Is a Zombie Apocalypse Possible? Morgan Freeman Knows

[Nieroshai]

Well... if the plague's airborne, of COURSE it becomes nigh-unstoppable. But with an airborne necrotic pandemic, you don't even need shambling rage monkeys. For zombies to even be needed in the equation, the disease would need to be contact-transmissible. The thought experiment breaks here.

 

[Nieroshai]

Eh, ill still take neil Degrasse Tyson's explanation.

http://www.zap2it.com/blogs/neil_degrasse_tyson_ruins_zombies_on_the_daily_show-2013-11

Human bodies require everything it relies on to be working. Zombies involve a walking corpse where nothing works but somehow the brain still kinda does but also doesn't.

So zombies can't stand, move, or be hungry. The brain would also be gone quickly making zombies short lived if the brain is slush. Ironically, zombies eating brains would destroy the one thing that makes them even viable. Beating people to death cripples the new zombie, so that is out too.

Just for the sake of discussion, let's say we're dealing with ghouls, not zombies. Living mindless cannibals who look like shit not because they're rotting but because they don't tend their wounds due to the mindless part. They are basically feral humans riddled with disease. What do you say about the plausibility of this?

 

[Sinocenturion]

Not to worry! I'm sure after years of training on countless situational simulators such as Dead Island, Left for Dead, Resident Evil, The Last of Us, Typing of the Dead, etc... and with our ability of neutralizing uncountable numbers of simulated undead threats, I and my fellow gamers will be to save the world when the unthinkable actually happens!


Plus, the Pentagon has a plan, so we're all good: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/13/exclusive_the_pentagon_has_a_plan_to_stop_the_zombie_apocalypse

 

[spartan231490]

Anything is possible, but possible and probable are two differing things.

 

[Nieroshai]

Eh, ill still take neil Degrasse Tyson's explanation.

http://www.zap2it.com/blogs/neil_degrasse_tyson_ruins_zombies_on_the_daily_show-2013-11

Human bodies require everything it relies on to be working. Zombies involve a walking corpse where nothing works but somehow the brain still kinda does but also doesn't.

So zombies can't stand, move, or be hungry. The brain would also be gone quickly making zombies short lived if the brain is slush. Ironically, zombies eating brains would destroy the one thing that makes them even viable. Beating people to death cripples the new zombie, so that is out too.

Just for the sake of discussion, let's say we're dealing with ghouls, not zombies. Living mindless cannibals who look like shit not because they're rotting but because they don't tend their wounds due to the mindless part. They are basically feral humans riddled with disease. What do you say about the plausibility of this?

A cannibal that looks like shit and is feral? Possible, but it would require a child to have been separated and live live long enough to turn into that. At an age critical where they learn language, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

It ain't all that common.

I guess I have to clarify. A plague that turns people feral, like a super-rabies that catches faster than it kills the host.

 

[deserteagleeye]

Maybe if they clarified that the virus was air-borne AND that the only survivors would be like 100 thousand or so people that were genetically immune to it, it would've been more interesting. But no, this was a stupid thing for them to talk about regardless.

 

[Strazdas]

there are many way a zombie ifestation can get out of hand. and no. the military would not overrun them. why? because the military is still sadly human and not robot, and thus has flaws called human emotion.

Eh, ill still take neil Degrasse Tyson's explanation.

http://www.zap2it.com/blogs/neil_degrasse_tyson_ruins_zombies_on_the_daily_show-2013-11

Human bodies require everything it relies on to be working. Zombies involve a walking corpse where nothing works but somehow the brain still kinda does but also doesn't.

So zombies can't stand, move, or be hungry. The brain would also be gone quickly making zombies short lived if the brain is slush. Ironically, zombies eating brains would destroy the one thing that makes them even viable. Beating people to death cripples the new zombie, so that is out too.

Classical zombie - yes. Virus that spreas via air and keeps human alive just agressive to the point of attacking others - nope.
Also as far as zombies biting potential zombies, youd be amazed how much damage human body can go through and still walk or run to attack others. especially if pain receptors are off

Added to the fact that if no-one is manning the nuclear power stations, they would all go..... nuclear.

completely wrong. had this debate with actual nuclear engineers. thats not actually even theoretically possible nowadays. Scenarios of what would happen from best to worse:
Automatic shut down.
energency shutdown when automatic shutdown fails
Emergency cooling when shutdown fails, drowning the reactor in cooling liquid.
all emergencies fail and the reactor dome mellts on itself, sealing the reactor for thousands of years withouty leaking any radiation.

Nuclear plants are built in a way as to never ever be able to replicate chernobyl, evne in worst case scenario of intentional human interference due to different fuel used. the most damage would actually come from hydrostations, as those would not open when needed eventually and dams would break flooding entire cities. nuclear power on the other hand is safest power we have on earth. we made sure of that after chernobyl.

Only old ones from the Generation II reactors. Generation IIIs have the ability to shut down automatically when it detects something ain't right. After humans covered that.

The only ones that would go nuclear would be the old early cold war ones that never got updated and the ones that people were too scared to update.

thing is, the last Generation II reactor is being shut down as we speak (takes years to fully shut down so yeah). even though it was updated and even safer than most nuclear plants on europe, but EU was afraid we would make nuclear warheads since this reactor used same fuel as is used in nuclear warhead creation. I am of course talking about Ignalina power plant.

Well... if the plague's airborne, of COURSE it becomes nigh-unstoppable. But with an airborne necrotic pandemic, you don't even need shambling rage monkeys. For zombies to even be needed in the equation, the disease would need to be contact-transmissible. The thought experiment breaks here.

i see zombies as a delivery vehicles rather than trasmitters here. you need a zmobie to come to your town to give you the airborn disease, does not matter if it gets to bite anyone or not by then your all infected. most airborne diseases cant fly across the globe on wind, they dont last that long. you need somone infected rtelatively close and thats where zombies come in - they are hosts that can carry it across long distances.

 

[Akisa]

Oh god.

Don't do this Morgan Freeman.

Zombie apocalypses look cool because I didn't think there was ever a chance of it happening.

Don't tell me that it actually IS possible!

Well actually there are diseases that actually causes effect the behavior of its host. For example there is a fungus that attaches to ants, it takes over the body and causes to attempt to get eaten by making it climb an object to expose itself to be eaten. Rabies causes aggressive behaviors in animals like dogs and cats to actually turn against their owners. So if any of those stuff actually migrate to humans, it might be possible to have a zombie.... eerrrr ghoul like outbreak.