"Why do Zombies run?" Topic

Since when and why? Who came up with that bright idea?

Zombies should just lumber about …I know I do

People started to realize the ridiculousness of "not being able to outrun a rotting corpse that shuffles".

Why do zombies decompose? If they are living dead, then they shouldn't fall apart. If they are going to decay, hold up for 6-12 months and let the elements do their work.

Cockneys vs Zombies – contains swearing

YouTube link

If zombies move and do not eat why do they not starve? Even faster to wait for it then decomposing.

To get to the meal (brains) quicker of course.

They run to get to the food faster.
In the USA nothing gets buried w/o being preserved first so American zombies shouldnt rot.

Where do Zombies go when The Walking Dead goes off the air for a mid-season break?

They stand in line at the DMV… ;-)

You'd run too if someone was trying to shoot you in the head!

There is a lot of disbelieve that does have to go on. But if anything if I was writing the rules to this genre I would've made infection from zombies a lot easier. Slaying zombies, with blood and fluid flying everywhere ingesting the stuff to me would get you a ticket to becoming one.

Some lumber about whilst others run. It depends on the agent causing the zombified state and it's workings on the deceased's brain. And zombies are toxic, so don't rot. The appearance of rot is the state the cadaver was in when the zombification took hold.
Dr. Bob

Irritable undead bladder syndrome.

Damn! Bashytubits beat me to it.

Either that or it's Cadillac dog food.

Iirc the first running zombies I saw were in the film The Return of the Living Dead.

As noted above, it is silly not being able to outrun shuffling corpses, although they can corner you if you miscalculated.

I guess running ones are more scary.

But zombies never get tired. They never stop pursuing. Sprain an ankle or just be out of shape and they'll get you! Also, I like the type of zombies that are nor really dead, just infected with a "rage" virus---as in John Ringo's Graveyard Sky novels.

I always thought it had to do with their relative state of decomposition. The fresher they were, the faster they moved.

This thread is hilarious. Silly answers to "serious" questions. Or is it serious answers to silly questions? So why not jump in?

Anyway, I'd guess that zombies with world class sprinter speed came about because some movie writer/director thought shuffling zombies just weren't scary enough for today's audiences. Personally, I find the idea of relentless pursuit, though slow, by the undead masses of "shufflers" more disturbing than that of the "sprinters". The Sprinters are just too darn fast. I'd be dead in 10 seconds…no drama at all. But the tantalizing slowness of the Shufflers gives rise to a false optimism that I might somehow escape them…much better, I think. As for all the other "what about decay/starvation, etc.?" arguments, I figure that once you are OK with the idea of animated corpses at all, the logic of the other stuff is pretty much out the window.

Ah, I came to this thread wondering if someone had put 'Rout' rules in for the undead!

Brains are very high in calories; they've got to work them off somehow, and for hygiene reasons most gyms exclude the living dead.

I think the idea of moving corpses is ridiculous in the first place. So they might as well run… ;)

That being said, I'm also kinda old school and prefer shufflers.

Yes, I think the shuffling grunters are far more frightening than the running shouters. As noted above, tireless and inevitable.

I often thought it might be fun to do a zombie game, but it would be an "Otto" game, where the hunter becomes the hunted. Here the one side would have hundreds of zombies, out to feed in an area.

However… the others side… would be great flocks of buzzares, crows, carrion birds, soyotes, jackals, bears, raccoons, and hugeswarms of insects drawn by he rotting flesh. Since it seems animals never get infected by the bacteria, virus or force that animates the zombies, it would be a happy hunting ground for nature's clean up crew. Then there are the maggots which would spring from the zombies own flesh. Not to mention the bacteria that would have a field day.

The zombies wouldn't last 24 hours.

But I won't.

I hate zombie games. To me, TO ME, and this is my own personal feelings, there is something morally repugnant about them and I will neither play nor create them. One of the most essential criteria of civilization is the rites for the dead, and cannibalism. We do not eat each other, and we believe that once dead, good or evil the dead are beyond the vile nature of this world. The elaborate preparations we make and expensive measures we undertake for the benefit of those who have passed on is an essential to our human dignity, and I do not think we can lightly play with these. War may be terrible, but there is an act of free will in it, which the zombie does not have. The dead become zombies not as an act of free will, but under the control of another and do what they do which was repugnant to them in real life, to their fellow men yet alive without distinction of family or humanity.

As I said, I am old fashioned and a formalist, and that is why I never play such games, and I eschew them totally. Zombie games are about atrocity and murder. There is not even the moral fig leaf of the "boots salutes and banners" the military chinoiserie of war.

Ottoathome: it's only a game.

Besides, wouldn't zombies be more likely to dry out if they're not decomposing? You would think that after all the fluids left the body after death then they would eventually become quite tough & leathery. Especially in a desert/dry environment.

Ottoathome: Everything you wrote is what makes zombies work as monsters -- it's why they're horrible and frightening.

Of course, you don't have to participate in zombie play (unless you find yourself in the wrong neighborhoods of any of certain cities in or on the Caribbean at the wrong time of night).

Why do Zombies run?

Because we keep voting for them … :(

Dear Glenn and Ian

"It's only a game" works up to a point. Some might play a game about being the management of Auschwitz, or a game about serial killers or rapists." Others might have a different idea that the premise of the game is too morally repellent for them. I'm among that number and it is my personal choice to list "zombie" games among them. If you find nothing morally reprehensible about them that is fine, and you can play them. On the other hand, remember to many our whole hobby is reprehensible as the glorification of war and violence." It is a matter of choice.

"Making them work as monsters" is obviously true. Except that again, it's a matter of individual choice. The crux comes in the de-humanization of the object. They are unwilling monsters and as I said, require me to compromise certain virtues of civilization I care not to. It is a matter of choice. I felt the position had to be stated. It requires no defense, and again is a matter of personal choice if you wish to do it , or not.

Felling you have to justify the use of zombies though, I feel, attests to the moral liminality of it.

Making them work as monsters

It's more making them work as tabletop monsters. There are a lot of things you can do in a movie that are extremely painful to do on a tabletop.

I don't like running zombies, I prefer them as shuffling corpses. Ok, you can outrun a few of them, but the horror comes from being surrounded and overwhelmed by hundreds of them, and not being able to get away. you can shoot a handful of them, but there are more and more..getting closer and closer… 'get away, go…, arggha….'

Everything that has been stated is the reason why zombies are excellent villains.

Cockneys vs Zombies

The zombie West Ham and Millwall fans getting stuck into each other is pure movie magic

Cockbies?

Zombies work because its okay to kill them. No one has to feel bad. If they're Nazi zombies, then its even better.

'Dead Snow', a Norwegian film, features a scene in which one of the foolish youngsters holidaying in an isolated mountain shack is being pulled through a window by two Nazi zombies. One of his friends exclaims 'I told you we should have gone to the beach!'

They don`t…… full stop

Since when? 1985. Martin was spot on with "Return of the Living Dead".

Why? Because the the writer & producer wanted to differentiate 'his' zombies from those in his ex-partner George A. Romero's franchise.

Whose bright idea? Screenwriter John Russo, co-writer of the original 'Night of the Living Dead'.

If you want it to work on the tabletop, there are a dozen varieties of handwavium that could be invoked.
Simple example? Zombies are creatures of primitive instinct. They do not run with a heel-strike gait, which is a learned action. They run with an instinctive flat-footed, low-impact plantar gait, like toddlers.
There you go: (relatively) fast zombies, no snapped ankles. You're welcome.

As to it being 'Okay to kill them' – in RotLD II, The X-file's Mitch Pileggi gives a speech about how cool the zombie apocalypse is, because you can do anything you want to the dead without any repercussion.
Then he hefts his M60, hits the street and is immediately overwhelmed by the horde.

Zombies either lumber or run… based on what the director needs to move the plot along.

Note that even "slow" zombies can put on an amazing burst of speed whenever the scene needs a lunger to bite an unsuspecting victim from behind a door, under a table, etc.