Death by Zombie

If, truly, a zombie outbreak happens?  Shamblors?  The infection spread out of control?

Yeah, slow walking biters susceptible to a shot to the noggin isn't going to be the real threat.  We are humans, and are pretty good at adapting to that kind of threat and meeting it head on.  So to speak.  In the US there is a gun for every man woman and child.

So, I don't think, in a Level 4 outbreak that the zombies will own 90% of the territory, and whittle the uninfected population down to 5% of it's current numbers, as all the really fun and good zombie literature indicates.

No, Zed won't be the big threat to human life envisioned.  We will.

The disruption a Level 4 outbreak would cause before the uninfected get on top of things will be the true killer.  Disruptions in agriculture and, more importantly, transportation of vital life sustaining food and medicine will lead to famine.  Diseases like Typhus and Cholera we now have a good handle on will explode after among weakened uninfected populations.  People in office jobs unaccustomed to work via manual labor will have to til the fields, move the stuff, and guard against the Zombies.  It'll be nice for people to be gainfully employed in 'real' jobs instead of the law firm, the NGO offices, and the SysAdmin server room, but they won't be that good at it, at first, and we do lose the infrastructure they now maintain that gives us the world we see around us.

Stresses from such disruptions will likely cause political stress.  Enclaves that have their region under control will chafe at the pressures from higher up the command and control food chain.  Enclaves that are more hurt will be pleading for more resources to help them back.  And lots of them will now be armed and practiced at zombie retirement.  It doesn't make them good infantry against other uninfected, but it doesn't make them a slouch either.  Revolutions and regional wars will almost invariably follow.

10 million zombies, 100,000 in 100 population centers across the world get loose.  They spread and quintuple their numbers.  50 million total undead versus 7 billion is not the issue.  It's the billions that succumb in the aftermath that will be the real suffering, and all after the Zombies are fully or pretty much contained.  The Arab Spring, the Rwandan famine and genocide, Hurrican Katrina and the 2011 Japanese Tsunami all rolled into one would seem like a picnic in hindsight. 

Think on that.  That's how Zed will really 'get' us.