Zombie Cliche Lookout: An Appeal to Logic
When you’re trying to convince someone of something, you have a few different avenues to pursue. For instance, consider that you are a survivor in the zombie apocalypse, and are trying to convince someone to let you into their safe house. You could try to appeal to their emotion or humanity, by pointing out that you need to get inside in order to survive the night and continue on your quest to reunite with your young children. On the other hand, you could appeal to logic and point out the benefits you would offer to him, for instance, the first aid supplies that you would share as a price of admission.
About this Episode:
Poor Brent has had to sit around quietly for quite a while now, which is a damn shame, considering how much I love pain-in-the-ass characters like him. He doesn’t add a whole lot here, but I like it nonetheless.
Discussion Question: Zombie Tolerances
I’m taking this question from the comments, but tweaking it a bit. Brickvoid’s original question was: “If your zombies encountered a geothermally heated hot springs, would they be able to survive the heat from the water somehow or would their bodies cease to be able to support their head and cause them to die when the head boils?” I’d like to broaden this a bit, and simply ask what everyone thinks are the relative environmental tolerances of zombies. We’ve had a couple of related topics so far (zombies and deep water pressure, and zombies freezing in low temperatures).
Instead of asking another specific question, I wonder what everyone thinks zombies could survive, at least as far as environmental hazards. Could zombies cross the desert, or would they dry out too much to maintain locomotion? Would zombies fall apart more quickly in extremely humid areas like jungles? Could zombies, as BrickVoid mentions, survive extreme heat from hot springs or geysers?
Brent is sounding almost as bad as that guy who kept going “yeah and …” in some movie I saw once! 😀 Let’s hope he knows when to shut up! 😀
What movie was that, BrickVoid? It sounds really familliar.
I’m not sure, but it seems rather popular on Google searches. I might do some digging around if I get the time over the weekend, I’ve got a lot of stuff to sort through. 😀
Let me know if you figure it out; I got nowhere on Google either. Too generic a search, I suppose.
Reminds me of the Big Lebowski, dude 🙂
Well that’s just, like, your opinion.
It depends on the ’cause’ of the zombies. Are they incredibly sick, aggressive, bestial cannibals? Or are they literally the dead come back to life? If they’re just very sick people, like in The Last of Us, they’ll probably take the humid and drier climates much better than the literal walking dead. If the zombies are actually walking corpses, then they’d probably mummify in a desert, and decay much faster in a humid climate, rendering them immobile. I still don’t see a ‘sick’ zombie lasting long in a desert, though.
Excellent point, Sir Marius. The type of zombie in the story depends incredibly on how the zombie “works”, so to speak.
Sir Marius may well have the right idea. I recall that ‘World War Z’ (the book) had zombies freezing up in the winter, especially in colder climates. Seems logical that even the dead would be subject to extremes of weather.
I’d tend to agree with that, OG.
“continue on your question to reunite with your young children.” “continue on your question” “question” just so you know, that’s a typo.
(yes, I am aware you are not five years old, but seriously? question instead of quest?)
Typos happen for a variety of reasons; you don’t have to be a child to make them. I’ve got a degree in English and make typos and other errors all the time.
Thanks for pointing out the mistake though; I’ll correct it.
Yeah sure, sometimes it does happen that you’re hands are moving slower than you’re brain and you put in a word that you meant to put in in a future paragraph, but I always thought you did some spell checking and while a minor spelling error could get through that using an almost completely different (aside from starting in much the same way) could not.
I meant to put “word” there near the end, but then I do zero spell checking in my comments. Either google informs me of something and I fix it or it doesn’t and I don’t.
Oddly enough, you’ve just made two typos, using “you’re” instead of “your” on two consecutive occasions. See how easy it is?
I do, indeed, use spell check. But since “question” is spell correctly, it wasn’t caught.
Here’s what I think matters: when I find or – more often – someone points out a spelling or grammatical error, I own up and fix is as soon as I can.
Well I found out quite a bit the other day about what the human body can survive. Apparently the brain is one of the only organs that don’t immediately just go SPLAT in every environment. So, because of that, a zombie is the very definition of a durable human. I think they would probably eventually fall apart, but in the short term/beginning they will be the most horrifying juggernauts in existence.
It sounds like there’s an entertaining story behind this.
To me, zombies are mythological and supernatural. It doesn’t matter how hot it gets, unless it’s denaturing the proteins that hold their bodies together. They’re just going to keep coming. Same for cold. Unless it’s cold enough to freeze meat sold, they’ll just keep coming. That’s the advantage of a supernatural monster: it’s physiology can be unique among animals- no rhyme or reason to it.
On the topic of the comic, I love how collectivism is slowly creeping into the picture. “We need to cooperate to survive!” So much for volunteerism. We have to take your stuff for the good of the many (which is us, don’t you see.
I think if I was Lou I might throw them to the ever-loving zombies for making the suggestion. That is, why isn’t Murphy telling Lou what’s in in for him, instead of telling him what’s in it for us?
This is not a compromise is the Steven R. Covey sense of the word. This is a win/lose, with Lou coming out decidedly on the bottom.
Definitely an interesting read on this, Bo. I can see what you’re saying, but at the same time you could argue that it presupposes Lou will be somehow compelled to go along with them, but he’s still completely in control of the situation.
Oh, I have zero clue what Lou will do. Maybe he’s lonely? Maybe he’ll let them stay at his place for some kind of rent? Maybe Murphy legitimately has something that Lou wants (and assuming Lou won’t just take it)?
I just hate to see folks use weasel words in a situation like this. I don’t like them on regular, everyday kind of days. To see someone start talking like a politician in a WCS is not going to get someone very far with me. The best Murphy can do is get really honest, really quickly. I mean he’s already cuffed, and his partner there doesn’t look like he’d give Lou much trouble.
I’m so glad you used the term “weasel words” here, Bo! I just read an article about illogical methods of argument, and this is a great example of one that I didn’t even realize that I had used. Very interesting indeed.
Yeah, I mean from Lou’s perspective, who says they have to cooperate to survive? For all we know Lou has a bank vault full of food, a raised bed garden and solar still on the roof, an artesian well in the basement, a reloading press, and a ham radio shack. We might be hooked up, considering the loaded shelves we see.
I do know some folks like that; and it’s one of my lifetime dreams.
I’m from New Mexico and not only do would the zombies have to deal with the burning heat in the desert but they would have to deal with sand storms with 60 mile per hour winds wild animals and just the vastness of the open desert would let them wonder in places people probably wouldn’t travel anyway so they would probably would be too big of a problem for us people in the west. I think another discussion question that would be pretty interesting u could do is how long would survivors be able to put up with a zombie apocalypse. A few months years or forever
I would actually like to build up on that question, maybe not how long would we last, but how long until civilisation is restored until a certain extent. Like “The Last Of Us” maybe, we certainly will have some advantage over the zombies now thanks to media and trusty internet telling us what to do until power is cut off.
Yeah, you’re/your is probably the easiest mistake in the world to make. I just meant that I figured you would skim through your annotations thing and see obvious mistakes like that, and if there was an edit option on the comments I would fix it.
Dave does a really good job of running this site, along with balancing personal life… like work/family/etc. The quality of content that comes onto this site is very good, yes there is the odd mistake. He reads over his content before it is put up, but when you read something over and over again sometimes things are missed.
I’ve been onto a bunch of other Lego comics similar to this one, and generally they have a lot less content and the quality is no where near as good as Bricks of the Dead… so perhaps in future if you notice a mistake you can just make a comment bringing it to Daves attention so he can fix it and leave it at that, instead of having a go.
oh damn, I didn’t mean to come across like this. sorry Dave.
No worries, hamof.
Most bacteria and viruses can’t live in arctic weather. Chances are, the virus that is making the human corpse undead, will die, along with the corpse, AGAIN.
Ah, but who says it’s a virus that’s making the zombies?
What if it’s a voodoo priest down in Haiti that’s making them?
Then you’re screwed.
Or a parasite that can survive extreme temperatures which exist all over the world.
Or End of Days, in which cold, heat or insects won’t matter…but it would make it interesting
All of what I previously said is likely if a zombie was in Antarctica, Greenland, Vancouver, Alaska, etc.
“You’re not helping”? Murphy, you aren’t doing too great yourself you know. When you’re staring down the barrel of a gun, it isn’t the best time to be telling a guy what he has to do. You’ve done a good job as a leader so far, but now your assertiveness could easily get you killed. If he thinks you’re trying to play him, which you kinda are, he’ll never join you, and you may not get out of here alive.
You need him way more than he needs you, and I bet he knows this. Rather than trying to tell him what to do, figure out what you can offer him, and try to persuade him that it’s worth his trading or joining with you.
Hmm, two and a half hours after the regular posting time! Just another heads up in case Dave needs to get those zombies back on the treadmill! 😀
Apologies for this. Had a bit of a family crises this weekend.
In that case, forget I asked! You know I’m okay if something serious happened that needed your attention! 😀
Although perhaps you’d consider an extra episode on Wednesday – just a thought, though! 😉
Hope it wasn’t a major family crises and that it is under control now. Take care of the Whanau, they are very important!
I have found with my own experiences that when a firearm is pointed at you there are only 2 methods to use: asserting and pleading
When can you get some sex in there?
I wonder how well Murphy actually knows Lou? Perhaps Lou is playing a bit of a practical joke on Murphy, need to find something to entertain yourself during an apocalypse don’t you? 🙂
Tolerances of a zombie? As discussed above, would depend on what the cause of the zombie outbreak is. Generally speaking I’d say that zombies are still human bodies, regardless of outbreak cause, so therefore a lot of the environments that would take us out would take them out. It might take longer in some cases because they aren’t hampered by some of our weaknesses, but they are still human vessels 🙂