Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

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Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby seneschal » Wed Sep 02, 2015 3:17 pm

I know many Goblinoid and Pacesetter fans are zombie fans. Please explain to me the endless appeal that fuels not only Rotworld but all the books, comics, movies, TV shows, games, etc., currently devoted to them. Now, I've watched plenty of movies featuring Haitian style zombies: White Zombie, I Walked with a Zombie, The Ghost Breakers. The supposed vampires in The Last Man on Earth are more like zombies than Dracula wannabes, and even Things to Come presented listless wandering plague victims. Invisible Invaders (1959) beat George Romero to the punch by almost a decade with aliens inhabiting human corpses in order to wreak havoc. What makes Romero style brain-munchers so exciting that you can base whole TV series and role-playing campaigns around them?

Shambling, flesh-eating hordes? How are zombies an improvement over Triffids, Fiends Without Faces, daughters of Caltiki, extraterrestrial Critters, or even Lord of the Rings' orcs? And all of them multiply as rapidly as, well, the mutant bunnies from Night of the Lepus.

The fear of becoming one of Them? Traditional vampires and werewolves do that, too, as well as countless alien invaders from the Pod People to the Borg. And they've got more smarts and personality, as well as the knowledge of their previous lives.

There are too many of 'em! We can't shoot them all? But the same is true of many robotic armies presented on page and screen, from Ming drones in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe to the Trade Federation droids of Phantom Menace. Flesh or steel, they're just as relentless and numerous.

The Star Trek episode Miri (1966) beat Night of the Living Dead to the screen by two years and presented similar themes. Great episode, but I can't image a whole TV show set on that plague devastated planet. Even 1979's Buck Rogers in the 25th Century dropped the "cannibal mutants outside the city limits" trope after the pilot episode (although I think they should have followed up on it).

Discuss.
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Re: Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby Blood axe » Fri Sep 04, 2015 5:37 pm

Im a big Zombie fan, but like anything, there is some good stuff out there, and some garbage. Zombies scariness boils down to a few things IMHO. They are us. Friends , family, coworkers. What causes it? Is a loved one infected? What do you do? Its easy to kill something foreign and horrible like a plant monster from Mars- but what about your wife (meh...maybe not that)....what about your child? Another is the break down of society. What was once safe & comfortable is now a dangerous landscape. The wilderness may now be safer. The worst monster may now be fellow survivors. Will (when?) will they betray you?
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Re: Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby sniderman » Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:04 pm

You know what I find horrific about the zombie apocalypse? It's unrelenting. When a zombie kills, it creates a new one. Two zombies become four, then eight, then 16. It spreads insanely fast. And one bite is all it takes. You're doomed.

Zombies don't need to rest. They don't tire. They don't get hungry (in the usual sense). They just keep coming. You can run, but you'll tire. They won't. You need to sleep. They don't. You can't hide forever. Oh, you can try, but you need to come out for food or water at some point. You say you can kill them by shooting them in the head? You'll run out of bullets at some time.

You're behind a fence? How long will it hold up when that group pressing against it gets larger and larger and larger until it snaps? You put up barbed wire and electrocute it? Zombies don't feel pain, so that's hardly a deterrent. Even if you hole up in an abandoned high rise with plenty of food and water to last you a lifetime, you'll be stuck there forever, listening to the never-ending moans and groans below. And if one of the survivors in your group dies in his sleep? He'll wake as a zombie, and begin killing you all before you awake. That's right, even folks you love and trust who are holed up with you can become a murderous cannibal if they die of natural causes and you're not around to thrust a spike into their brainpan.

Zombies are a wall of disease. A never-ending mass of biting, rending creatures. And their victims only ADD to that mass of walking death. That's what I find frightening. YOU CANNOT WIN...EVER.
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Re: Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby seneschal » Sat Sep 05, 2015 3:43 am

Good arguments. But surely the zombie hordes aren't endless. Even without opponents there's got to be a pretty good rate of attrition from decomposition and wear and tear. I mean they are shambling around exposed to oxygen, weather, etc. An individual zombie would rot much faster than a normal embalmed and buried corpse. Eventually they'd run out of readily available victims and animals to infect and fall apart on their feet. All animal life in the area might die out but plague germs in soil and water and air don't last forever. Eventually the environment would clean itself up and be recolonized by creatures with immunity to the plague.
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Re: Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby seneschal » Sat Sep 05, 2015 11:08 pm

My previous post made certain assumptions. Zombie movies naturally focus on humans becoming zombies. But does the phenomenon affect animals as well? Mammals only? It occurs to me that mosquitoes and flies, feasting on the undead shamblers, would be more of a threat than the zombies themselves as far as spreading the disease goes, even if the bugs were unaffected by zombi-ism themselves.
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Re: Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby Blood axe » Sat Sep 05, 2015 11:49 pm

Decomposition.
The germ/virus (or whatever) could possibly slow down the rate of decomposition. In the Dead Reign RPG, the zombies absorb the life force of the dying and that keeps them "fresh". Once all zombie are gone, what about another outbreak? The next time someone dies, they could turn and it starts over.

Animal Zombies.
Perhaps the animal brain is not advanced enough and only humans (or even primates) are developed enough to reanimate. Also, if animals can turn into zombies- people are screwed. Birds are everywhere. Brian Keene has books that go into this. The virus mutates. At first it only effects humans/mammals, but it later jumps to fish and birds.
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Re: Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby Goblinoid Games » Tue Sep 08, 2015 3:28 am

I'm a sucker for the survivalist aspect of it as well. Zombies are a big part of it but humans might be the most dangerous opponents!
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Re: Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby DavetheLost » Mon Sep 21, 2015 11:47 pm

The zombie plague doesn't have to last forever, it just has to outlast us. Even if the last zombie falls apart five seconds after the last human dies, the zombies have still won.

Add to this that these days zombies are usually portrayed as not supernatural, it is a virus or bacterium, in a time of Ebola and HIV that hits home. Zombies also were once us, perhaps they still are. They are not some horrible, but safely non-human, thing from somewhere else. They are our friends, loved ones, coworkers, they are us. Death scares many people, and zombies are death incarnate except that they don't follow the rules of death. They are dead but they move and spread death.
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Re: Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby sniderman » Tue Sep 22, 2015 11:52 am

Blood axe wrote:Animal Zombies.
Perhaps the animal brain is not advanced enough and only humans (or even primates) are developed enough to reanimate. Also, if animals can turn into zombies- people are screwed. Birds are everywhere. Brian Keene has books that go into this. The virus mutates. At first it only effects humans/mammals, but it later jumps to fish and birds.


You should check out The Other Dead. The zombie virus ONLY affects animal species. And in The Rising, ANY living thing that dies comes back as a zombie: people, animals, birds, INSECTS...etc.
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Re: Zombies: A Bit of Heresy

Postby Blood axe » Tue Sep 22, 2015 1:12 pm

sniderman wrote:
Blood axe wrote:Animal Zombies.
Perhaps the animal brain is not advanced enough and only humans (or even primates) are developed enough to reanimate. Also, if animals can turn into zombies- people are screwed. Birds are everywhere. Brian Keene has books that go into this. The virus mutates. At first it only effects humans/mammals,


but it later jumps to fish and birds.


You should check out The Other Dead. The zombie virus ONLY affects animal species. And in The Rising, ANY living thing that dies comes back as a zombie: people, animals, birds, INSECTS...etc.




Thanks. I have read Brian Keene , The Rising series, but I'll check out the other one. Lots of stuff out there, but not many good ones.
To defend: This is the Pact.
But when life loses its value,
and is taken for naught -
then the Pact is to Avenge.
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