The Flaw to the Zombie Genre
A minor critique
I love the zombie genre particularly movies. My favorite sub-genre of zombies is comedy zombie. I’m not really a fan of the horror side, but I enjoy post-apocalyptic stories. However, one thing has bothered me, and that’s energy. I think that’s the inherent flaw in the plotlines.
Zombies will eventually run out of energy.
To maintain the human body, you have to eat between 3 and 4 pounds of food a day. Zombies don’t seem to eat much, and even if they eat brains, the supply on brains runs low quick.
Let’s assume zombies would eat whatever flesh and they are more attracted to living animals but primarily humans.
Let’s also assume zombies aren’t particularly smart, and therefore they are not capable of cultivating food or hunting in a more advanced way.
Based on these assumptions, zombies will all die off once they stop having people to eat. This means in a self-contained city, zombies would first eat everyone they could get to. But once bitten by a zombie, people become zombies, so the food supply runs out until zombies eat zombies.
If Zombies Don’t Eat Zombies…
If zombies don’t eat zombies, then once all available people are zombies, it is only a matter of time for them to run out of energy and die. The worst case is around 30 days before the body runs out of energy. So stay alive for 30 days, and you’re good.
If Zombies Do Eat Zombies…
Assuming zombies attack/eat humans first, zombies wouldn’t eat zombies until all available people in a city were zombies. Let’s assume that happens in a single day as zombies beget more zombies.
Are zombies likely to travel outside of the city? They would again run into a food source issue, so there is a higher likelihood that they would eat each other until there was none left (assuming the last one dies).
This could take a lot longer than a month. If you have 100 people weighing 200 lbs each, it could take a few months. Only two zombies would have be eaten the first day, so about 2%. After 30 days, there could be ~50 zombies left. It would take about ~215 days to get to zero assuming consumption in an orderly fashion.
For a million zombies, this could take a long time and give time for them to spread.
Worst-Case
Let’s assume most of humanity becomes zombified. Zombies could live off of themselves for 3 years assuming they eat each other in an organized fashion. This is probably not going to happen because zombies are inherently not organized, and there are often distances between zombies. If you live in a small town, you have a chance of only needing to survive a few weeks before they run out.
The key to the zombie apocalypse is taking quick action at the start. Don’t worry about the long game because it will be over relatively quickly. After a short time, they will all die off anyways for a lack of energy.
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Further readings of mine:
My Second Book: Advanced Espresso
My First Book: Engineering Better Espresso
