Zombie Bits by Scott Nicholson & Joe McKinney & Jack Kilborn & Jonathan Maberry & Derlis Santacruz

Author:Scott Nicholson & Joe McKinney & Jack Kilborn & Jonathan Maberry & Derlis Santacruz [Nicholson, Scott & McKinney, Joe & Kilborn, Jack & Maberry, Jonathan & Santacruz, Derlis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Fantasy, Horror, Zombies, Paranormal, Suspense, Science Fiction, Adventure, Anthologies, Short Stories, living dead, walking dead, Thriller, Zombie, Supernatural, jack kilborn, ja konrath, Military, david wellington, brian keene, Undead, action, monster, terror, creatures, drama, B-movie, Roger Kirkman, post-apocalyptic, Scott Nicholson, Jonathan Maberry, Joe McKinney, technothriller, horror books
Amazon: B003WJRICE
Publisher: Haunted Computer Books
Published: 2010-07-19T04:00:00+00:00

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THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL SCORECARD

By Jonathan Maberry

So…how do our chances stack up if the dead rose?

The answers depend on how the dead rise and what kind of zombies we’d be facing, and unless you’re a Romero purist, there are a lot of variations to consider. Here’s a summary of the major zombie sub-types along with some projections of how the 21st century human race would do in a battle with the hungry dead.

SLOW ZOMBIES RISING AS A RESULT OF A PLAGUE.

This is the most common variation on the standard George Romero model, and it’s a far more plausible and practicable one. These zombies are the slow shufflers. They have very little brain function; they have poor balance; they fear fire; it takes a headshot to bring them done.

POTENTIAL FOR GLOBAL PANDEMIC: Very high, but it would follow well-established epidemic spread patterns beginning with a Patient Zero and then increasing exponentially. Each vector would have the potential for unlimited contamination of human victims; each victim would become a disease vector upon reviving from human death.

LIMITS TO DISEASE SPREAD: Depending on where the infection begins, the spread of disease may be easily containable. In Resident Evil, for example, the disease would have been contained within the Vault had not human greed and a short-sighted desire to weaponize the disease overridden common sense and the sensible precautions built into all disease study and bio-weapons research. If the disease begins spreading in a small town there is the possibility of quarantine and purification (read: nuking the crap out of the town).

LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESSFUL HUMAN OPPOSITION: Humans are smarter, faster, capable of using technology, and possess the ability to share information and form cooperative resistance. (Though in the movies they fail miserably at all of this so the movie zoms can ultimately win. Though this was a brilliant if cynical view put forward by Romero in Dawn and Day, the apocalypse-due-to-petty-humans theme has been way overused).

Considering the efficiency of military and local law enforcement and the sophistication of their weapons and tactics, there is a solid chance that we would stay ahead of the undead tsunami and eventually win. Call it a survival likelihood of 85-95 percent.

LIKELIHOOD THAT WE’RE ALL TOAST: A lot of things would have to go wrong, more than just pettiness and in-fighting, for us to screw the pooch so badly that we’d all become dinner for the dead.