Zombie Apocalypse Guide

Zombie Physiology and Behavior

This chapter deals with how the Zombie pathogen spreads and the behavior and traits of the infected. (It has a fair amount of gore descriptions). While it may be tempting to skip ahead to the weapons sections, it is important to understand your undead enemy.

Transmission

The Zombie pathogen is transmitted through blood, bodily fluids, and water. It does not affect animals and insects, but most animals can become carriers for a limited (but still significant) amount of time. Similarly being bitten by a tick or mosquito that has recently fed on the infected can also lead to infection. The pathogen can survive for limited amounts of time in spilled bodily fluids and blood from the infected and in water. Some primates have a similar reaction as humans to infection and will reanimate.

Zombie bodily fluids (spit, blood, etc) entering your body through a wound, your mouth, or eyes can lead to your infection. Similarly consuming unpurfied water that has been recently touched by the infected or an animal/insect carrier can also lead to infection.

Once infected, a human can take anywhere from 36 hours to six days to turn. They can also infect other humans during the time they are a carrier but not yet an undead.

These methods of tramission often lead to zombie ground zeros being cleared, only to have multiple new cases spreading elsewhere miles or sometimes hundreds of miles away from the original ground zero.

Recently deceased human corpses can become infected and will reanimate if infected within 12 to 24 hours of death.
Long dead corpses, or corpses whose brain (or a significant amount of nervous system) is destroyed will be unable to reanimate or may be in an incapacitated state where the brain is reanimated but is unable to control the body. The infected decay at a much slower rate than normal corpses.

The gums and lips of zombies decay away which gives the teeth a more sharper appearance and makes it easier for them to bite. Similarly, the ends of fingers will decay away which gives the fingernails a sharper appearance and function.

The undead have also demonstrated the ability where in when there is a lack of food they will go into a hibernating state. After extreme periods of hibernation the zombie may no longer be mobile or able to move, but the body will still be a carrier.

Behavior

A human who has been infected will show no signs of infection for the first day or two. Afterwards, they will display common flu symptoms such as coughing and a fever, which will gradually worsen until death. Other humans can also be infected by a carrier human. Upon reanimating the zombie will be as fast as a normal human (presuming all their body is physically intact) and intelligence will be peak at this stage. As time goes or as the body accumulates damage, the zombie will slow down to a walk and their intelligence will diminish.

Zombies will ignore obvious hazards such as fire, sharp objects, and falling, but will often choose to walk through danger if spotting reachable prey. They display very basic pack and swarm tactics and tend to group and travel together. Herds may occasionally split up into smaller herds or squads, and head off in different directions, if they have not had luck in finding prey. Zombies have shown limited but still intentional attempts to spread infection such as throwing up in water sources, biting large animals nonlethally, and allowing carrion birds to safely eat strips of their flesh for very short periods of time. With the exceptions of mosquitos, ticks, and other blood-feasting parasites, most insects naturally avoid zombie flesh for unknown reasons. This helps in slowing their decay process.

Upon spotting human prey, zombies will let out a scream or groan (depending on the state of their vocal cords and lungs) which other zombies naturally head towards. They are natural endurance predators and typically rely on chasing their prey until the prey's exhausted or by swarming and surrounding them.

Upon engaging with prey, they will attempt to grab them, which can result in scratches due to their nails. After grabbing hold of prey they will try to deliver a bite. Armless or arm crippled/restrained zombies have been shown to skip the grabbing phase and instead skip straight to biting. Zombies have been shown to try new biting attempts in light of failure ex: if attempts to bite a prey's arm have failed (for example due to the human wearing arm protection) they may target a different area to bite. Intelligent zombies have been shown to change tactics more quickly than older less intelligent undead in the face of failure.

There is a noticeable difference in their methods of attacking or killing prey, which differ depending on the intelligence level of the infected.

The more deadly, smarter, faster, and fresher (more recently reanimated) zombie has two types of attack methods in engaging prey, Feeding attempts and Infection attempts. Infection attempts are mainly used against large animals (animals medium dog-sized or larger) and humans. The zombie will attempt to bite a large animal and will cease further attack attempts upon doing so. This has been speculated as an intentional attempt to turn large animals into carriers. Some have mistakenly believed that large animals that have been bitten are now immune to further attacks from intelligent zombies. This is false as other intelligent zombies will still try to bite the animals and sometimes even an intelligent zombie which has already bitten the animal, may attempt to reinfect the animal if enough time has passed or the zombie encounters the animal again later. This attack strategy defers with humans in that the undead will continue to attack humans until they are deceased, but will cease further attacks as they leave the body to reanimate. This has been speculated as an intentional way to preserve the strength and body integrity of the corpse so that the new reanimated zombie will be more lethal.

The feeding attempts differ in that intelligent zombies will try to kill the prey regardless of its type and then will consume the corpse of the prey until the zombie is full. While more directed towards animals of any size that the zombie is able to catch, a hungry enough intelligent zombie has been shown to feed on humans they have killed, but they will cease feeding once the corpse reanimates.

Other nonintelligent zombies engage in feeding attempts with all prey, regardless of whether the prey is human, a large animal, or not. But will cease feeding if full.

All zombies will typically cease feeding, if living humans are spotted, and instead opt to hunt the spotted humans.

All zombies will never feed on reanimated corpses, but may eat from reanimated corpses that have been put down.

Summary and Warning

Remember that the immediate physcial threat of zombies, of a relentless corpse that brings death with its bite, is far eclipses by the microscopic pathogen. Infection threats from insect, animal and temporary human carriers, infected water and of course the bodily fluids of the reanimated corpses is far more dangerous and lethal than the immediate blood loss from zombie bites and scratches.

The zombie threat is a pandemic threat that far eclipses the immediate combat threat.