Reconciling Zombie tropes with (pseudo)reality

[J Gregory]

I loves me some zombie movies. But, more often than in any other genre, my suspension of disbelief is stretched to the limit. And I don't mean the Big Point, "the dead can't rise" type of SoD - I'm talking about the little regular old inconsistencies that zombie fiction (films, in particular) conveniently overlook.

So I thought I'd throw a few of my thoughts out there over the coming days on resolving some of these little dissonances, and how they might tie together. Please, chime in with your 2 (or more) cents worth.

Hive Mind
"Aim for the head!". "Destroy the brain!". Don't bother - the brain turned to liquid and ran out long ago. They don't 'think' with the brain any more than they 'see' with their eyes (which were the first things to go...).
The undead don't see, hear or smell; all of their sensory organs failed along with their animatory ones. No matter - what need for such insensitive apparatus, when every corpse is itself a receptor, an organ for a greater consciousness - a hive mind. Each seeping, lurching cadaver is an antenna, feeling our proximity. It feels the warmth of our auras, or the tug of our magnetic fields, or whatever-the-hell-it-is that it feels. It senses the spark in you, and wants it for Itself.

[J Gregory]

If I’m going to postulate some kind of hive mind as a way around the problem of having a likely non-existent brain being the key principle behind the dead walking around, I’d better address why the hive mind has come into existence…

The Virus
It must have come from…where? (where does any virus come from, for that matter)? Space? Perhaps even another dimension – an organism small enough to slip between the layers. Or maybe its always been here – longer than us. Asleep? Or just waiting?

The virus is itself a consciousness - a sentient parasite – albeit one so alien and abstract that it is difficult to frame in such human terms.

Each cell is a synapse, seeking a collaborator. Feeble and barely aware when few, but growing in authority and potential with every addition. All but impotent, yet smart enough to recognise the most effective tool at its disposal…

Squatting in the infrastructure of the human nervous system, it has agency. Hijacking the body’s electrical impulses, it forces the sinews and muscles to labour on after the soul has fled. While this network of filaments remains largely intact, it can command the flesh, even after ‘death’.

Installed thus, it senses the flaring impulses flashing through the nerves of the living – and no emotion blazes faster and stronger than panic.

Undoubtedly, the dead bite: they do not eat, but It certainly feeds. Its not coarse muscle that The Bite seeks, but rather an immediate, wet connection with the coursing current of fear. It doesn’t care which corpse taps a source; the power swells throughout the Hive on a level imperceptible. Every stolen watt makes the Hive Mind flare brighter, reach further. And every festering bite plants a new seed. And so it grows.

To what end? If only we knew…


How much of the nervous systems needs to remain intact to function? How much damage is enough? I guess we don't know. Until we start chopping...

[J Gregory]

If a corpse without a brain can still walk, how can it, in the further absence of eyes, still see? (I know you too have lain awake at night wondering…)

Eyeless Sight
The eyes have dried up or run out, sockets empty or full of black corruption. So how can they still track your every frantic turn? The web of myelinated nerves that drive the stolen carcass serves also an inductive antenna, ‘seeing’ the rippling field produced by a moving living being. The more you struggle, the harder you run, the easier you are to find. Under a desk, behind a door, in car – if you move, they can ‘see’ you. But when they are close enough that you can see the maggots squirming under their skin, and the stench of rot is making you reach, doing nothing is the hardest thing of all…

How still is still enough? You can hold your breath – can you stop your heart pounding? How far away do you need to be for them to no longer sense you? Does their range of ‘vision’ deteriorate along with the nerve cells that they rely on to locate their prey (read: you)? So many questions…

[J Gregory]

Our bodies are organic tools to the virus. Like anything organic, they're at their best when they're fresh. And, as with any tools, the more degraded they become, the less effectually they perform.

Soft Machines
Unlike spirit, flesh is subject to the laws of nature: it decays when left to its own devices, and the bodily machine ceases to function. Once the precious ember of life has been snatched, It knows that time is short. The virus has a narrow window - measurable in days, not weeks - in which to exploit Its instruments of meat and gristle before they fester to pulp.

In this instance, as with all machines, decay is the enemy of control. As each cell weakens and fails, so too do the tracks of nerves vital to domination. Blood sets hard in the veins, sinews draw tight, tissue sloughs off. It must gather fresh bodies while it can, faster than Its present minions deteriorate.

Ironically, time is the enemy of life and undeath alike.

Thus the fictional regularity of uniformly shambling hordes must yield to brutal efficiency; this tide of ruin lurches and crashes forward like a wave cascading over itself, the fastest plummeting forward, the slowest spat out the back. And before you realise, it is breaking at your feet.


The week-long dead can only shamble forward, as best their corrupted flesh will allow. But the freshly dead, with their runny fluids and still-warm cores? If they could sprint you down in life, they probably still can.