This doomsday scenario seems to never run out of interest in our pop culture. We can find it in movies, TV shows, books and video games. Although the chance of it happens in real life is extremely less likely, yet the entertainment industry still transforms this scenario to many variations and story lines for us to enjoy.
Here are some reality aspects I found interesting on some of the famous zombie apocalypse pop culture.
Personal Hygiene
This one is a long running question to the Walking Dead TV series. How can they stay good looking on years on the run? Do they shave for that hairless armpit everyday?? Why Glenn always has stubble all those years??? I mean it has to grow at some point right??!?
So many questions.
I understand it does not look cool and bad-ass to care about your personal hygiene in a zombie world, but it is a very important aspect in life. If you lack of personal hygiene, what is going to happen to you? Sick. You are going to get sick. Whether you eat with a dirty hand, or you wear wet sock for one week, or you get fleas on your facial hair and body hair, they all will get you sick and can lead to death. And do you know what is the worst implication of this? Periods. How do women keep their personal hygiene in such world? Imagine having vaginal infection while being surrounded by zombies.
One comic, or manga, actually cares about this. It’s I Am A Hero by Kengo Hanazawa.
Even though it has the weirdest zombies, but it has a very realistic day-to-day basic needs. There is one arc where the characters are going to a hot spring and talking about getting a razor for shaving their body hair. There is also a building where people live, at one point they ran out of water, so they have the occupants to pee in a bottle to keep the building clean. They also show characters getting worried about their body odor (sounds like my everyday concern) and many other details. That what makes this manga is special. It shows the real surviving without the comfort we usually have.
The details on this manga also include make-shift weapons from everyday stuff, how they use sex as currency, utilizing bicycle (this might sound weird but many mainstream zombies stories don’t actually have any bicycle in them, even though it uses no fuel, makes little sound and is easier to repair), and many other amazing details. The only downside of this manga is the zombies, they have “purposes” and “goals”, which makes it pretty absurd. Nevertheless, it shows the real nature of human survival with proper personal hygiene care.
Decaying Zombies
Running zombies are the worst. If they are real, forget everything I said earlier about bicycle and get me a car promptly. Train to Busan, Left 4 Dead, World War Z are some pop culture examples with running zombies. To encounter the argument “but they are dead!”, these stories usually have the infected people technically still alive but infected with virus on their brain. With that information, I can safely assume that they still have metabolic system which keeps their body running and functional.
Why this is important? Because if the zombies are dead people, then they will have no way to survive the decaying body.
Basically we have metabolism to let our body get what it needs to, well, be alive. Zombies have no way to have these chemical reactions in their body to keep it operating as it should. They also have to face the decaying of their own body. Flesh and muscle will rot and the body will not be able to stand with only bones intact. Eventually the zombies will fall on its own and defeated by the greatest predator of all time, mother nature. Bugs and maggots will decompose the body, scavenging animal will devour the carcass, not to mention the predator animal like bear and boar will attack these zombies as well. They also have to deal with extreme temperature and without metabolism to combat it, the zombies will have no chance of survival.
((MINOR SPOILER ALERT FOR 28 DAYS LATER))
I find that in this scenario, 28 Days Later, a 2002 movie by Danny Boyle, can represent this realistic aspect. In the movie it is shown that the zombies are indeed infected and technically still alive (and yes they can run). On the beginning of the outbreak, they chase and kill people and wandering around aimlessly looking for brains to consume. But in the end of the movie (around 2 months after the outbreak), it shows the zombies are dying of starvation, because there are less people to eat, because more people have become zombie and the remaining human become smarter to avoid them, thus they have less food to consume. Of course this doesn’t really stop the story because we have the next installment in 28 Weeks Later, but it is shown in the franchise that human can starve the zombies as a mean to defeat them.
Country Will Not (Easily) Fall
I hate it when they make it so easy for a country to fall during zombie outbreak. Why? Because country always has a plan for every disastrous scenario. Country has military, which can shoot and destroy enemy from far away and have spend their whole life trained for emergency situations. Don’t tell me the military cannot obliterate thousand zombies, which I remind you cannot shoot at them back, marching to the city hall. It is not going to be easy, but I’d say they have a pretty good chance.
Beside that, biting is a very bad method of infecting other people. We used to have the SARS epidemic back in 2003, it spread through air, which is pretty much almost impossible to avoid, and yet here we are still walking in this earth. It is almost impossible to infect thousands of people through bite alone on initial outbreak.
BUT if it does happen, I still think we will somehow survive. Humanity will prevail and rebuild the world. If the zombies manage to conquer big cities and the army fail to fight them back, some type of government or authority will still rise and take charge and rebuild the world. This happens in the world of Last of Us, a video game by Naughty Dog released in 2013.
20 years after the initial outbreak (the outbreak is from a fungi-like parasite and can transmit into the air in the form of spores; thus making it plausible to spread widely simultaneously), 40% population of human survive and live in quarantine zones with curfew and martial law, which implies some sort of authority is in charge nationwide. People still work, go to school, have a family, even Ellie the main character was born after the outbreak. Her character will show you how someone born in that times doesn’t understand the concept of a “normal” life as we know it. The Last of Us world is an excellent example of how community and authority will rise and rebuild the world years after the zombies outbreak.
And I bet in that world they will still have you fill out some bureaucracy paperwork.
But considering all aspects, in my humble opinion…
the most realistic zombie apocalypse scenario is…
((MAJOR SPOILER ALERT FOR SHAUN OF THE DEAD))
This 2004 movie by Edgar Wright is the most realistic zombie apocalypse scenario in my opinion. It’s a horror comedy film which fits perfectly with our online society. If we have zombie outbreak, I bet some people will still login to their computer and photoshop crying Jordan meme on the sunflower from Plants vs Zombies getting eaten.
Some people will be clueless and have no idea what happened (just like in the beginning of the movie). They will see people get bitten in the street and will probably ignore them, because you know it’s impolite to stare at funny looking people doing weird stuff on the street. They will know once the meme (or the news) circulate on group chats. After that people will start to get ready like they know how to fight zombies and look for their families. Then you just have to wait it to blow over. In the end of the movie, the military show up and kill and catch all the zombies. Society returns to normal. Seems like a very likely scenario if an outbreak ever occur.
What do they do with zombies afterwards? They become cheap labor and source of entertainment. Of course. That is the most realistic thing you can do with them.
