"What counts as a Zombie ?" Topic

What do you count as a Zed ? Just the shambling risen dead or is it zombie is as zombie does ? Do fast moving ragers count as zeds ? what about triffids, crazies or geography teachers ?

I count ragers as zeds and shamblers/shufflers too.

Definitelty geography teachers.

The problem lies in defining it both too narrowly and too broadly.
It is best to follow the criteria of Justice Stewart who said "I know them when I see them."

Anyone who Instructs, Briefs or Teaches using Death by Powerpoint is the ultimate zombie creator. Ask them. However, I am not really sure they understand the process completely as they are zombies themselves.

My ex-mother-in-law is a zombie. Anyway, that will be my story the next time she rocks up on my doorstep while I have my shotgun.

The problem lies in defining it both too narrowly and too broadly.
It is best to follow the criteria of Justice Stewart who said "I know them when I see them."

I agree with John the ZOFM.

They have to have been alive, and now be clincally dead: just being mad/drugged up is not enough, although it can provide a similar effect.
Which is why George Square in Glasgow was chosen for filming World War Z.

Ragers = Zeds….fast Zeds.

"I know them when I see them."

This works for me too. I don't know why it took cops 18 minutes to put this one Zed down as he was eating a homeless mans face off.

link

This guy was fresh Zed too. Hardly any decomposition.

8)

I am okay with druggy zombies, that is what a voodoo zombie is anyways.
My favorite though is George Romero style reanimated dead. Slow shamblers that bite, fear fire, and can on occasion use tools (or play XBox)
But I don't care for the idea of fast zombies or ragers.

I agree with John the OFM. Impossible to define.

With the vast difference between voodoo zombies and Romero style zombies, Romero zombies and Rage virus zombies there is little common ground. Throw in those from Resident Evil and L4D and it gets even more complicated.

You could almost classify them as mindless or at least single minded, but then there are the new smart zombies from THW.

Chances are, if someone thinks it's appropriate to post here, there's probably some reasonable grounds for it.

Dead that walk . Ragers are not zombies cause they bleed . Zombies shamble cause all the blood has settled in thier legs making it hard to move .

I thought zombies returned from the dead where Ragers are infected and never died. But I could be wrong.

I'd keep the line drawn at their having to be undead and only vulnerable to destruction of the brain.
Also, keep them at the same speed as those in 'Night Of The Living Dead'… they weren't all that slow, but they weren't track stars either.

Call those fast, living, crazed things 'Ravagers' or 'Ragers' or 'Ravers'.

Well definitely not triffids. Because they are plants.

Geography Teachers are unique in that they can turn you into one but are not necessarily one themselves.

dictionary.com says "the body of a dead person given the semblance of life" That pretty much rules out Ragers and crazies for me. Because normally Ragers are not dead but infected and sprinting around is a little too animated for "semblance of life" to my mind.

Personal preference, but I'd include ragers and crazies. No triffids or bugs, but I'd include humans controlled by a plant or hive-mind, as long as they acted like zombies.

In my games, though, I definitely prefer dead, slow, and shambling.

Zombie (1968 Night of the Living Dead): shambling pace, unintelligent, only killed by head shot.

Rager(28 Days Later): fast pace, animal intellignce, killed as regular human (head, heart, suffocation, etc.)

Brain-eater (Return of the Living Dead): Shambling pace, near human intelligence, killed by electrocution or fire.

is it more likely there's different stages of zombies? start with infection (resident evil), rager (28 days), brains (RLD), and final full on zombie (NLD). i suppose that if you're doing powerpoint presentations, you just begin at different starting stage – skip right to stage 3.

I'd keep the line drawn at their having to be undead and only vulnerable to destruction of the brain.

I know this seems like common sense (if you're a fan of certain films and not others), but this is too narrow a definition.

The zombies in Return of the Living Dead were undead, but were not vulnurable to head shots.

The zombies in "Zombieland" were not undead, just infected. Zombieland has become a popular zombie setting, with Reaper even producing knock off minis for it. While not everyones idea of a zombie, I don't think you can discount them (it says zombie in the title).

Left 4 Dead is pretty commonly accepted as a zombie game, even though they are refered to as infected, aren't dead, don't require a head shot, and can have mutation induced special abilities. There are multiple producers of minis that make minis specifically to correspond to this game. The producers and wargamers almost always refer to these as zombies.

None of these are anything like voodoo zombies which were around long before the undead started using the name.

I think "zombie" needs to be accepted as a much broader term than it was pre- 28 Day, pre- Resident Evil, Pre- L4D, etc.

Still no love for Triffids as zeds ?

Nope, none whatsoever.

Just me so….

But, hey, it's your game. If you want to call triffids zeds, I certainly won't stop you.

A new sort of Zombie Apocalypse (tm) has recently begun in the UK: As soon as public figures die they become child molestors.

Jeezus, now I would be petrified of a Jimmy Saville zombie…Yikes!!

What about the reanimated dead from The Reanimator films, don't forget them. They aren't infected or spread disease, some have human intelligence, some insane, but I would reckon are still "Zombies"

Dario Argengo's movies Demons 1 & 2, these are humans demon infected by a scratch/bite that become homicidal killing "zombified" monsters. Quite similar, but I think falls into the catagory.

Krondorian Demons in the evil dead movies and games/comics are in a similar vein to the above, being reffered to as deadites etc. These qualify too I think.

Cronenbergs "Rabid" is another where the infected victims turn into psycho's from the main character spreading the disease with her weird "growth" under her arm etc.

A common theme with most of what we class as zombies, is the introduction of some kind of external pathogen or disease/agent that enters the human body and takes over the host body and allows a transformation to take place. Voodoo Zombies are Drugged and brainwashed, return of the living dead zombies are reanimated from the gas from a military experiment. In the Romero films its the crashed satallite with the disease, Resi it's the Tvirus, 28 days later its the rage Virus, Reanimator its the re-agent, Evildead and demons 1 &2 , its demonic possession (Even in the REC movies, the disease is derived from demonic possession)

So, I reckon its down to some kind of external thing entering and taking over.

I have seen stuff where the cause of the infection was plant based spores infecting creating a zombie alike,even worms and bugs controlling the body, but not triffids!
Do you mean body snatchers? They were alien plant clones quite similar to zombies in some of the movies based on that idea…

The Zombies in Zombies of the Stratosphere are definitely Zombies, but not Zombies as we on earth understand the term. They are Zombies who are alive, are able to think, move quickly and don't need to feed on brains. This makes them very dangerous Zombies. YouTube link

For me the whole thing with zombies is that they are relentless, mindless and insatiable. It is this uncompromising behaviour mixed with the fact that they are physically hard to put down due to effectively being 're-animated dead' that appeals to me and truly defines zombie. With that definition you end up at the Walking Dead as the exact model for a zombie. Intelligence has been removed, and replaced with single minded 'mindlessness'.

That said, I would then accept 28 days/weeks (and hopefully months) later where the above definition of a zombie would be stretched to include these living infected. The issue then of 'what makes a zombie?' would have, for me, to be one thing, and that's the uncompromising single mindedness again. It's that behaviour that underpins all zombie films IMO and puts them at odds with humans in the first place. If there's intelligence (in terms of self awareness, the ability to reason) then I don't see how they are zombies. This does leave the answer to the thread's question open to a larger pool of answers than just saying 'Walking Dead' zombies or whatever.

Cheers,

Ark3n

Anyone who comes to destroy my brain. So anyone in middle management

they are relentless, mindless and insatiable

yes that pretty much describes middle managment

TMP link
TMP link

Dan