no new zombies.
They don't breathe and they don't eat - what's fuelling their muscles? If there's no electrical activity in their brain, how are there nerves working? If they don't drink fluids, what's keeping them from drying up? The human body is a complex machine that needs everything to work just right - zombies fly in the face of that. What's making them move? I'll get to this later.
Ahhh! Get it off me, get it off me
I guess you shouldn't have let them get you then. I'm not going to get into a big long discussion on anti-zombie combat tactics except to say that you should flee to cover and attack them with ranged weapons.
UHHH (or, the zombie brain, and why it's your best friend)
Instead of working, I made this little flowchart to help you keep from being eaten.
As you can see, there's not a lot to it. However, like the complex flocking behavior of birds can be simulated with three rules, we can squeeze a little more out of this.
First, zombies are going to clump together. Their shuffling and uhhh-ing will attract other zombies. Eventually they wander around in crowds of smelly awfulness. Like Gen-con without the dice bags.
They must have some way of telling the difference between dead (but still warm) humans from other zombies. Figuring out what that is would make an excellent defense. Like shuffling along and chanting "Imhotep Imhotep".
The larger clumps will be louder, so they will feed back on themselves, becoming larger still. The good news is that they'll be easier to detect. The bad news is that when you stumble onto them, you've got a huge problem.
It also means that with a little time and preparation, you can do in large numbers of zombies. Simply lure them into a big warehouse and set fire to it. Or lure them onto a boat and sink it. or... Well, you get the picture.
Zombies can't reason. This means if your up on the roof when a hoard of zombies come, you can kick the ladder away and they can't get you. The only way they are going to reach the roof is if enough of them are bunched around the base of the build for the outer zombies to scramble to the top - at no time will a zombie reset the ladder to climb up. This doesn't just make them dumb, it makes them dumber than a lot of animals.
Hello, is there anybody alive in here?
Nope. We're all in easily defended islands, military bases and shopping malls. Didn't you get the email?
I have a problem with a lot of zombie fiction. It's the assumption that society would be destroyed and all that's left is a small, ragtag group of survivors struggling to survive. Now I'm going to say something that is going to sound like the height of stupidity, but hear me out:
Zombie fiction isn't realistic.Well of course it's not - zombies aren't realistic. That's not what bothers me. I'm a firm believer that, when writing speculative fiction, you get one free pass per story. You can have time travelers, or you can have intelligent dinosaurs, but intelligent time-traveling dinosaurs are just silly. It's the same thing with zombies. You can have the reanimated dead hungering for our brains, or you can have humanity turn stupid, but I will be really disappointed if you have both. Mankind being decimated by hoards of creatures that have the collective intelligence of a bag of slugs just makes my want to scream.
What would really happen? First stage people would panic. That never lasts long. Next they hide. This keeps the problem from getting bigger. Then they start to organize and think. Some people push back and these groups become larger and larger as the merge with other groups. zombies are pushed back to the fringes and are either eventually wiped out or become just another background danger. The closest real-world example I can think of would be a large population of rabid people living on the fringes of society. Now how long do you think the authorities would put up with that?
As another data-point consider real world sieges. The people inside the wall survived a long time against a foe that had considerably more resources and smarts than your typical zombie hoard. If they could do it with medieval technology, you should be able to do it with an Abrams tank. If your not up to I'm sure a couple battalions of PPCLI are.
Two stories show the extremes. Neither has zombies, but they're both post-apocalyptic and have a lot of the same themes and elements of zombie fiction. The first is Reign of Fire, the second is Day of the Triffids.
Reign of Fire is about dragons wiping out humanity. Except that the dragons are basically big dangerous animals. At no point in the movie do they show any intelligence beyond the average predator. Plus, while they do have thick skin and a certain amount of native toughness, they aren't indestructible.
The only way the dragons could achieve the superiority they have is if every single person on the face of the earth forgets how to use a gun. This is an example of an unbelievable story.
Day of the Triffids (the novel and 1981 mini-series, not the 1962 movie, which sucked) is about how mobile plants take advantage of the majority of Earth's human population being rendered blind, and how the few non-blind human survivors cope with it.
John Wyndham basically made a zombie story in a day and age when people didn't like being grossed out. He kills the population with the blindness and had the plants take the place of the shuffling undead hoard relentlessly pursuing our heroes.
And what do the characters do in Day of the Triffids? They learn to cope with triffids. They barricade, organize, arm themselves and bide there time looking for a solution. By the end of the novel the plants are merely a dangerous nuisance; the real adversaries are other humans who see this as an opportunity to set themselves up a feudal lords.
My fourth-level fighter swings his +5 long sword at the undead fiend
I guess I don't mind you wiping out humanity if the point is a character study. If you want to put a dozen people into a shopping mall surrounded by the undead just to see who breaks first, hey go for it.
You can even role-play this if your goal is a one-shot. As a campaign it leaves a lot to be desired. Because zombies are so stupid they become tiresome adversaries really quickly. I prefer the "cosy calamity" version where the slate of civilization is clearered away and it's up to the characters to make something out of the ashes. Zombies in this setting simply become a catalyist and eventually a dangerous, but manageable, part of the background.
In a (ho ho) realistic zombie background I would expect large pockets of unzombified resistence around every island, peninsula, military base and port. Desparate survivers and refuges will be a bigger threat then the shuffling stupids.
God hates us all
In such a setting, there will be enough people not reduced to moment to moment survival that research will happen into the why of zombies.
So why are there zombies? As I mentioned earlier, there's just too much that's impossible about reanimated corpses for it to ba anything other than completely supernatural. Oh, some people dress it up with a virus or some other contagion, but that really ignores what virii do. Zombies behave like a virus in how they spread (and even that breaks down when you notice that people can't see a cloud of virii coming towards you from a mile away).
Really, you need magic, or some kind of super-science (which is another way of saying "magic") to make zombies. Or you can say God did it. Magic is the least satisfying. Super-science at leasts let you explore themes of scientific hubris and how man has gone too far.
If God did it, then it really is the end of the world. The dead rise and the fact that it looks like zombies spread like a virus is simply an illusion. Car accident victims rise too, but you're not as likely to notice that and make the connection to polyester seats cause zombification.
You can even explain how society collapsed so completely so quickly - the zombies had a helping hand from the almighty. It's would be amusing for all of the characters to hit upon the secret to survival - "You're Episcopalian? I'm Episcopalian too!". Now you're in a really gross version of the Left Behind series.
Well that's enough for now. I'll add more later if something occurs to me. Like how tanks are the ideal anti-zombie weapon.
On Zombie Gaming
Date: 2004-08-08 09:09 pm (UTC)We do this because we take turns running games with each other as players. I can't read anything to do with zombies or Delta Green - If I've covered some of the same things as AFMBE, this is why. Right now he's not allowed to read Planetary, Global Frequency or anything to do with Over the Edge - it's all getting worked into my Mage: TA game.
He tells me the game (AFMBE) is pretty good.
Re: On Zombie Gaming
Date: 2004-08-09 10:45 am (UTC)