The more plausible ideas I've seen have some sort of endemic disease (perhaps mosquito borne, wind borne, etc) such that you aren't safe from contracting it anywhere in the world. It doesn't kill you, but when you die if your nervous system is intact, it reanimates you and turns you into a zombie. So any death will result in a new zombie. Have a stroke doing the dishes, zombie in a few hours. Die in a car accident? Zombie. Fall off a ladder? Zombie. etc.
As for the "slow zombie" scenarios, there are two possibilities. The first is that order among the military breakdown such that the soldiers go AWOL and look to protect their families and communities, leaving not enough of a fighting force to maintain and resupply the soldiers. The other is that the infection is so dangerous that just getting splattered with zombie guts and blood is enough to make you sick and eventually turn.
For the "fast zombies" such as World War Z, that's just obvious. Speed, strength and numbers. Once it gets into a major metro area, there just aren't enough soldiers, guns and time to put down an outbreak.
In a slow zombie scenario, it's easy to ask, "Why weren't trained soldiers, police, national guard, hunters, gangstas, etc not able to put head shots?". However in a fast zombie scenario it's understandable that there will be too many coming too fast for folks to hold out. World War Z showed it the best with the zombies able to swarm in numbers to overrun any wall (not spoiling anything since I'm certain that was in the trailer).
Zombies are real, they arise from the unwise reading of threads like this one. I am now non-living proof of this.
Gotta go, I'm feeling a mite peckish.
Wouldn't something have to happen to greatly increase the rate which people are dying? Otherwise, I suspect that the living with their vastly superior numbers and capabilities would be in a strong position to withstand a zombie takeover.
As far as I can tell, about 50,000 people die in the US per week. It is hard to imagine (slow) zombies completely overrunning society if they are being created at a rate of 50K per week. I can't imagine it would take more than a week or two for society to figure out how to kill zombies and prevent those who die "naturally" from becoming zombies. At this point, I have to imagine that a couple hundred million remaining Americans could handle a couple hundred thousand zombies, at least to the point that 99.9% of the population doesn't end up zombified.
Now if 99% of the US population died from something within a week, that's a different story. But I haven't seen anything in TWD which implies that this is what happened.
Natural immunity is the best protection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xyhVO-SWfM
Last edited by CameronBlue; 01-07-2022 at 11:50 AM. Reason: My favorite Key and Peele skit
What did the zombie say to the prostitute?
Keep the tip.