Why don't undead freeze in winter?

[Thaluikhain]

Ok, yeah, undead, silly idea as it is, but I like the idea of undead monsters running around in the snow where humans have trouble existing. Castles made of ice surrounded by lifeless snow. Possibly being covered by snow and jumping out when someone walks too close.

OTOH, if they don't have metabolic functions and don't produce heat, then they'd end up at the same temperature as everything else (good for now showing up on thermographics). If that was cold enough, they'd freeze solid and be unable to move (not so good).

Zombies that are killed by their brain being destroyed would probably need to keep their brains above the temperature at which the fluid inside freezes, otherwise the expansion would wreck the brain. Or, at least with repeated freezing and thawing.

So, do the undead need to keep themselves warm, just not as warm as humans, or is there some other way they could get around this (apart from "just some kind of unspecified magic")?

 

[Ryotknife]

Wouldnt skeletons get around this as they are technically constructs held together only by magic, although they seem to be able to break the law of thermodynamics. Plus bones are already solid.

EDIT: and now i have spooky scary skeletons song in my head.

 

[Itdoesthatsometimes]

The food that they eat is enough to adjust their temperatures for a short amount of time, as well as any shelter. Meaning the zombies that you see are the lucky ones, that wandered into food and shelter. Vampires actively seek food and shelter, and body warmth.

Plus, if they do freeze they can just thaw out later.

 

[Kopikatsu]

It depends on the universe they're in. By that, I mean how they function. Sometimes zombies are 'living' but infected with some sort of virus. Sometimes they're actually reanimated corpses. Etc. First you'd have to define exactly what 'breed' of zombie you're talking about before you start theorycrafting about them.

 

[Eddie the head]

Are we talking like the Forsaken in WoW? Or like the T virus in resident evil? As far as I'm aware the answer is just magic, and we don't' know respectively. Really it's all because the plot says so. If I'm willing to accept the walking dead I can accept a suspension of the laws of thermodynamics.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It depends on the universe they're in. By that, I mean how they function. Sometimes zombies are 'living' but infected with some sort of virus. Sometimes they're actually reanimated corpses. Etc. First you'd have to define exactly what 'breed' of zombie you're talking about before you start theorycrafting about them.

Oh sure, but if they are infected living, they aren't undead, and suffer from cold same as other living things. I meant animated corpses and the like.

 

[Kopikatsu]

It depends on the universe they're in. By that, I mean how they function. Sometimes zombies are 'living' but infected with some sort of virus. Sometimes they're actually reanimated corpses. Etc. First you'd have to define exactly what 'breed' of zombie you're talking about before you start theorycrafting about them.

Oh sure, but if they are infected living, they aren't undead, and suffer from cold same as other living things. I meant animated corpses and the like.

If you're going to be getting all sciency about it, the question becomes moot. Every time you strain your muscles, they get micro-tears. When the tears heal, your muscles become stronger.

But if the zombies are undead, then they don't heal. They'd be unable to recover from the natural tearing of their muscles, and after a short time, they'd be rendered immobile. Especially since the initial soft tissue decay should extenuate the tearing...

If the cold doesn't stop them, their bodies falling apart would.

 

[The Madman]

According to the zombie survival guide, the number one source for info when fighting the undead, they do. Sometimes this destroys the undead and other times it only disables them, leading to scenario where you have half-buried undead clawing from the frozen ground and catching unsuspecting people by surprise.

Nevertheless the biggest problem that countries like Canada and Russia faced during World War Z wasn't the undead, it was the massive flux of people fleeing warmer climates and bringing with them disease, conflict, and starvation.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

If they can move they have energy in their bodies, energy which can also produce heat.

 

[Colour Scientist]

In Max Brooks' World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide they do.

They also thaw out when winter ends.

 

[Silvanus]

Weeeeeell... I think there's a difference between magic zombies (like Draugr from Elder Scrolls, or Wights from ASOIAF) and sciency zombies (for lack of a better word; like those from The Walking Dead, Resident Evil, or old Romero movies).

With magic zombies, the explanation is easy. Magic. It's right there in the name.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Our Zombies Are Different Damn-it. (OZADD)

Zombies aren't real, so the writers can bend their "rules" a little bit to fit their own Universe.

Really, the question that should be asked is, "Why are zombies around in fiction in the first place?" and you'd get the same answer: "They're fictional".

 

[Ratty]

Presumably the magic or pseudoscience explanation which keeps them from falling to pieces after a few days in the summer heat is the same thing that keeps them going in the winter. So either magic, virus X or chemical Z.

 

[DoPo]

Umm, zombies don't exist. They cannot exist, in fact. At least not the ones usually depicted. Given a universe they do exist, then that automatically means, in that universe they have a way to overcome their complete inability to exist. So if that's the case, perhaps they have a way to also not freeze.

Who knows, as always with creatures of fiction, if you don't refer to a specific work, there is no way to explain anything as each work has the fictional stuff work different to the rest. Even contradictory in some (possibly "many") cases. And sometimes no sufficient explanation is even given, so we are forced to assume that whatever the phenomena is, it's normal. E.g., zombies existing and also existing in cold temperature.

 

[geK0]

This is just one of many issues with zombies. It's best to not overthink it and accept that they exist because they're just a funthing to make action-survival-horror stories about. The bigger problem with zombies is that they function indefinitely with severely damaged vital systems and little sustenance.

Capcha: Maple Syrup

That's racist caphca

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

Because they don't exist. That tends to put a hamper on the whole freezing business, and anything else that requires existing.

 

[SD-Fiend]

Because the you have to take in account for all of the other factors that make Zombies impossible like how they would rot quickly in warm/wet environments.

 

[camazotz]

The number of people here who prefer to default to "fiction, ergo no effort required to engage imagination" is saddening. The OP made it clear he knew we were discussing the fiction, so why even bother to post if you're not going to engage the topic creatively?

So, some suggestions:

1. Magic zombies: the magical animating force also insures they remain functional, even frozen (though they might be brittle). Usually in fantasy zombies are either reanimated corpses with no lifeforce, or they are imbued with some sort of spirit or residue of the afterworld. Whatever the magic is that powers them, it can insure that the corpse is at least mobile; necromancers don't have much use for corpses that freeze in place, I imagine. D&D for example has a number of "frozen undead" specials.

2. T-Virus type zombies probably do freeze. In the super-weird-science universe of Resident Evil it seems likely that the t-virus stimulates dead cells back into action, and causes them to rapidly generate new tissue. The bigger issue isn't even this; it's where that new growth is coming from....lots of the higher-level monstrosities in RE generate a ton of additional tissue, and even manage to conceal it in smaller forms (almost any of the RE bosses are known to do this). That probably generates a lot of energy. Even if the t-virus infected zombies eventually freeze, in the weird science reality of RE that virus probably just unthaws when things warm and resumes working full speed. Offhand though I can't recall any examples of RE zombies completely freezing; even in those levels of the various games where you were able to deal with the undead in cold weather environments they still seemed to function.

3. "realistic" zombies (ala 28 Days later, I guess....or The Last of Us) probably do freeze and die. I don't think I've seen any game with zombies that were just infected but living people doing otherwise.

Anyway, my supposition has always been that whatever virus or magic animates zombies is probably also regenerating tissue....but its infection of the dead tissue still keeps it in some sort of necrotic, hideous state. If it's at least keeping them going then it can probably also "heal" frozen tissue damage too, or unthaw it, or whatever.

In fiction there are a few authors who have addressed this. It's usually very popular to assume in zombie fiction that they do freeze, then come back to life when Spring arrives. Dead Snow is one example I can think of where they are clearly more than just zombies, but magical revenants back to murder everyone. No matter how you cut it, zombies+winter make for an interesting and scary combination!