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The Walking Dead zombie math

Charro6 🚫

I know it is not a story, but I have always wondered.
Because the show is set in North America, that is what I will work with. And assume the rest of the world matches.
The population of the lower 48 states of the United States is approximately 329 million.
If one percent did not become zombies that leaves 3.29 million survivors. That number seems high but there are over 19,000 incorporated cities or towns in the US that averages 173 people per town.
If 1 in every 10 survivors was a fighter that would give us 329,000 zombie killers across the country.
If each of these killers only killed one zombie a day for a year the total would become 120 million dead zombies, a year.
Using that basic math, there would be no zombies left in the United States after three years.

My question is, after more than five years where do all these hoards of zombies still come from?

Replies: Dominions Son Grey Wolf akarge AmigaClone palamedes

Dominions Son 🚫
Updated:

@Charro6

If each of these killers only killed one zombie

I don't know that much about "The Walking Dead"

A lot depends on what kind of zombies are in the "The Walking Dead".

Are they diseased mutants, still technically alive but without higher brain function as in Resident Evil?

That kind of zombie might be capable of reproducing without converting additional humans. With a massive numbers advantage, they will reproduce faster than the uninfected humans.

Or are they genuine undead zombies, corpses reanimated by some supernatural force?

A few thoughts on genuinely undead zombies:

This kind of zombie would not be limited to those humans that were still alive when whatever created the zombies happened.The event could empty every graveyard. The supply of zombies is potentially everyone who ever lived in North America, wasn't cremated and isn't so old their bones have started to crumble.

In some of the folklore, undead zombies are almost impossible to permanently destroy. Severed limbs will continue to function and attempt to attack.

They can be disabled, but as long as the force that animated them still exists, permanently destroying them may require incineration. Otherwise, the force that animated them in the first place can put them back together eventually.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫
Updated:

@Dominions Son

I used to watch it religiously, but think more in terms of 'fast-walking zombies' and less of 'reproducing' zombies, so naturally, I've thought the same exact things, yet never applies the math to it (which seems an exercise in frustration, as in most fiction, you simply accept the premise, ignoring how utterly unrealistic it is.

I can easily recite ALL the reasons why Star Wars isn't the least bit possible, yet it didn't prevent me from accepting the story anyway, at least until I saw my … 38th movie (more realistically it was probably the 5th or 6th one), at which point I just threw up my hands and never bothered with another one again.

Yet knowing a story's inherent weaknesses, makes them easier to 'work around' them.

However, the key to any horror movie is the 'ever present threat', so in the end, it still doesn't matter how unlikely it is, horror fans still want more of it!

I stupidly wrote my own zombie novel, Zombie Leza, where Leza was someone who could communicate with the Zomies and thus offered the remaining humans a 'safe zone', yet the only thing they saw, was her leading huge zombie armies who she could easily command to do her bidding.

Yet, when I closed the story with the protagonist's helping find a 'cure' for the zombie virus (both living and undead versions), every horror fan who read it absolutely HATED it.

So, having learned my lesson, I never again wasted my time writing an 'alternate' horror story. It's still one of my personal favorites, yet it's not one the fans demand, so … who bother?

It appealed to the non-horror fans, yet it spoiled the ride of the main horror fans.

Replies: Charro6

Charro6 🚫

@Vincent Berg

I throughly enjoyed reading Zombie Leza.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Charro6

As usual, I typically enjoy upsetting the standard approaches, so those familiar with my stories tend to appreciate my unusual approach, while the die-hard horror fans instead took my non-standard approach as a slap in the face.

Like you, I liked what I did with it, yet after watching the fallout from it, I decided it just wasn't worth the aggravation, though maybe I just need to label those stories as something other than "horror", so maybe "satire"? ;)

Grey Wolf 🚫

@Charro6

I suspect the number of survivors is far too high. An awful lot depends on the transmissibility, but if there was any incubation period, you'd get a sudden onset where someone exposed went to school / work / the mall, turned, and started biting everyone in sight. No one would be prepared to do anything about it, and you get dozens of people exposed, most of whom are just going to repeat the same thing.

I suspect it's much more like '28 Days Later' or similar stories. Thousands to one zombies to survivors, with small groups of survivors killing plenty of zombies but, relatively speaking, only slowly making a dent in the overall number.

But there are all sorts of zombies. Fast zombies, slow zombies, smart zombies, mindless zombies, sterile zombies, reproducing zombies, viral zombies, supernatural zombies, and on and on. All of those behave differently.

Heck, there are zombie movies where the zombie plague can potentially go airborne. That would again change the math to hugely favor the zombies.

akarge 🚫

@Charro6

Also remember, some of those zombie killers, get killed. It shouldn't affect your math that much.

On the other hand, maybe some of the NEW zombies are really illegal alien zombies. Undead people that STILL want to come to America. "Brains, we want American brains."

AmigaClone 🚫

@Charro6

I can see some parts of the US where zombie killers would not view other zombie killers automatically as allies. Instead, of fighting a common enemy, they might fight each other which would cause future issues.

Replies: DarkKnight

DarkKnight 🚫

@AmigaClone

As depicted in TWD. The worst "monsters" turned out to be the very much alive survivors.

Replies: Grey Wolf Vincent Berg

Grey Wolf 🚫

@DarkKnight

I haven't watched TWD, but that's almost always a good direction to take the plot. Zombies themselves are nearly a 'natural disaster.' You can't reason with them, can't negotiate, can't make truces. They don't make moral choices. They attack, people die.

Other humans are far more interesting. They have the ability to make moral decisions, and some of them will turn out to be horrible people. Whatever you have, there's almost always someone willing to share and work for the common good, and there's almost always someone else who wants it all for themselves and will do what it takes to get it.

You can blur the lines - see 'Warm Bodies', a favorite of mine, where the zombies are capable of moral choices, growth, and even recovery (though they don't start out knowing that) - but it's much more common for them to be mindless lost causes.

Also see 'The Girl With All The Gifts', essentially a zombie story where some zombies have human to human-plus intelligence.

Replies: Pixy

Pixy 🚫

@Grey Wolf

Also see 'The Girl With All The Gifts'

Which also has a cracking tune in it...

Vincent Berg 🚫

@DarkKnight

In the story, the 'Walking Dead', weren't the zombies, instead the title describes those still living, as they were merely 'surviving', making them the true 'walking dead', killing zombies rather than killing the living, yet just as soulless and thoughtless.

If you never got that, then you never even grasped the story itself, as they made it plain at the end of the very first season.

palamedes 🚫

@Charro6

My question is, after more than five years where do all these hoards of zombies still come from?

You need to add all the dead to your numbers. I say you add a few hundred million more zombies from all the graveyards, mausoleum, and crypts plus every living person is all ready a zombie they just haven't died yet. Being bit by a zombie doesn't make you a zombie it just causes you to become infected (like a poison) to where you die faster and once your dead and your brain is still in one piece you will become a zombie. Once you die no matter how you die as long as the brain is unharmed then the dead will rise up as a zombie.

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The Walking Dead zombie math

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