Our Zombies Are Different - Are Yours?

Hey, everyone! I know that a lot of people have their own take on the nature of the Zombie Apocalypse, so I'm just interested to hear if anyone else has any interesting ideas.

My zombie apocalypse scenario is neither supernatural nor plague-based - it's a cross between a Zombie Apocalypse and a Bug War. An enormous alien called a Worldqueen crashes into the Earth and consumes people - and, instead of the zombies actually being the original humans, transformed and decayed, the zombies are degenerate copies of the original humans - allowing for dozens of identical zombies, and, more importantly, allowing for a higher number of zombies than people who have been killed. The zombies obey orders from their queen, functioning something like ants, killing humans and bringing their corpses to the queen to copy. There are dozens of different castes of zombie with different capabilities, similar to the Special Infected in Left 4 Dead - including Zonequeens, the only zombies who actually are directly transformed from humans (living humans, in fact), who perform the same role as the Worldqueen, but are smaller, weaker, and numerous, with, say, one eventually arising in every large urban area in the world.

Nanomachines! Who doesn't want to use that excuse?

Oh yes, they might improve your health alright, but what if they say, malfunction? And then they realize that their current host is slowly dying without any way of recovery? Then they might decide to migrate to a new host, whether they'd like it or not, and even if they'll expire due to the haphazard way of bites. At least the machine will keep the body functioning! Using tools? Might just be for smashing, but that's fine. Running? Oh for a short while if the body doesn't overuse itself. But no matter what happens, the machines will do their work! Only the destruction of brain could shut em down, and only if it's large enough that the machines can't regenerate parts of it back. And even if you tear off the host's limbs, there are plenty others to take! Maybe even having more would help...

I am a pedant so the term zombie apocalypse bugs me(it is a mix of Niger-Congo and 3rd century Greek, for a start) so when not doing a fan version of an established work my zombies are usually people whose memory and sense of self worth were destroyed by hallucinogenic plants and animal poisons. If I want them to be threats they are under the command of an evil person. If I want hordes then several evil people, since it would not be possible for one person to make large amounts of zombies and have time to do anything else.

Supposing you mean an apocalypse akin to Daniel's or John's, my zombies would only be one part of it. Maybe a small part, maybe large but they are not contagious and are unlikely to produce more of their kind on their own. Even if I made them supernatural it would still be a case by case basis.

Well, they're retro-virus based and originally used as a kind of medicine. The idea would be to cause rampant cell growth without the cells loosing their original function. It kinda worked.

Zombies heal rather quickly. Infact, unless you kill it instantly with either the complete destruction of the heart or brain then the zombie will heal before the tissue becomes necrotic. Even destroying the brain doesn't actually kill the zombie. Rather, the brain heals but does so improperly so the zombie essentially becomes brain dead and never does anything more than drool and starve.

While there is no effective cure for zombieism, actually preventing it is actually fairly easy. The mucus that protects the mouth, nose, and eyes will trap the virus. Likewise, the acid in the stomach would destroy the retro-virus as well. Even being showered in infected blood usually doesn't mean infection. Even if some of the virus gets in the body's immune system is usually very effective at stopping it. However, this has been after several years if not a couple decades of natural selection and limited exposure. Most survivors have an acquired resistance. However, a breach in the skin and fluid contact with that breach is almost always an infection. There are some cases where the person was infected but the virus didn't take hold like it usually does, though. The virus does a few weird things to the body before going into remission. Nobody knows why or how that happens and the victims usually try to pretend it didn't.

Zombie behavior is essentially rabid. They feel no pain nor fear. They are hyper aggressive. They do not have the instinctive safeguards normal humans have on their strength. Normally that would lead to muscle degredation but the enhanced healing not only overcomes this but takes advantage of it. Long lived zombies are incredibly strong and tough, far more than a human should be. They also eat just about anything that resembles food and often attempt to eat many things that aren't food. Zombies tend to be single minded. They'll keep chasing a target until either the target is eaten or something else demands attention, like a blow to the head. Zombies identify each other with a surprisingly acute sense of smell and taste. They will eat zombie corpses but only after the corps has cooled.

Some zombies that live long enough eventually start gaining a level of intelligence. The intelligence is still rather feral but it's capable of laying ambushes and occasionally using objects as weapons. They also gain a degree of agility and coordination on par with, if not superior to, normal humans. These zombies are known as ghouls and are deadly even to experienced survivors. Fighting one is more like fighting a wild animal rather than a zombie. It's unknown if these ghouls are the people they once were but they remember only fragments of their old life at best and almost no personality traits. Most regular zombies give ghouls their space. Those that don't get killed and eaten.

Zombies that have died can never become ghouls, the brain just doesn't have the capacity to do that anymore. At best they can become revenants. revenants are essentially ultra tough, ultra strong zombies. They can grow up to eight feet and have thick hide and bones. 9mm and .45acp rounds can't harm a revenant even with a headshot. Luckily, they're somewhat slow. The muscles are so big that they interfere with each other, hurting flexibility. Almost any given zombie can become a revenant. They just need to take and heal from enough damage. This usually amounts to shattering every bone in the body multiple times but zombies are a clumsy lot.

Zombies actually have a sex drive. However, they don't recognize humans as the same species. Assuming they're well fed, two (or more) zombies will just go at it right out of the blue. Next thing you know there's a pregnant zombie running around. However, zombie mothers are pretty absent minded about the whole being a parent thing. Sometimes they'll carry the infant around but often they'll forget about it and wander off. Zombie children are always ghouls from birth.

Ghouls are not only aware enough to recognize their mates but often their offspring. They'll go out of their way to retrieve food for them and even set up little dens. Ghoul children will leave their parents as soon as they hit puberty.

Some ghouls, almost exclusively second generation and latter ghouls, can become very intelligent. Infact, these ghouls become so intelligent that they become smarter than some humans. These beings are known as demons and they are the most terrifying foe of humanity. In addition to the strength and toughness that all zombies and their variation have, demons can understand the rules of human society and even becoming fluent in multiple languages. They also tend to be manipulative sociopaths that see humans as food. Somehow, they seem to have some kind of control over the zombies and even ghouls will obey them. Luckly, demons are very rare. Only one out of a couple thousand zombies become ghouls and only one out of a thousand ghouls can become a demon. Revenants with weapons chained to their limbs is a sure sign of a demon running around.

The closest thing I have to a zombie-apocalypse is in a science-fiction setting I'm musing, which is sort of a cosmic-horror thing. A bunch of marines return home to find their planet devastated by some kind of unknown weaponry. They can't leave orbit or contact help, so they try to set up an emergency base in the ruins, but at night, weird things happen.

Some of these weird things are violent, undead-like humanoid apparitions, sort of semi-physical ghosts, along the lines of Silent Hill. They can't 'infect' people, but I'm thinking the ghosts of those that die on the planet join the ranks of the undead, eventually becoming monsters themselves. While some of the ghosts retain memories or desires, most of them are insane with grief and horror, motivated only to destroy.

My problem with zombies is that several traits typical to the archetype are just flat-out impossible in a setting without a.) magic or b.) sufficiently advanced technology.

No virus is ever going to enable somebody to keep going while missing significant parts of their anatomy. No virus is going to give a human the ability to go without air (a number of zombie fiction works have them crossing water by simply walking along the bottom...) or endure severe exposure (zombies wearing tattered rags walking around in the rain, typically around Halloween...hello hypothermia) or any number of things zombies are routinely seen to do.

So if I do resort to 'zombies', I go with one of three options.

1.) A Wizard Did It. Or rather, the zombie state is supernatural in origin. At this point, basically anything goes (within the usual narrative limitations).

2.) Somebody with access to superscience invested a lot of work and resources into creating something that would mimic the zombie archetype. Nanotech would be a likely approach here, of course you risk falling into the 'A Nanite Did It' trap where you basically substitute 'nano' for 'magic' in your writing and create fantasy masquerading as sci-fi.

3.) The zombie traits are limited to the realistic parts. It is possible for a disease to send somebody into a permanent, homicidial rage. Drugs can do it, brain damage can do it, so the fact that no viral disease known to us can do it (rabies comes closest but still doesn't quite work that way) doesn't mean that it's not possible. Somebody in such a state could ignore any number of low-caliber gunshot wounds before blood loss finally finished them, making them appear immune to anything short of the classic headshot. So what you'd have is 'zombies' with a zombie-like state of 'mind' (no sense of self-preservation, no fear, no pain) and apparently heightened resilience but without the rotting flesh and dangling entrails.

edited 19th Dec '12 5:07:46 AM by MattStriker

Well, you could have a bit of rotting flesh and entrails but obviously with a corresponding decrease in constitution. One of the reasons leprosy got a reputation as 'bits falling off disease' was because its harm to the nervous system means that people didn't notice as much when extremities become necrotic. I imagine a population that lived off rotting human flesh and didn't take care of its wounds would have a pretty zombie-like appearance quite quickly, although obviously if guts start falling out then you have a zombie whose brain-eating days are pretty much over.

edited 21st Dec '12 1:58:50 AM by Kesteven

My zombies are called shades - they are dead people restored to life by the magic of the Queen of the Underworld. Shades do not decompose and are not cannibals, but they do feel a compulsive need to kill those the Queen has "marked" as Her Property. Once all the shades in the world are raised, they will try to take over the human realm.

@Runekn: I like it! I had this spin on that concept.

Their is an invasive ecosystem of bacteria, protozoa and nanomachines that loves warm water, caves and brains to be the perfect place to incubate. The bacteria provide a means to store information and can "corrupt" other strains of bacteria (Truth in Television, bacteria exchange plasmids and some have seen, via electron microscope, bacteria exchange plasmid DNA between species). The protozoa harvest proteins from the bacteria and live in symbosis with them. The nanomachines can build both, protect both and are Technopaths. Given enough time, the nanomachines will figure out how to bore through, dissolve or corrode biochemical barriers. When a critical mass is achieved, it's a large intelligence (like the one Angel from NGE).

Nothing is safe from them. It starts small, the water and the soil turn funky colors. Then smaller critters act funny, get eaten by the larger ones who get eaten by others. Same with plants, they either get coated with the stuff or draw it into their roots.

Of course you get the traditional zombie behaviors because the "superorganism" infects larger organisms and eats the brain and central nervous system. So it acts like a baby: learning to move and eat. They shuffle around, many die (the rotting carcasses provide a nice warm place and scavengers eat them). Over time the infection starts making planning zombies, tool using zombies, "infector" zombies that spread the virus. More advanced zombies can hide the infection.

Meanwhile the water and the soil are invaded. The survivors must filter. Boiling isn't enough when the virus makes extremeophiles that can survive (or even like) boiling.

It's easy to stop in the first stage, but five rounds rapid only delays the inevitable. The heroes must either hold out or find some kind of cure (this is for a sci-fi setting natch).

Of course the nano-machines and protozoa are killed by radiation, but would the heroes risk that?

Eventually the organism gets to the point that it can build crude starships to spread to other planets. Or it simply waits inside a new host to get rescued.

It's an invasive microscopic ecosystem. It's a hunger and a means of feeding that hunger. No queens just a large hungry hive mind (stomach would be more accurate). No talking, until later in the infection, but by then the characters are gonna be lunch if they don't have the cure.

edited 22nd Dec '12 5:10:59 AM by TairaMai

In my setting, the reanimate are magically-powered semi-sentient constructs. A dead body has an "echo" of the soul that inhabited it, so a wizard can draw out the instinctual urges that lie dormant and provide a spark of motility to let those urges use the body again. The magic inhibits decay and the undead do not need to breathe (unless they are capable of speech).

The reanimate are generally cheap unskilled labour or cannon fodder, but most civilized people view their use as corpse desecration and a violation of the natural order (a dead body should rot and return to the earth).

I had an idea for a zombie apocalypse. The disease that causes zombie is also the same disease that causes lycanthropy and vampirism (it follows the Romero rules in that anyone who dies will shortly reanimate as one).

Most of the time infectees become mindless, slow-moving zombies. Less commonly, they become fast-moving, wall-climbing feral vampires with a sunlight allergy. Other times, they slowly transform into quadrupedal, cunning werewolves with an allergy to silver and silver compounds. All are vulnerable to head shots (vampires and werewolves can also be killed if the heart or spine is damaged). Vampires and werewolves are able to reproduce due to their essentially "living" nature, while the rotting zombies are doomed to slowly rot away until none exist. An interesting development is that vampire and werewolf children don't suffer the deterioration of higher brain functions that their parents do, and if captured before puberty, they can be taught language and culture and will exhibit empathy for human beings even if not "domesticated" (as well as, more disturbingly, sexual attraction). They don't need to eat human beings to survive, but the ferals will do it anyway, and will eat zombies if humans aren't available in preference to other prey.

edited 23rd Dec '12 7:19:01 PM by Zenoseiya

I've been working on a zombie game concept. One of the abilities I cooked up was "Mitochondrial Assimilation"; basically, a zombie takes the still-functioning mitochondria from their kill and uses it to replace the old ones they died with (lots of influence from Parasite Eve, by the way). In game terms, this means that they regain Stamina on top of HP when a zombie eats a survivor's corpse. I also used an Eat Brains For Memories system to make them smarter over time (EXP equal to HP regained).

My main Original World has Magic zombies in the form of a Necrology skill tree, first animating dirt and dust into a vague semblance of a person; then increasingly well-preserved walking corpses. There are also two different kinds of Parasite Zombies; Swarm Nurseries, which have Swarm eggs laid inside of them with a special kind of larva acting as a Puppeteer Parasite to make it's host build and protect a nesting site for it's sisters rather like Coleomegilla maculata wasps; and Carrion Crawlers; horrendously mutated terrestrials and aliens infested by a parasite that resembles a disembodied spinal column; Captain Ersatz of Chryssalids and Necromorphs, respectively.

edited 26th Jul '14 12:14:59 AM by dvorak

Revenants are exactly what they sound like; their will and desire for something literally transgressed the line between life and death. Too bad that they're stuck there, though. When they first return, their memories of their lives are muddled. They also bring some of the 'winds' of the Underworld back with them, giving them grisly powers. Because the strength of the mind and soul is what sustains their body, mental and moral degradations directly affect their body. Therefore, spiritually sick revenants become the classic, rotting zombies. Also, Revenants can eat human flesh (or just cause death in general) to gain more energy and fuel for their powers, but that degrades their bodies further.

Well, there are also beings called Zombies. But they're the result of sorcerous rituals and are made on one-to-one basis, rather than a continuously occurring phenomenon like Revenants. Zombies don't get regeneration, so their bodies are stuck the way they died. Which means that the sorcerer has to acquire intact corpses.

Now, neither of the above transmit zombie-ness. But the Blasphemous can. They are spawned from destroyed remnants of the cosmic life-force that animate Mummies in my story-verse. So a slain mummy might turn everyone nearby into the Blasphemous in a necromantic explosion. Or a mummy might sacrifice bits of its own life force to spawn an army of the walking dead.

The last are skin-thieves, which is a general term for ghosts that hijack corpses. They can't spread undeath, but they can kill someone and move on to that next host it just created.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I want to add the uber-virus or uber-nanomachine types of zombies. Or even the Frankenstein types. I'll probably tag them along to the golem/ artificial man type of supernatural critter I'm struggling to develop. (They have a theme of Mad Science, you see)

edited 17th Jul '14 6:11:37 AM by Ninth

So I've been toying with the idea of a zombie hive mind based on pheromone and auditory cues. This explains why zombies don't kill other zombies. Additionally, if a zombie possesses intelligence it can compell other zombies. As a result, hordes of zombies sometimes have a degree of coordination if an intelligent zombie leading them. Infected but not turned individuals feel the pull of the hive mind as a kind of compulsion. By the time the compulsion is too great to ignore the person has turned entirely. Luckily, the signals are pheromonal and auditory so ear plugs and a gas mask will block it out almost entirely.

Virals: These are the results of infection by a man made viral agent that causes enough neural degradation to make a victim lose most cognitive functions and become highly aggressive. Necrosis of extremities and loss of pain reception is also a highly common symptom. These zombies are dangerous, but epidemics tend to either be contained or burn out on their own before they can overtake a planet's population.

Cybernecrotics: With sufficient augmentation, a body can operate even when clinically deceased. However, the brain will be damaged beyond repair and unable to control its motor functions unless implants capable of preserving the brain are implemented. One unusual use of this technology is to transport wounded to safe areas where they can be revived or recycled. Seeing a horde of dead soldiers or even war organisms stumbling back to base can change one's outlook on life.

Reanimate Warhead: This weapon was developed by Morokoth and used during their wars. The weapon is a warhead that carries a nanoswarm capable of rapidly reanimating and repairing organic matter by drawing power from capacitors in the warhead. The reanimated flesh becomes heavily corrupted as a result of the nanomachines, so its medical applications are limited, but it makes for a very terrifying weapon. Morokothi soldiers often have special collars that injects a preservative made to increase the odds of reanimating with one's wits intact. The rest will either rise as mindless killers or simply enter a gruesome death rattle.

Hive: The origin of this highly infectious and intelligent nanovirus is a mystery. All that is known is that it is one of the most dangerous forces in Occupied Space. Once infected, it takes a very short amount of time for a victim to come under total control of the gestalt entity in control of the entire swarm. Its lethality comes from its ability to infect both organic and inorganic structures, often merging the two into a single war machine. In order to communicate across interplanetary and interstellar space, it must infect and transport black boxes, communication devices that use a series of nanoscale wormholes to access Transnet. Although Hive was beaten back during the Great Pyrrhic War and all known infected black boxes have been destroyed, it still lurks between the stars and at the edge of Occupied Space. All it would take is one infected black box to start the epidemic all over again.

Fungoids: It all starts when a spacecraft equipped with a Zerospace Breacher crashes into a planet, momentarily loosening the stability of the surrounding dimensions. The immediate area becomes a Zeroground, home to numerous anomalies that pose a constant danger to the living. Those that aren't killed are slowly altered by anomalous radiation. The most dangerous anomaly affected organisms are spore producing fungi. These spores will latch onto other organisms and begin attacking the host's tissue. Eventually it will gain control of the nervous system and will drive its host to infect more organisms before congealing to a damp place and releasing more spores. Thankfully, the rest of the anomalies keep these mutated fungi within small patches of infected territory.

Revenants: These entities are created from exposure to certain alien artifacts, often ones possessing intellects of their own. The nature of the revenant will vary depending on the artifact. Some will become empowered in order to inflict as much death as possible. Others are convinced they serve a divine purpose and will often achieve great things. Most, especially the Demon Blades, will simply give their host the power to fulfill unfinished business, slowly taking over the user in order to hunt down rival artifacts.

Tetsuo: This is a nanovirus of entirely alien origins, and it has the capability to be just as lethal as Hive. It starts as an airborne pathogen, but from there it can spread from practically any other vector. During the first stage of infection, the host breaks out in dermal growths and rashes that are a constant irritant, suffers from heavy fevers, and quickly realizes that sleep is a thing of the past. By stage two, their skin become red and blistered to the extreme. Hosts will often black out, only to awaken with pieces of metal and machinery fused to their flesh. From there, it's only a matter of time before stage three takes hold. At this stage, the virus is in complete control. Unlike Hive, its control over the host's physiology is absolute, allowing much greater flexibility in its metamorphosis. Fortunately, the Tetsuo virus has been contained within a single planet. Unfortunately, the planet is covered in flesh highways and massive techno-organic spires while forces maintaining the quarantine are holding off on glassing the planet for both PR reasons (there are a few high priority survivors, apparently), and so they can study it and possibly use it against Hive. It doesn't work out too well.

To make matters worse, most of these zombie viruses are not exclusive to humans. Genetically engineered life forms are commonplace, so there's very little you can do if your roadroot or war organism becomes infected except kill it with fire. Lots and lots of fire.

edited 18th Jul '14 10:12:36 AM by MaxwellDaring

I have a story with 'mummies' that serve the same purpose.

They're called that solely because they pop up from the ground in 'coffins'. Really, they're artificial 'humans' that use dead human bones for their internal structure, with an artificial muscle structure over that and all covered with a flammable purple 'flesh'. As this presents a slight flaw in their design, they are wrapped with fire-retardant bandages.

That flesh functions as both a fuel source and ablative armor as needs dictate. The mummies all have a small fuel processor that they can use to 'digest' living flesh into purple flesh, and are in theory capable of perpetual action if they can continue to replenish their fuel. The flesh will also degrade on its own after a while, but this isn't much of a relief as it is a Class 6.1, 8, and 9 Hazardous Material (toxic, corrosive, attached to a thing that will kill you) and can only be safely disposed of in a special incinerator.

Their heads look like goggled gas masks, but with something resembling a bear trap for a mouth - the better to bite victims with.

They are not smart or independent. They aren't dumb, but they operate on orders relayed from a central location. They are strong, able to punch into building walls and climb them that way. Their top running speed would be about a 5 to 6 minute mile, but their artificial muscles tire far less slowly than humans', making outrunning them on foot a difficult task.

Weaknesses: They aren't very agile, and will no-sell a hit rather than avoid it. While they have a lot of redundancy built in and their weak points (they basically run off of an internal smart phone) are armored, they aren't bulletproof - a couple of shotgun slugs or a full 9mm clip to the right spot will disable them.

In the story, the only thing that can reliably destroy them and are man-portable enough to fight more than a few of them at once with is a device that surrounds its target with a bubble of unreality - in essence causing the surface layer of something to not exist - and even that takes a few shots. (There's also a 'video game shotgun', which is something like the Metal Slug weapon in that it is basically a cone of BOOM that nothing can survive, but the collateral damage that comes with its use outweighs most of its benefits.)

My undead aren't really 'zombies' per se, but they're still returned from beyond the grave so I suppose they count.

Basically, they're dead people that were 'recruited' by a sinister order that worships the god of death, who appropriately enough is dead. The order brings corpses back to their monastery, where they are reanimated by Magitek - a face-mask which contains a Sacred Flame.

They are essentially the same as ordinary humans, except they lose all their memories when they are resurrected and they rely on infusions of the dead god's essence to stay alive. These take the form of a blue powder which is only found in the rocks of the mountains where the order is located, which is burned in their masks and breathed in.

While they are healed of all injuries when they are brought back, they have little healing capacity afterwards unless they take huge amounts of extra infusion (they only usually require a teaspoon per day). Despite this, they feel no pain, require no food and will basically keep going until they are dismembered (in which case they will still be alive but unable to move) or their masks are removed.

The order effectively indoctrinates most of the returned as they have a blank slate to work with, but sometimes the doctrine doesn't take when they have flashbacks to their former life. Outright defiance is usually punished with immediate execution (i.e. removal of the mask), and escapees generally perish within a few days as they run out of infusion.

One idea I had for zombies was that, not only are they decayed, but they decay anything they touch. This explains how they're able to tear people's flesh off with just their hands and teeth: when they touch a part of your body, it immediately starts to rot and becomes soft and spongy. This creates an ironic situation, because the zombies crave living flesh, but any flesh they put in their mouths will be dead before they can swallow. The decay also tends to spread once it's been created, letting you combine the everyone-who-dies-becomes-a-zombie thing with the zombie-bites-turn-you-into-a-zombie thing. This would also explain why people killed by zombies tend to come back as mostly intact new zombies instead of being completely devoured: a pack of zombies won't be able to take too many bites out of a person before their whole body becomes filled with decay, and is thus no longer appetizing.

I had a type of "zombie" that was very different, they're actually entities corrupted by a sentient computer virus.

The Black Virus is a sentient, extradimensional program that takes the form of black insectoid creatures the size of a large dog. They originate from another dimension Metaspace that's linked with cyberspace, filled with program-like Energy Beings called Metas. Black Virus are nasty for the fact that they attack in hordes and regenerate very quickly, and using any form of program corruption abilities (viruses, Malware, Data Drain) heals them instead.

Black Virus normally do one of 3 things to others- kill them by ripping their heart out (organics), bite them to infect them (the infected slowly turns into a Black virus themselves, works on organics, machines and Metas), or rarely, merge with them to corrupt them (usually done with Metas, can also be done to organics and machines).

The third instance is the "zombie", known as a Corrupted. The host's soul/AI/data is replaced with that of the Virus, giving the host viral powers like corrupting tendrils or blasts of dark energy while retaining the powers they had before. Coming into physical contact with a Corrupted can spread the corruption.

edited 11th Aug '14 4:22:54 PM by ironcommando