Don’t worry, wildlife would kick undead ass:
…zombies are essentially walking carrion, and Mother Nature doesn’t let anything go to waste.
Yup.
[Update a few minutes later]
It’s really worth a read:
North America’s large mammal predators would be more than a match for zombies. We have two bear species, brown (or grizzly) and black bears. Male brown bears can weigh in at 1,000 pounds. They are not afraid of humans. They can deliver a bite of 1200 pounds per square inch and have long, sharp claws designed to rip open logs and flip boulders in search of insects and other small critters to eat. They would easily tear apart rotting zombie flesh. Black bears are much smaller and typically run from humans, but even a black bear, when approached or cornered, would make short work of a zombie. Both bear species have an incredible sense of smell and both love to eat carrion, so even if zombies didn’t approach them, the bears eventually would learn that these walking bags of flesh make good eating.
Like black bears, gray wolves are very shy of humans and typically run away at the first sight of us. Nor are they strangers to scavenging. They’d soon take advantage of the easy pickings presented by lumbering zombies. Coyotes are far less shy than wolves and can happily live alongside humans, including in the heart of our cities. These intelligent canids would quickly learn that they could take down zombies one by one, especially the eastern populations of coyote, which are larger and bolder due to past interbreeding with wolves and domestic dogs.
Though I’d point out that it they think black bears are shy around humans, they’ve never run across one in Alaska. They’re very aggressive up there — Alaskans seem to fear them more than grizzlies, which will generally leave you alone if you don’t surprise them. I suspect it’s because they’re much less used to humans, with the low population density. It’s almost like they’re a different species from the lower forty nine. Alaska would be a particularly gruesome place to be walking dead. The moose alone would make quick work of them.
Not a zombie afficionado so maybe I’m wrong but……
isn’t it true that if you are bit by a zombie you become a zombie? Vampire-like, so to speak, as it were?
If so, if a zombie ever got a bite into a bear, a zombie bear would be a pretty fearsome thing, I would think.
Leading to other zombie bears and therefore a run on .470 Nitro Express ammo…………
I think the science is still out on whether or not you can zombify a non-human.
Depends on your mythos. One of the Resident Evil movies, for example, had crows that were either zombies themselves or had some kind of related infection, apparently from eating zombies.
Zombies, being undead, are pretty slow. The Mythbusters just had a whole episode dedicated to zombie lore and found it fairly easy to evade them (especially when you do what Karie did!) While a human can’t outrun a living bear (“I just have to outrun you!”), you should be able to outrun a zombie bear. Besides, would zombie bears want to eat the brains of living bears?
well I see zombie dogs all over the place – including ammo boxes and targets.
Resident Evil has zombie dogs…and as we all know if it happens on tv it must be true.
I can buy zombie teddy bears called “Undead Teds”……………
I think it’s time to stock up an .470 NE………..
In the Lewis & Clark expedition’s diaries, there’s a discussion of them meeting their first grizzly. It isn’t pretty. Something like 50 armed men and the verdict: “Please, let’s not do that again.”
Yes, but they probably dealt with it badly, not understanding its nature. They probably figured it was just a bigger bear, and good hunting.
Grizzly Adams (one of the people responsible for the extinction of the California Grizzly) would hide in a tree with all the guns he could carry and wait for a bear to walk underneath. He’d fire everything he had at it and then jump on it and finish it off with his Bowie knife.
I don’t remember them showing that on the TV show, but I didn’t watch the TV show very often–maybe I missed it.
It’s kind of interesting that California has an extinct mammal on its state flag. Maybe once all the entrepreneurs leave they can put an image of one of them on as well.
That video of Yellowstone elk (in the Mammoth Hot Springs area) charging cars reminds me that the people out there who have to deal with clueless tourists mixed in with crazed elk for a long summer, tend to acquire a fondness for elk burgers by the end of the season. It’s the only way that they can “get back” at any of their tormentors. 😉
The logical follow-on genre would then be: non-zombie humans emerge from hiding only to be attacked by everything from maggots to grizzly bears, who have repopulate the planet with their own kind only to eat all of the zombies, and now have a taste for humans.
In my book, that would be much more terrifying than any zombie attack…
That’s pretty boring. People die off immediately, done in by zombie influenza or zombie mosquitoes. Most likely they go extinct before they find out what killed them.
Little shop, little shop of zombies.
If you’re ready for the Zombie Apocalypse, then you’re also about as ready a one can be for any disaster, natural or man-made: a bug out bag, a bug-in shelter, contacts with neighbors, and so forth.
If I remember correctly, a lot of novels say zombies are not edible (by animals at least), so animals just eat them and die.
Probably there would be bacterials able to decompose them or they should be burned.
If we go for the virus infection and they are unable to regenerate damage, the zombies hordes would be destroyed by time and wear pretty fast (weeks).
Just have them follow you on a heavy truck going very slowly. They will consume their feet doing it all day and night and day. They will just break muscles and tendons and fall down after a couple of days of walking continuously.
Then living humans could pick them up one at time, hack them and throw them in some furnace with ease.
Usually one of main probem is someone dying and becoming a zombie inside a populated place (walled city or likes). The people there fail, every time, to divide the place in a way zombies can not immediately be able to access all the place as they enter.
Doors and walls are your friends. Living can walk on a catwalk, zombie can not.