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How long do zombies last?

Discussion in 'Episode 605 - Now' started by wolffe, Nov 10, 2015.

  1. wolffe

    wolffe Member

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    How long do zombies last before they rot away into nothingness? We've seen zombies before on this show that looked like they were 90% decomposed.

    If it's guaranteed they rot away into nothingness eventually, then most of the zombies would be dead fairly quickly. Even if it took 3 years for full decomposition, the bulk of the zombies would be finished fairly quickly.

    Only the ones that were lucky enough to snag a meal would survive for any length of time, but their numbers would be so small they would be no problem to destroy by survivors.
     
  2. pilight

    pilight Member

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    Realistically, as long as the show needs them to last.

    Feeding shouldn't make a difference. Walkers don't have functioning digestive systems. Some don't even have that part of their body, but they keep moving. Not much of what walkers do makes sense if you think about it. They don't need to kill for food. If they kill to activate the pathogen, as procreation, they wouldn't attack other animals. Yet we've seen them attack horses, goats, deer, and so on. Their behavior is illogical.
     
  3. Blueman

    Blueman Well-Known Member

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    Until the brain is dead. Even just a walker head (without the body) immersed in water still 'lives'. This means, the head does not need food, blood or oxygen to continue its living.
     
  4. Neuropyramidal

    Neuropyramidal Well-Known Member

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    They last a few minutes longer if they think about baseball.
     
  5. murdoc

    murdoc New Member

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    im more curious about how their brain can still be in tact at certain points of
    decomposition for example the walkers in the sewer that attacked
    Maggie and Aaron... their brains had to be mush by that point.
     
  6. LadyGrimes

    LadyGrimes Well-Known Member

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    With Negan up to bat.
     
  7. QuantumCurt

    QuantumCurt Member

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    In season three, Milton (the scientist guy in Woodbury) says that walkers starve to death, but much more slowly than people do. This may have simply been an assumed speculation though, because they never really mention anything more about it afterward. Given that the bodies are still decaying, I'd assume that eventually the bodies will fail. Sooner or later they'd just lose the structural integrity to support themselves. Given enough time I'd assume that the populations of 'stray' walkers would be very significantly reduced because of this. They'd just become what essentially amounts to body-less heads snapping at the air lol
     
  8. Prufrock

    Prufrock Well-Known Member

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    [​IMG]
     
  9. ella_k

    ella_k Member

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    TBH IF this was reality, it would make a pretty crappy tv-show. Zombies the way they are in Walking Dead wouldn`t be much of a threat.

    Once you have made it out the initial outbreak and established a somewhat safe community - such as Alexandria - all you need to do is some grade 3 lvl thinking and lure them away from your home. Then wait few years until they have all rotted, problem solved.

    They are essentially slow moving mush-heads that mindlessly react to sound. Not exactly rocket-science to distract them/manage them/lure them away.

    If this was IRL then yes the initial outbreak would prob be as bad as in the show but after that Im sure the survivors would come up with some very clever ways to distract them and mass-kill them. Not hard at all.

    Living in this world with THINKING humans is much more dangerous.

    I was very pleased to see that at last the Grimes group is doing some thinking - the way they lured the herd away. IDK why they all still go into unknown territories with just their guns ... why hasn`t anyone thought of some more clever ways to keep themselves safe. Like some noisemaking devices/stuff you can use to draw attention away from your person.

    It`s like "Oh hey. Here`s a potentially dangerous being that reacts to sound and movement! I know! Let`s fist-fight it and if that doesn`t work let`s use our loud guns!":dead:
     
    #9 ella_k, Nov 11, 2015
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  10. Anachronda

    Anachronda Member

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    There was a little bit. When Rick meets Clara in the woods outside the prison, the woman who was trying to feed her zombie husband (Eddie), talked about it. She said if he doesn't eat, after awhile he starts to get slower and slower until he can't move at all. He has to have live food.

    As for the digestive systems someone mentioned above, they actually do seem to have something going on - several zombies have gorged and become bloated and fat (like the one that ate Lori), but the ones we see eventually end up normal. The heads in the governor's aquariums weren't moving a lot. It would be interesting if he's put some kind of nutrients in those but I would imagine a severed head zombie is screwed.

    The zombie behavior seems to come from the way their brains were damaged. Everything but mobility and the desire to feed is gone, and they are always hungry. Brain damage can actually cause the latter - there's a brain function that processes the feeling of fullness, and if that breaks you no longer feel full when you eat.

    It does seem like that would be. It's interesting we saw our first basically skeletal walker in "Now." The ones in the sewer must have decayed worse because of where they were. Most of the zombies in the world had to have come from early on. If they were normally decaying bodies in an exposed state they would probably be way more advanced than now. It's possible there is some life process preserving their bodies, but the state of decay suggests otherwise.
     
  11. Elton Dixon

    Elton Dixon Member

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    i dont think they will die or just rotaway, they prob will get weak,

    when carl rick n michonne went back to rick's home town, the walkers in the bar, michone said they are weak cuz they havent eaten

    they will just be weak and slow and their body compostion will be weak as well,
     
  12. No.Pantaloons

    No.Pantaloons Well-Known Member

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    The technical aspects don't really interest Kirkman, so it won't ever be a stickler point unless it needs to be. Even if zombies did exist, they shouldn't have limitless energy and decompose way faster to the extent they would not be a long term threat horde-wise.
     
  13. Stuartino

    Stuartino Member

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    I think its fair to say that we've seen trapped indoor walkers in reasonable shape, and wandering weathered ones not looking so hot. The ones submerged in water seemed pretty intact, and the sewer ones in terrible shape due to caustic nature of their location.
    So all things considered, I'd say it depends.
     
  14. JEA13

    JEA13 Well-Known Member

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    It depends how long its been since they had some.
     
  15. RoboLives

    RoboLives Member

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    :zombies_confused:At Least thru season 7.
     
  16. Walker Caravan

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    I really try not to think about it because that takes me down the unsuspended road. Like has been said, if something remotely like TWD happened IRL it wouldn't be much of a thing past the initial outbreak. I don't even think the initial outbreak would really disrupt normal life THAT much. The brain should disintegrate and be eaten by insects and bacteria and whatnot pretty quick.
     
  17. Lian

    Lian Member

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    I think they slowly decay.

    It's not that they 'need' fresh blood/flesh, but it will keep them 'fit'.
    So starve them out (although it may take much longer than a living person) and in a number of years problem will be solved.

    Perfect way for mother nature to restore from over population and pollution and stuff.
    To quote w of the w,; "With just a handful of man, we'll start, we'll start all over againnnn.."
    :Grin:
     
  18. zero7starz

    zero7starz Member

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    In season one didn't Jenner hint towards it being a "virus" or "parasite" that latched to the brain causing the behavior? The parasite actually makes the most sense why they last for so long and why feeding matters and also doesn't at the same time. Also why it only needs the head to survive.
    It would be cool to see the actual way of the walkers really fleshed out and I think it'd bring in some interesting plots they could do. However, with the way the show uses the walkers I don't think they'll ever do it. It's a unique way, as most shows usually revolve around how to stop it or fix it.
     
  19. kivo1889

    kivo1889 Member

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    I know what you mean about trying to overthink shows like TWD, but I assume that one of the main effects of whatever causes zombiefication in TWD is to make walker meat toxic to insects and bacteria. So, like embalmed or preserved meat, it just goes off very very slowly.

    I did read though that it typically takes about 7 years for a buried body to be pretty much skeletonized, and we're only ZA +3 years right now.
     
  20. Anachronda

    Anachronda Member

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    TLDR version, reader's digest version is Jenner didn't know.

    It's weird but he actually said they don't know if it is a virus, parasite, or microbial. That seemed weird since you'd think he would be able to identify things like that, or at least by size. "Wildfire" seems to show whatever it is undergoing cell division, although there are some crazy spike structures on ... whatever it is. Viruses are RNA strands rather than complete cells, and must invade a cell during division. Another possible interpretation of this scene though is that the regular brain cells did get infected with a virus, explaining the transition we see there.

    I agree with you about the parasite theory. It's even possible the parasite is some kind of colony of single celled organisms (similar to Portuguese Man of War), which are able to act like brain cells and take control of the body after killing the part of the brain responsible for consciousness. Of course a virus can inject DNA into cells, which could repurpose brain cells potentially.

    In the end the virus/pathogen theory of zombies was inserted into shows like this IMHO in order to give a veneer of science. It's interesting that Last Man on Earth, the original one with Vincent Price, seemed as I recall to suggest his character was skeptical of the germ theory of disease, but in the end vaccination turned out to be the solution. It's essentially impossible IMHO for the theory displayed in The Walking Dead to work, especially since movement is not controlled by the brain stem, but by the motor cortex, in a part of the brain which seems to be destroyed by the virus. The repurposing above could maybe change some but not all aspects of that.

    There are pathogens which affect behaviour in animals after infecting the brain cells. An example of this, for which this effect was shown in recent experiments, would be Toxoplasma gondii, which affects the fear response in rodents and infects 1/3 of humans. There are hypotheses on its effect on humans, and that article talks about some possibilities, but also says there is some dispute.

    We can only hope that the horrors developed by governments around the world do not unleash some horrible plague. Interestingly enough, there is apparently some work on viruses that target specific genotypes, both for good and ill. Eugene's theory was the government created the virus, but he was also lying. I do think it might have been possible to use his plan, though, to kill the zombies, if our gene therapy technology were up to par.

    -----------

    PS: On a kind of unrelated note, I apologize if this post seems confusing or something. I was working on it late, and while I was doing web research the forum page reloaded. Recently some new ads have shown up on this forum site which instead of showing on the page, load a new page. This breaks editing, especially since the redirect back to the page doesn't work (goes to a blank page), and I didn't see a way to manually save the draft. Anyway I lost a huge chunk of data and stuff and had to try and rewrite it. I actually sent a message to the admins about this awhile back, but have no response.
     

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