this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
543 points (97.9% liked)

memes

10341 readers
1750 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 98 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Did we all collectively forget that far too many Americans were willing to spread a deadly illness, deny its existence, spread conspiracy shit about the vaccine, and host literal mask-not-allowed COVID parties, while people were dying as their lungs melted, just to oWn ThE LIbS?

Even the best military response can't defeat the collective willful stupidity of citizens.

[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes but viruses are unseen and can't be shot. A zombie can be seen and can be shot. I think those that didn't understand how to fight a virus or believe it was a thing at all would happily shoot a zombie.

[–] kameecoding@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

let's be honest a bunch of them would go out and get bitten on purpose to own the libs and their fake zombie virus

[–] howsetheraven@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pre-2020, all zombie movies were goofy fiction. Now, I feel like they are best-case scenarios. People are fucking dumb as shit.

[–] LemmysMum@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you really want to drive that feeling home watch 'Don't Look Up'. It's a documentary on the incapacity for individual cognizance to overcome wilful ignorance and the very real cognitive limits of your average person.

[–] Kiosade@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

I watched that and thought it was way too on the nose… then I heard it was written BEFORE all the pandemic and Trump shit happened. Wild!

[–] frickineh@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Are you trying to infringe on my right to get my brains eaten by a zombie?? That sounds like commie talk to me. This is America, and if I want to become one of the undead, you can't stop me!

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 66 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If covid taught us anything, the issue with a zombie outbreak will be the hordes of rednecks and Karens failing to take precautions against getting bit, then getting bit, and then going into community safe-havens because of their freedoms, where they'll then turn and infect others.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Covid really made me go from

"why would anyone ever hide a bite?? They're already dead, might as well not put the rest in danger. This is unrealistic"

to

"oh yeah no of course they would hide a bite. People could pull up their sleeves to show an infected bite and they would deny it straight to their faces"

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 64 points 1 year ago (7 children)

If a zombie apocalypse ever happens

I won't be worrying about the zombies ... I'll be in more danger from other healthy people who will all be going bat shit insane and want to kill me, the neighbor and everyone else around for food and supplies because they all want to live five minutes longer than me.

In the end the survivors will probably kill more survivors than the zombies will.

[–] Hegar@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

In actual disasters people spontaneously self organize to help each other. That's far and away the most common observed behavior.

[–] SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago

Either that or they try to take advantage and loot.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm indigenous from northern Ontario. My parents were born and raised in the wilderness and the first ten years of my life were partly spent on or near the wilderness.

Yes people do help one another in times of need .... but only if the people helping have a surplus to share. But when people are on their own without outside resources, food quickly becomes scarce.

My parents and elders told me lots of stories of famine in the wilderness in the 40s and 50s. When everyone is hungry and everyone is facing death ... people start doing some ugly things to one another ... murder, sabotage, lying, cheating, stealing, abandoning children and just plain letting people die. Being an orphan back then was a death sentence for children. The elderly were on their own and just expected to die when they no longer could keep up.

And that is just a thousands of years old traditional culture living in their normal environment.

I can't imagine what would happen to people living today if they suddenly had to face death, starvation and extreme poverty. The first hundred years would be a huge adjustment for humanity and after that I expect the survivors to be more like the hunter gatherers of North America like my ancestors ... or those of ancient Europe.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For a while, sure. But if normality goes away for too long you get warlords.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I have 2.5 acres of swamp, solar power and plenty of ammo. I'll just go hide. Which I do every weekend anyway. :)

[–] bingbong@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago

Get off mah swamp

Forget cottage-core, we're about Shrek-core now

[–] superduperenigma@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hello, this is your Amazon delivery driver. I'm having trouble locating your bunker address. Please send me the exact coordinates of your bunker so I can deliver this PS5 to you.

I promise not to change the locks on your bunker.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] TurboDiesel@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah, I've always said (and still maintain) that I'd rather die in the first wave/initial blast or whatever, rather than try to survive through the aftermath. What kind of existence is on the other side of something like that? Personally, not one I'm interested in.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] masquenox@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (5 children)

World War Z (the book) had to go to extreme lengths to dumb the world's militaries down to make it's zombie apocalypse seem plausible... everything from completely misrepresenting the way air-fuel munitions work to completely misunderstanding what assault rifles is all about.

And the book's silliness doesn't stop there...

[–] bleistift2@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

What are assault rifles all about?

[–] masquenox@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I remember the author writing an entire paragraph's worth of screed because the stock of an M16 is not as solid as the stock of an AK - you know, for Hollywood-style zombie bashing - completely forgetting that the AK, like the M16, are rifles and that if you use them as rifles you won't have to worry about using them as clubs. He also forgot that clubs are easy - pickaxe-handles are much cheaper than M16s.

[–] Voyajer@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] EatYouWell@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Actual assault rifles are fully automatic military hardware.

What most people call assault rifles are just hunting rifles in cosplay.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] BruceTwarzen@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

Hah, and it was basically all for nothing. If he wrote the book past covid, he would know that he doesn't has to dumb down anything

[–] SHITPOSTING_ACCOUNT@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

One thing they got 100% right is the idiots. I remember being really annoyed about the chapter with people pretending to be zombies, intentionally getting bitten and spreading etc...

...and then COVID happened and proved that the real world had people at least as bad if not more.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Zombies might be a threat for the first days or weeks. People aren't used to killing, especially not things that look human, especially things that might look like a friend or family member. People would hesitate, or screw up, or think they were safe, or whatever.

But, after a short time people would either learn to fight zombies, or they'd become zombies.

Good zombie fiction isn't really about the zombies, it's about the breakdown of society. Bad zombie fiction has people still fighting zombies multiple years after the outbreak started.

The thing I wish you'd see sometimes in zombie fiction is no zombies. Like, a few months after the outbreak, a group of humans completely eliminates 100% of the zombies from a big island or peninsula so people within that area can live normally. It might require killing a million zombies, but that's only 1000 zombies each by 1000 people. That's only about 30 zombies a day for a month per person, which should be pretty easy for a dedicated, competent zombie killer. Instead, the most you get is a small walled town with countless zombies on the walls.

It just makes no sense that you typically see every survivor killing dozens of zombies per hour every day and they don't seem to be making a dent in the local zombie population.

[–] Kyyrypyy@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

To be fair, we still have a covid pandemic going on because people are not smart enough to do the smart thins. They will hide their ingections, the infection screenings will be done by incpmpetent people, the rich and dumb elite will preserve zombies as "exotic pets" they show off to their friend because "they have money, so rules don't apply to them", and sentimental idiots won't let go of their turned loved ones. Not to mention the otherwise entitled people who just blatantly disregard every precaution because "You can't limit my freedom with this hoax".

But yeah, in ideal world, the zombie outbreak would be dealt swiftly.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, but that's because COVID isn't 100% fatal, whereas zombie bites are 100% fatal.

It doesn't necessarily mean that people would be more cautious of a Zombie outbreak, it just means that the dumb ones would be awarded Darwins much more swiftly, leaving only the more cautious ones behind.

[–] ganove@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The incubation time is key. Imagine, we are already carrying the virus, babies are infected in the womb or through a funghi. Some show symptoms immediately, some later, some never.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

True, but in the Zombie fiction I've come across the incubation time is extremely short. That makes it more dramatic and scary in one sense, but would make the outbreak much easier to control. In particular, if you can spread it without knowing you're infected, the world is in real trouble.

That's another thing that makes typical Zombies so easy to control. The only "people" who can spread it are dead. You can safely care for someone until the moment they die. As long as you can avoid getting bitten once they're dead, you're safe. Real diseases are so much more dangerous because doctors and nurses have to weigh the risk of getting infected against the desire to help the patient.

I'd love to see a Zombie story involving a bored nurse who follows standard safety procedures and straps a standard Hannibal Lecter style mask on any possibly terminally ill patient.

[–] Kyyrypyy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Add to that a possibility of asymptomous infection. Not only that, but assuming this would be a parasitic or viral infection, them killing the host, especially before spreading, would not be beneficial for survival, so the infection would probably become nonleathal to majority, because the surviving strands would be the ones that stay hidden the longest.

In addition, if "the efficient erradication" missed a one zombie, what guaranties are there that it was JUST one zombie? Could you trust someone who has been in contact witha a zombie, but claims not being infected? Have you been in contact with a zombie recently, mayhaps? Are you sure you haven't been?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Good zombie fiction isn't really about the zombies, it's about the breakdown of society. Bad zombie fiction has people still fighting zombies multiple years after the outbreak started.

A good zombie series can have both. The Last of Us was really about people in the post apocalypse, not about zombies, but they were still fighting zombies 20 years later.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It depends on how the zombies are made - if it's one of those "everyone who dies always comes back as a zombie" deals, the fighting will never end until the last living person is gone.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you.hqvent read the stand, you should. It's excellent.

It's not zombies but a flu, but the "breakdown" and then the "after" are as you describe.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unless it's like Left 4 Dead virus, that thing is airborne and insanely infectious.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, the bite version just doesn't play out, but if there's one thing COVID has done it's prove we're toast if zombies can just cough on you.

Side note: absolutely love when zombie survivors are covered in zombie blood and guts, scratched all to hell, wiping black corpse gunk out of their eyes, but it's fine because they didn't get bitten.

[–] electrogamerman@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

about that side note, also when survivors cover themselves with zombie guts to mix themselves with zombie hordes, so zombies attack based on smell? based on looks? on behavior?

[–] PlushySD@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When you reach that point, zombies actually start feeling sorry for you and don't want to bite

[–] electrogamerman@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Zombies are like: brain where?

[–] joyjoy@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What, you expect the military to do extensive zombie outbreak war games and not be prepared for a zombie outbreak? smh

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 16 points 1 year ago (10 children)

A zombie outbreak would end in a few days by itself. In Africa, in a few hours.

In the winter, between the cold destroying nerves and incapacitating movement and corpses getting waterlogged by rain, which would accelerate rot, zombies wouldn't last long.

In the heat, zombies would be quickly turned into maggot meals by every fly available. Add bloating from the heat and the entire situation would sort itself out quick and dirty.

And let me just add another thought: our main advantage is our brains. Zombie crave for it but are not particularly known for using it. Any zombie trying to attack a wild animal would end up made in pieces. Bears would have a field day. Imagine the carnage by pigs and cows. A single wild boar would be capable of plowing through a horde. At some point, even dogs would turn feral and attack on sight any two legged figure.

[–] Hasuris@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

A walking dead version? Sure. 28 days later? Nah. If those fuckers run like that, we'd be done for.

Yes I realize 28 days later technically has no zombies but it's a more probable scenario to have a virus infect people and make them mad than actual corpses walking around.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
[–] just_squanch_it@lemmy.one 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Watch out for that Boomer!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i remember there's one popular piece of zombie apocalypse media that portrays it more like it would actually go down: people just briskly walk away from the zombies and the only threat actually posed is that you can't really stop for a long time nor truly relax.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] foggy@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

How about when they emerge from their bunker 20 years later to find that their fate is to be eaten by bears?

[–] NegativeLookBehind@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

In America, it’d be a subscription service. Zombie Removal Platinum® provides a complete zombie-free experience!

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›