What do Zombies Eat Exactly?

[Lazy Kitty]

It depends what kind of zombies they are.

If they're infected living, they require food so they have enough energy to keep walking, preferably meat because it contains a lot of proteins.
If their digestive system is too damaged, they'll die after a while because of a lack of energy.

And then there are the real zombies, the living dead, brought to undead by necromantic magic.
They usually get their energy from the magic that sustains them and brought them to undeath.
This magical energy can be provided through a direct link with their necromancer, demon or other master, it can also be provided by linking them to another source of magical energy, like some kind of magical stones which can be recharged by making sacrifices on an altar.
The entire altar business is normally only used by groups of magic users to sustain the kind of minions which require more minions than they can provide on their own.
[sup]This technique is also used to sustain huge golems, restore the bodies of fallen demons (This rarely happens because demons are pretty hard defeat and even if they're defeated, this is never permanent, so people usually prefer to seal them, because this usually lasts at least beyond their own lifetime, which is a considerably longer time than if they defeat the demon and have to deal with it again the next week.), sustaining magical barriers which have to last more permanently, sustaining permanent portals to other dimensions and various other magical projects which require a lot of magical energy and projects which have to last beyond the lifetime of the caster.
But enough about that, back to the zombies.[/sup]

It is possible to sustain the necromantic zombies with food in the same way as infected zombies, but this only works for fresh corpses whose digestive systems are still in tact.

 

[MarcusD357]

It depends on what sort of zombie you're on about..
There's the good old "Back-from-the-dead" zombie which logically wouldn't eat anything at all due to the fact that it's internal organs are no longer fully functional, the food would just sit there and rot along with the rest of the body so there isn't any need to eat.
Alternatively, there's the "Viral-infection" zombie which is really just a disease-ridden human. This would mean that the zombie would still need to eat so, depending on the virus, it would eat whatever it may choose. However, the virus may cause it to become crazed and blood thirsty in which case it would eat your brains.

 

[Wushu Panda]

Zombies eat flesh because they go after warmth. They're attracted to body heat and the smell fresh humans give off.

 

[alandavidson]

am i the only person that doesnt take the survival guide as the be all end all of zombie canon?

No, I really disagree with a lot of what the guide has to say. I prefer using actual warfare combatives.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Zombies are jealous of life, that's why they eat us. They can go on indefinitely (depending on environmental conditions). At least that's how I always saw it. It's just instinct to kill us.

 

[The Gatherer]

You really need to ask a professional zombie and get his or her opinion

Well as a career zombie I can tell you that we eat braaaaiiiinnssssss *cough* to harvest the electrical energy within so we may continue our existence. You see our brain stem is the only part of our brain that functions, and the aforementioned stem runs on electrical energy which is rapidly dissipating due to necrosis, so we need constant electrical pick me ups, this is why we have an un-dying need for human brain matter and also why electrical weapons are never featured as means to kill us in your 'video games.'
So next time you see a zombie feeding on the flesh of the living you'll give us a little more compassion. Dick

 

[luclin92]

they eat what they can get their hands on is what my impression is, but somehow they have a preference for humans.

 

[Revenge Revisited]

They probably eat anything they can get. Humans, animals, other zombies...

 

[CODE-D]

In soviet russia, zombie eats you.

 

[xdom125x]

I think they just need to eat living flesh. I bet they could eat animals but most animals aren't stupid enough to be caught by zombies. Also, I assume human flesh is their favorite, they can settle for animals but they want human flesh.

And like somebody else said earlier, all the sources that were already mentioned are just as valid as each other about zombies because zombies aren't real. Hell, I could argue that zombies would be vegetarians but they are too stupid to understand the concept of agriculture.

 

[JamesStone]

The "infected zombies", the modern day ones that are for many considered canon, are nothing more than hosts. A infected is a human contamined with a bacteria. The bacteria eventually kills is host, and after the death, it occupies small parts of the cerebral mass, the ones that control movement and agressivity (because their close), much like spore carriers in Fallout New Vegas, but a little less green. So, the body doesn´t need to eat because it´s like a puppet, but the lack of food and water makes the cells rot, one by one. However, thanks to the bacteria control, it never fully fails.

So, no, if zombies were real they probably wouldn´t need to eat.

P.S.: I´ve already said this to many people, but they always ask me about the bitting, and even thinking that this is basic here it goes. The human teeths are pretty sharp things. A zombie is a feral beast with no capabilities, including using weapons. They use bitting as a way of attacking effectively. Also, bacterias "clone" themselves time to time, so they probably get to saliva trough the blood and infect other people after the bite.

 

[theironbat46]

It honestly depends on what zombies you are referring to.
Romero[Slow, Dumb, Classic]: I think it had been establish in some Romero movie that zombies just ate people because they were in pain. They would eat only the brains I think. In later movies they seem to eat the whole human. These zombies won't starve.
Max Brooks Zombies[Same as Romero]: In the the "Zombie Survival Guide", Brooks says that while zombies prefer to eat humans, and will always go after them, but will consume animals such as dogs,cats, and etc. These zombies won't starve.
28 Days Later [Fast,Crazy,Newer]: To me this is the most plausible thing that could happen in real life. These zombies or "infected" are really just full of rage that drives them insane. They don't really want to eat you, they just want you dead. They will just happen to bite you sometimes, the virus spreads through blood and saliva so you probably going to be infected. These zombies will starve eventually.

Actualy the whole "pain of being dead" was not part of Romero's Zombies but rather spin off made by a guy who worked with Romero in the original movie.

I knew I was forgetting something. The other films were a lot more campy than Romero's.

 

[Doclector]

Day of the dead's dr Logan disproved this point most effectively. He removed a zombie's eating organs, everything in the digestive system, but the head still tried to bite him when he came near, thus proving zombies don't eat because they need to, they just want to, or think they need to, like a feeding instinct, if you will.

Romero nerds, always on hand for zombie trivia.

Of course, outside of the traditional shuffling zombies, there may be exceptions. The infected from 28 days later starve because they are for all intents and purposes, still alive, same presumably for resident evil's ganados and majitos, but because zombies are technically already dead, not breathing, no pulse, not even any body heat, they do not need food.

 

[Gustavo S. Buschle]

In my opinion there are two kinds of zombies that are the most probable: The mutated zombie.

Spoiler: example

http://io9.com/5817312/a-tumor-that-could-provide-the-key-to-making-zombies

and the parasite infected zombie (Similar to the Ganados from Resident Evil 4).
The first kind would probably need to eat to get energy, the second would probably just be consumed by the parasite and die in two weeks after infection.

 

[WeAreStevo]

In the George Romero lore from NOTLD, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead (more emphasis on Day, because they outright describe this phenomenon in that movie) they don't eat to survive.

They are working on "pure motorized instinct." They simply eat because they are working off of instinct. Another way that I look at it is that they have an insatiable hunger, which is why they appear ravenous towards any living creature.

The brains thing only came in from Return of the Living Dead, which was hokey. 28 Days later they aren't even zombies.

I think World War Z and Zombie Survival Guide were based off the Romero style zombies as well, but I'm not 100% sure about that...

 

[Toaster Hunter]

Zombies don't need to eat, but will do so out of instinct (for lack of a better word). They are perpetual motion machines and will continue to exist even without any sustenance. Eating flesh is pointless, but that really doesn't matter when hordes of them are crashing through your door.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Nobody has pointed out it's a zombie thread being necrobumped?

And perpetual motion machines piss me off.

I'm imagining a zombie apocalypse to be like the Troughton era Doctor Who story The Mind Robber.

"Graaah" say the zombies.

"You can't possibly exist." says someone. "You'd need to be a perpetual motion machine if you are able to move around without feeding on anything. Furthermore, for you to function, your muscles require oxygenated blood, which requires most of your organs to work, shooting you in the head would be unnecessary."

*zombies have no counter and turn into regular dead people*

 

[drewblood37]

Maybe this answers it ?http://insidethereel.com/blood-or-brains-a-vampirezombie-nutritional-guide/

 

[geK0]

Even if they don't starve perse, they still rot, and eventually they would degrade completely unless they are mummified. Might take a while though.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

Depending on the interpretation, flesh and/or brains.