By the by -- bye bye

paul_valaru said:
shaun


and they were romero zombies
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In Shaun of the Dead there was still the bite that caused the dead to become ill, die and reanimate. Does anyone recall what the "cause" was? (I have the DVD, I should watch it again... loved that movie!)

Dawn of the Dead was the sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Also by George Romero. In that film it was a plague that caused zombie-ism, passed on to the victim by a bite from the Zombie.
 
Stranger than Fiction: It turns out that it's actually fungus that causes Zombies

Brain-jacking fungus turns living victims into 'zombies'

Makes them hang from trees as horror nest-womb cocoons

By Lewis Page • Get more from this author

Scientists say they have discovered a horrific flesh-eating fungus which is able to infect living creatures and turn them into "zombies".

The hapless victims are then compelled to shamble away to a location where their immobilised bodies - as they are gradually consumed from within, acting as food supply and nest to the ghastly fungal offspring - can spray out more spores to seize control of more hosts.

For now, the terrifying Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus appears to be focusing its zombie extermination campaign primarily on carpenter ants of the sort found in the jungles of Thailand.

“The fungus accurately manipulates the infected ants into dying where the parasite prefers to be, by making the ants travel a long way during the last hours of their lives,” says Dr David Hughes of Exeter and Harvard universities.

Having successfully taken over an ant, the fungus compels it to leave its normal haunts high in the forest canopy and directs the unfortunate insect down into the dark, moist basement layers of the jungle. There the luckless creature is compelled to clamber onto the underside of a leaf in the O unilateralis' favoured location for reproduction - some 25cm above the ground, on the northwestern side of the tree or plant in question.

Once in such a location, the dying ant is made to clamp its mandibles - jaws - firmly shut onto the leaf, and then hangs lifelessly from them to become a food supply and home for the burgeoning, ghastly fungus-children within. Most of the insect's innards are gradually converted into food and consumed, but the muscles holding the mandibles shut are cunningly left alone.

In order to prevent any rivals trying to snaffle the nutritious ant corpse, the fungus also forms a protective coating or cocoon over the hanging victim. Presently a stroma or "fruiting body" sprouts from the back of the insect's head and begins to shower drifting spores down on the forest floor beneath - each of which could infect another unlucky passerby.

The fungus' dreadful capabilities were already well-known in the insect-zombification boffin community, but Hughes' latest research has revealed just how precisely the hapless walking-dead ants are controlled. He theorises that the deadly rain of mind-control zombo spores may be why the carpenter ants try to avoid the lower levels of the jungle as much as they can.

Hughes' and his colleagues' new paper, The Life of a Dead Ant: The Expression of an Adaptive Extended Phenotype, can be read by subscribers to The American Naturalist here. ®
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Source
 
The most important gun during a zombie invasion would be one that allows you to move quickly and quietly, and kill animals, and replenish the ammo easily. A zombie invasion is not World War 3. If you're in a situation where you need to kill a large number of them, you're probably dead no matter what gun you have. What happens when you need to reload? When you run out of ammo? When you need food, water, or rest? The zombies have unlimited numbers, you can't kill them all. The only way to survive is to get to a safe, sustainable location. The first step is to get away from population centers. Rural areas will allow you to forage for food, hunt animals, and find fresh water, and the zombie population will be less dense.

Another important thing that people don't realize is body armor. You always see these zombie movies where the people are dressed in business casual, fighting zombies. Bad idea. You want work boots, 2 layers of jeans, at least 2 shirts, a heavy leather jacket and gloves, neck protection, and some type of sports/automotive full-face helmet. This will greatly improve your chances if you are forced into hand to hand combat, since they will be unable to easily bite you. Zombies are dead, so their muscles decay like a normal corpse, so they won't be as strong as you, if you're properly nourished and physically fit.

I have a basic outline of my zombie plan. I'm going to grab what supplies I can fit in a backback, then head north about 5-6 blocks to the grocery store. I will take enough bottles of vitamin C supplements to last for years, as well as any additional vitamins and preserved food as I can carry. The final stop after that is 2 blocks east, there is a marina. There's a 3-masted boat there, this big ~75 foot sumbitch. Going to climb aboard, untie it from the dock, and get out into the Hudson. Much safer idea than trying to camp out in the most densely populated area in the US (18 million zombies within about a half hour's driving distance)

IDK how it would work out long term, though. Ideally, I'd be able to operate all of the ship's electronics - radio, GPS, radar, etc. It seems built for a long voyage, so hopefully it would have desalinization equipment and fishing gear.

One risk would be zombies on the riverbed (there's already plenty of dead bodies down there, but they all have cement shoes - hehe) climbing up the anchor chain, so I think I would try to sail South, to calmer seas and a warmer climate (at least until hurricane season begins)
 
Jim would be so happy.....a Blunderbuss.


:shrug:


Sounds kinda like the Judge. Or its' great-great-great-great Grandpappy.
 
paul_valaru said:
well, actually RPGs don't arm until they have traveled a certain distance. So Jamal won't be killing them all, it's just a big slow bullet until it's traveled 500 yards or something.
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Depends on two things. How deep the water is under that boat and the swimming skills of the terrorists. After all...the grenade might not explode, but it will sure put a dandy hole in that rowboat...;)
 
Altron said:
The most important gun during a zombie invasion would be one that allows you to move quickly and quietly, and kill animals, and replenish the ammo easily. A zombie invasion is not World War 3. If you're in a situation where you need to kill a large number of them, you're probably dead no matter what gun you have. What happens when you need to reload? When you run out of ammo? When you need food, water, or rest? The zombies have unlimited numbers, you can't kill them all. The only way to survive is to get to a safe, sustainable location. The first step is to get away from population centers. Rural areas will allow you to forage for food, hunt animals, and find fresh water, and the zombie population will be less dense.

Another important thing that people don't realize is body armor. You always see these zombie movies where the people are dressed in business casual, fighting zombies. Bad idea. You want work boots, 2 layers of jeans, at least 2 shirts, a heavy leather jacket and gloves, neck protection, and some type of sports/automotive full-face helmet. This will greatly improve your chances if you are forced into hand to hand combat, since they will be unable to easily bite you. Zombies are dead, so their muscles decay like a normal corpse, so they won't be as strong as you, if you're properly nourished and physically fit.

I have a basic outline of my zombie plan. I'm going to grab what supplies I can fit in a backback, then head north about 5-6 blocks to the grocery store. I will take enough bottles of vitamin C supplements to last for years, as well as any additional vitamins and preserved food as I can carry. The final stop after that is 2 blocks east, there is a marina. There's a 3-masted boat there, this big ~75 foot sumbitch. Going to climb aboard, untie it from the dock, and get out into the Hudson. Much safer idea than trying to camp out in the most densely populated area in the US (18 million zombies within about a half hour's driving distance)

IDK how it would work out long term, though. Ideally, I'd be able to operate all of the ship's electronics - radio, GPS, radar, etc. It seems built for a long voyage, so hopefully it would have desalinization equipment and fishing gear.

One risk would be zombies on the riverbed (there's already plenty of dead bodies down there, but they all have cement shoes - hehe) climbing up the anchor chain, so I think I would try to sail South, to calmer seas and a warmer climate (at least until hurricane season begins)
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someone has read the zombie survival guide.

at least you and I did our homework.
 
Altron said:
The final stop after that is 2 blocks east, there is a marina. There's a 3-masted boat there, this big ~75 foot sumbitch. Going to climb aboard, untie it from the dock, and get out into the Hudson. Much safer idea than trying to camp out in the most densely populated area in the US (18 million zombies within about a half hour's driving distance)

IDK how it would work out long term, though. Ideally, I'd be able to operate all of the ship's electronics - radio, GPS, radar, etc. It seems built for a long voyage, so hopefully it would have desalinization equipment and fishing gear.

One risk would be zombies on the riverbed (there's already plenty of dead bodies down there, but they all have cement shoes - hehe) climbing up the anchor chain, so I think I would try to sail South, to calmer seas and a warmer climate (at least until hurricane season begins)
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Here's hoping that you get to said boat before someone else does, eh. If I can't find a boat or get to one safely, my best bet is going North, where the population density drops to less than 0.1/sq.mile and take over someone's nice cabin up there.
 
MrBishop said:
Here's hoping that you get to said boat before someone else does, eh. If I can't find a boat or get to one safely, my best bet is going North, where the population density drops to less than 0.1/sq.mile and take over someone's nice cabin up there.
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It's at a large marina. I'd like to snag the biggest boat, but I'd be able to find a smaller one. There's a few other yachts over 40 feet. Or, I could grab like a J24 or something, and sail to a nearby harbor that has a larger ship. With enough other survivors, we could probably operate a much larger ship. I live inside New York Harbor, so there's plenty of choices. Everything from rowboats to aircraft carriers.

The ship idea isn't endlessly sustainable, but how long does it take a corpse to rot? I could probably ride out the worst of it for a few years sailing in wherever there are the least amount of storms, then sail to Maine once most of the zombies have sufficiently rotted.
 
Altron said:
but how long does it take a corpse to rot?
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Depends: If buried... within a few weeks, the muscles are mostly eaten by bacterium and the juicy bits have had flies and maggots, and other insects, devour them beforehand. That is, if zombies decay at a normal rate. Out in the open (not buried), normally animals take care of business and the bugs finish the job usually within 2 weeks.

If zombies decay slower AND don't find new prey, you could be on that boat for years. You're still talking 6 billion people and even a superior killing force would take over a year to kill off that many people - but we're talking zombies and mostly hand-to-hand fighting.

Find a comfy boat!
 
Oh...and you're near a marina, but then again..so are close to a million others just like you. Bring a gun and prepare to thin down the herd of survivors to ensure your own survival.

*That was odd...a basic edit turned into a complete repost with edit.
 
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