In the event of the dead returning to life, I really don't think any movie's got it right though. Consider, the "zombie apocalypse result" in which, quoting from the Zombie Survival Guide, "zombies become the dominat life on earth". In "World War Z", the military even looses a large set-piece battle against millions of zombies (though they had massively smaller numbers). In the "...Of the Dead" movie series by Romero, zombies are shown to repeatly overcome any human resistence even if blocked by numerous obstacles (fence, river, door, wall).
Yet, from a military standpoint, zombies are the most laughable threat possible. Consider, masses of tightly packed infantry, unarmed mind you, easily lurable with human bait. Off the bat, an attack helicopter's nose gun, usually a 30mm chaingun, would allow the pilot to eliminate many hundreds of zombies every second (30mm rounds do a headshot pretty much anywhere). The helicopter simply hovers out of reach of the undead hoarde, while the human bait sits atop a very high pillar. The only limitation would be ammunition. In addition, gernades, heavily armored vechiles, aviation strafes, and automatic rifles. If we cannot reasonably assume society would digenerate into chaos without 1 military escapade, a zombie apocolypse becomes impossible.
Hence, a zombie scenario becomes a matter of civil strife. The level of suffering I believe would largely correlate to how quickly the "zombie rules" (Zombies want to eat you, Zombies can only be killed with a headshot, Zombie-bites kill you, all dead people become Zombies) are hit on and propogated by the media. There is some lines of thinking that would indicate the scientific community would be a hinderance to the dissemination of the "Z" rules, however, as I will show below, many instances of experimentation would quickly turn science into the Rule's greatest advocate. The experimentation is actually where social ills play a good part in our salvation. In rural areas, zombies by nature would not be a large threat except to the extremely unweary (large distances, clear visibility, prevelance of hunting equitment). However, in an urban enviroment, the only counter to rampant zombie-ism prior to the police/military's update on the Z rules would be criminals/gang members. However, many non-criminals may be killed or driven away before a gang member is found and said gang member retaliates the zombie's meancing lurch with violence. From these tentative experiments a practical foundation to zombie-ism could be established, and with this, science would support the pragmatic "Zombie rules" and begin informing of the public.
Thus, depending on the date of media information hitting on the zombie rules, the death-toll could range from a few dozens to several thousand. However, it seems unlikely more then that given the contemplative nature of humans and the saturation of fire-arms in our society (which result in more experimental evidence for the zombie rules and thus leads greater credience to them more quickly).
Largely the only difference for the average person in a post-apocalypse would be 1) near-universal ownership of firearms (as zombie-ism by its nature would be a continual social problem) 2) murder becomes relatively easy to get away with (she was a zombie!) and 3) Our death rites become far more distant.
Thus my zombie plan is the same plan the heel of every zombie movie has. Hold up in my house until the military sorts out the problem.
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