Zombies: What Hollywood (and books!) Have Taught Me.

This post will delight and frighten you. It will entertain and enlighten you. And, no, you will not be getting the time back after reading this.

Anyone that knows me knows that I have this unhealthy obsession with zombies. The Hollywood glamourization (oh, I made a word!) of them, not the voudoun bit with drugs and mindless slobbering.

First, let's explore why they're so frightening:

1. They feel no pain.

I have never heard a zombie yell out "Dude! WHAT THE FUCK!" when you lob a brick at their face. What you get is more of a "Unnnnnhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnn", and they keep stumbling toward you with their mouth hanging open like a slack-jawed yokel. That's terrifying (the yokel, not the zombie). If you can't cause them pain, there's no hesitation. There's no "hey...maybe I should pull back a little and plan a way around that shotgun blast to my face". Just zombie mouth on your meaty bits.

Which brings us to:

2. Transmission is faster and more likely than contracting The Clap.

If Zombie Disease were an STD, all the Frat Boys would be nomming on each other. Every writer has their own version of transmission. The scene in 28 Days Later where Brendan Gleeson contracts the Rage Virus because a fucking ZOMBIE BLOOD DROP lands in his GD eyeball? What the fresh hell?! Now, you know to add goggles to your survival pack. Fucking goggles. Because your eyeballs are now vulnerable.

3. More zombies by the minute.

I've already mentioned that transmission is stupid quick. There's no prophylactic to bar against it. There's only duck and dodge. And hand grenades. So let's say at 9am there are 3 zombies milling about your house. By noon, you'll have 30. Have none of these people seen a movie?

If your neighbor comes stumbling over to your house with half of his face hanging off, and instead of dropping at your feet he dives at your face - what do you do? You do not help this man! No! YOU SMASH A BAT INTO HIS FACE. He is not coming to you for help, HE WANTS TO EAT YOUR BRAINS. This is why the zombie apocalypse happens in movies. They have no Hollywood History to go by. Because of that, they fall victim. Quickly.

Now it's 9pm and everyone in your town has succumbed to cannibalism, save for you and that other asshole with all of the guns.

4. Zombie Biology: How The Fuck Does THAT Work?!

Mmkay. Number one, you're dead. B, you're decaying by the second. What happens when you die? First and foremost, your heart stops beating. Which means blood is no longer coursing through your veins to all of your extremities and vital organs. Your heart and pancreas and liver are no longer filtering out the baddies and sending the blood straight back through clean. You. Are. Dead. First, you shouldn't be able to move after rigor mortis sets in. So as a zombie - you've got about a good 3 hours of chomping before you're easy prey to the living. Maximum stiffness (hardy har) takes up to 12 hours to achieve.

So, for 3 hours you're whooping it up. Brain party. Munching like a pothead at a White Castle. After that initial time, your muscles begin to stiffen. Why? LACK OF BLOOD FLOW. You know, because your heart's not beating. Your brain can only control so much. After that, for almost 3 days - you can't move. You're barely going to wiggle, let alone run after scream queens in the shopping mall. Assuming a zombie has any logic and reasoning skills, you may have found a safe place to hole up until rigor mortis passes. It's not like you're going to starve to death. All you can do is lean and "uhhnnnnnnn". God help the poor soul that finds you on day 4 and decides to poke you.

And now the last, yet most important point:

5. Zombies: Dey iz nut smrt.

This is a smart zombie:

He pumps his own gas, herds the other zombies to safety (and/or food), he even figured out DOOR KNOBS. Now you have the most dangerous animal on the planet. He feels no pain, doesn't get tired, can duplicate himself faster than amoeba, AND HE PUMPS HIS OWN GAS. He'd almost be the perfect man, aside from the whole 'wants to eat you' thing.

This is a dumb zombie:

My eyes are up here...

Hey...back here...hallooooo...

So anyway, zombie logic and reasoning. Does not exist. Even if George Romero created a zombie that relearned things like...hand eye coordination and pulling that trigger makes things go BOOM! And how did he figure out that the fire works were set off as a distraction? All of a sudden his decaying and dead brain is all "EUREEKA!! They're trying to TRICK US! THOSE BASTARDS!! ZOMBIE COUP!" and all of a sudden he's Che Guevara raised from the fucking dead? Nnnnnnno.

Which brings me to my closing (I know, I'm sad too). Every book and movie out there has tried to blame the Zombie Apocalypse on something rational. Science gone wrong, deadly pygmy monkey virus, sexually transmitted disease, etc. This does not explain how it can all break the basic rules of biology. It is physically impossible to become a zombie. There can be no zombie apocalypse if it were the fault of science.

Which only leaves one plausible answer: MAGIC!