Sunday, October 25, 2009

Why Eat?

For some reason, I am known as the local zombie expert at work (my day job, not my RoMERO job. Natch.) Someone asked me why zombies don't try to eat other zombies. And why do they eat people anyway.

Short answer: Who knows? Not nobody, that's who.

Long answer: Well, there are lots of theories.

Here are some:

  1. Zombies are hungry (though we don't how their metabolic process works) and other zombies are poisonous. Think about it. Would you eat rotten meat (zombies) or fresh meat on the 'hoof' (us)?
  2. They have a social taboo against cannibalism, just like humans do, and they are a separate species.
  3. A bite is how a the virus that make zombies is spread, and the virus evolved this vector for transmission by compelling the infected to bite. If it is a virus. Again, we don't know.
  4. They have the weight of a thousand hells bearing down on their shoulders, and are kinda disappointed that the living aren't in the same boat.
  5. They hurt, and brains makes the pain go away.
  6. They just plain mad. MEAN mad.
  7. Maybe they've been spending most of their lives living in a zombie paradise.



1 comment:

Paladin said...

There's precedent for this in the virus world already. The virus I deal with on a regular basis, the rabies virus, behaves in such a way.

It is almost entirely spread via saliva/wound contact. A significant physical symptom, once an animal is shedding the virus in its saliva, is the propensity to attack and bite anyone/anything nearby.