First things first, these rambling posts were inspired by watching the summer anime series, High School of the Dead. The first episode is standard zombie fare: the dreaded zombie outbreak with no explanation as to its cause. A school in Japan is where the mayhem takes place with students being attacked and attacking alike. The zombie hoard of recently killed students eating the remaining living students. Lots of blood flying in this one. I watched the episode with pleasure. Its fanservice was stupid fun, but it kept me wondering about zombie attacks and our reactions and responses to them.
Zombies (the monsters, the stories, and the movies) don't do too much for me. The George A. Romero, slow zombies aren't too frightening. The fast twitch, neu zombies do, but they are not what I'll be discussing today. I can't believe in fast zombies. The dead, because of rigor mortis, shouldn't move very fast. Plus, fast zombies are even more scarier. I just don't want to deal with them.
Why is it that in dealing with zombies the major problem arises from stupid mistakes of the survivors? "Don't open the door!" "Don't go out and save her!" "Don't let him in! He's infected!" Your chance of survival is directly proportional to doing common sense stuff and keeping away from them. I guess that's why the Zombie survival book was a big hit. It made explicit the common sense things to do in order to avoid death when the dead rise.
In the anime, the kids did the stupid things to die. If you do the stupid things, you'll die. The only way to live is to not do the stupid things.
And that's my problem with zombies. Through proper, rational thought, you should survive. Keep your wits about you, and you should live. By being sentient, you should live. Avoid being stupid. You'll be dead. Smart equals living. Dumb equals dead. Your intelligence will get you through the zombie infestation. It's that easy.
That said, if it's fast zombies, all bets are off.