Murdermouth: Zombie Bits by Scott Nicholson

Author:Scott Nicholson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: flesh eating, paranormal, postapocalyptic, fantasy, living dead, walking dead, creatures, jonathan maberry, anthology, jack kilborn, supernatural, monsters, undead, monster, horror, dark fantasy, zombie, pulp fiction, apocalypse, science fiction, zombies, horror anthology, short stories
Publisher: Scott Nicholson
Published: 2010-08-20T18:20:48.202528+00:00

FAST ZOMBIES RISING BECAUSE OF A PLAGUE.

This is the premise of the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Something starts the plague and it spreads very, very fast. Victims who die as a result of bites reanimate within seconds and they retain human speed and coordination.

POTENTIAL FOR GLOBAL PANDEMIC: Less likely than shown in the movie unless a lot of folks with bites suddenly hop onto airplanes to visit foreign countries. Once the disease becomes known in one country the governments of neighboring countries would react the same way they would to a military coup: they’re seal their borders, start pointing missiles and very likely consider pressing those big red buttons. If things got out of hand it would be a race to see whether the plague or radioactive fallout would claim the most lives.

LIMITS TO DISEASE SPREAD: Most likely it would become an overwhelming disaster within the confines of connected continents. North and South America would fall within days or weeks if the infection starts there. Same with Australia. Since Europe and Asia are connected by shared borders any plague that starts there would consume that land mass. Rough terrain (mountains, ice, oceans, big rivers, etc.) would form natural barriers and allow for humans to regroup and make a coordinated stand.

LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESSFUL HUMAN OPPOSITION: Slim to none unless the nature of the threat is identified (and believed) early on. The disease spreads too fast to allow much reaction, study, preparation and response. It’s the same nihilistic view as the radiation raising all the dead, and from the storytelling point of view there is only one story to tell. At best you can try for episodic survivor tales, but that’s it.

LIKELIHOOD THAT WE’RE ALL TOAST: There are two views on this. If you stick to the mythology as shown in the Dawn remake, then yeah, we’re toast; but since the disease in that film doesn’t operate the way any disease is likely to act, then we probably have a shot. No matter how virulent and aggressive a disease is, there has to be time for it to spread through the bloodstream.

The thought that an infected person reanimates after hours or days is plausible; and the fact that they reanimate quickly makes some degree of sense, especially in justifying why they are fast and more coordinated: they are not in rigor yet and they’ve suffered significantly less damage to the brain. Fewer brain cells have died and therefore more of their motor cortex is working even if cognition is diminished.

But the thought that a person who is bitten to death immediately reanimates and as a completely infectious vector is less likely. If they die from a bite to the throat (as does Anna’s husband in Dawn) and bleeds out from a torn artery, there won’t have been time for the disease to have taken hold throughout the entire body.

The mouth won’t yet contain a sufficient (if any) amount of the pathogen to make them an instant carrier for the disease.

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