Zombies in St. Elmo Redux

I think we need to realize some things about the occurance of zombies. First, the very nature of the "Zombie Appearance" is hard to define and exceptionally difficult to to give an accurate name. Do you call it a "Zombie Appearance" a "Zombie Uprising" or a "Zombie Event"? All names are slightly inaccurate and fail to capture the altogether remarkable, unique, and ubiquitous nature of such an event. While the name is still, in some sense, unimportant it is still important to remember a couple of important aspects of the "Event". So, for practical purposes, I will henceforth refer to the appearance/arising/occurance of the Zombies as the "Zombie Event".

Onwards. The Zombies start initially as the "dead becoming undead" i.e. dead bodies suddenly becoming animated without intelligence and a soul with an insatiable desire to consume the flesh of the living. While there is some discussion about the "undead" or "Zombies" being possessed of spiritual beings (demons) giving an approximation of "life" to the physical bodies, that is irrelevant to understanding what is to be feared of Zombies.

This may seem an obvious point but it should be emphasized nonetheless: Zombies should be feared because if you are bitten by one you will become a Zombie also. No-one of course knows if the living are conscious of their material bodies being in an "undead" state (there's an assumption of dualism here, mind/soul + body), but that possibility makes the fear of dying to become a Zombie all that more terrifying. Moreover, while there has been some debate to the contrary along with pseudo-zombie films (28 days later) sowing confusing, the "undead" or, "becoming undead" is not something scientifically (i.e. medically) understood. It is an altogether spiritual "disease" (lending weight to the "demon possesed" argument).

So, at the occurance of the "Zombie Event" cemeteries, mortuaries, and other locations for the dead are where the first Zombies are found. This is why in the first phases of the "Zombie Event" high populations aren't to be feared necessarily. It is in later stages as Zombies begin "turning" the living into the undead that large population areas become enormous hazards for the remaining living. Which is why Mesh's point concerning avoiding large population areas is a valid one within a certain context.

I'd also like to reiterate again the inherently dumb/stupid nature of Zombies. They posses no intelligence beyond that required to move and pursue the living (in the most redimentary fasion). They have no problem solving abilities. Even recent developments in the Zombie canon (Romer's recent Land of the Dead) do not change this fact (and Romero should be chastised for suggesting otherwise). Zombies can not problem solve nor would they have any knowledge of military tactics as PhysicalPants suggested.

Mesh has also suggested that we find areas with a little population as possible. While I think this is smart on one level I dislike it for a number of reasons. The first is that the shift from our current food/sustenance setup to a largely agrarian one is going to be time consuming. None of us are farmers, remember, and much of the materials we'd need to begin with such an endeavor can only be found in population centers (even small ones).

Further, and this I belive is the most important point: the Zombies must, must be defeated to some extend before any societal institutions can be rebuilt. Even the most simplest terms, how can we build a farm if we haven't killed all the Zombies in the surrounding area? In the long term, how can we regain the earth and society at large if we don't slowly contain the Zombie problem as a whole? That must be the long term goal of fighting the Zombies. We must not engaged in a overall pattern of appeasement, since that is simply a pattern of defeat. We must draw a line in the sand. We must settle, we must create a new home.

Again, that is why I think Lookout Mountain is our best option. It is isolated geographically, but still close enough to former population centers to allow for necessary scavenging for institutional remains to build new ones. And it also, quite frankly, puts us in an excellent position to slowly decrease the Zombie population in Chattanooga after the "Zombie Event".

get a job

Haven't you seen Shaun of the Dead???

Stop using the "zed" word!!

I suppose I could make more posts about my furniture.

I would think as long as you had access to some kind of elevated building with ladders you could pull up or some such thing it wouldnt matter a lot where you were at. You could live right in the middle of them and name them like pets. Maybe drop down one of your neighboors and while they're docile after eating him you could put a couple of them in a giant hamster wheel to provide power for your house.

Look, Manny Rico sells tombstones, right? Lure all the zombies over to his place (they'll think their "friends" are underneath the monuments) and then set them on fire.

I'd pay to watch it.

I started to comment, but then it got way out of hand. I'll be pinging you soon.

Yes, this is ridiculous.

I think the term "zombie apocalypse" sums it up nicely.

i bet rob zombie wishes his career was undead - and it seems to me that if any living (or unliving - i don't want to cast any aspersions on rob if he is in fact a zombie) composer could score this uprising...and yes, every uprising needs a musical montage w/ a rocking soundtrack i'm thinking rob could work wonders retooling a coldplay song - they seem to make music only a corpse could enjoy...but i digress...rob zombie needs a job, there a zombies on the loose...the only way this makes sense to me is if rob is leading the charge on his tricked out zomboni...

You'd have to get the canons working up at Point Park before Lookout would be a viable retreat.

well, for a farm you could set up in the woods after clearing out an area and building a wall while holding the occasional zombie off with gunfire, get your wall setup, use fire as your primary heat source and use the woodash as fertilizer... so you could set up a fortified, s elf sustaining settlement that way, the only trick would be water, unless you were near a spring or had a river running through your encampment.