Zombie Apocalypse? Oh, Well, It’s Not the End of the World

[sour_idealist]

Everyone loves a good zombie apocalypse AU, right? Or story, if we’re talking origfic. After all, it’s a cool idea, inherently dramatic - our intrepid heroes trapped and desperate as they fight off hordes and hordes of monstrous, mindless, slavering, hungering, rotting mobile corpses -

Wait. Rewind that a bit. No, no, past there:

Rotting.

Okay

Comments

[wake_the_dragon]

It depends

[sour_idealist]

Well, if the outbreak is fast, then that actually hastens the eventually collapse of the apocalypse: less time for all the zombies to rot. It might lower the chances of people initially escaping, but they don't have to fight off the zombies for that long. If everyone's infected within the first six months, then the time to no more zombies is six months plus decomposition time (around two months), so that would mean the zombies would be gone in under a year. And if everyone comes back as a zombie, then it becomes procedure to cremate your dead immediately, strapping the corpses down to do it, and life can still go on although more hazardously.

As to three and four: yes, there would definitely be panic while the zombies were there, and you'd definitely have to fight them off, I'm not arguing that. And yes, a lot of people would probably die. But there's an end to that stage, you know? There's a point within a few years when you stop fighting and start to rebuild. The world isn't permanently zombie-ridden, and I bet it would be possible

[wake_the_dragon]

What if the virus stops rotting? They wouldn't be falling apart, so there wouldn't be a time limit. Also, what do you mean by if everyone's infected? Most of the population, a city, what

[sour_idealist]

I... agree that there would be a lot of deaths, actually, I never said there wouldn't. Things would suck for a while, and a lot of people would indeed die. But I've seen a lot of stories wherein the zombies stick around for generations, or otherwise where it's implied the world is permanently and entirely doomed, and they just... massive plot holes.

Things would definitely suck in the short term, though, I agree.

[wake_the_dragon]

Yeah, I see what you mean. The sticking around for generations thing, could be stupid, but I've seen it done well once where according to the story throughout history there have been periodic outbreaks of the zombie virus. (In the comic, there was this great scene that had Romans vs. Zombies)

[wake_the_dragon]

I was also mostly playing Devil's Advocate. Which I probably should have said before...