Zombie Cliche Lookout: Run or Hide
When it comes to zombies, you want to put as much distance and as many obstacles as possible between you and the zombies. Of course people can’t run forever. Unlike zombies, we have a lot of needs that have to be met, otherwise we simply stop functioning. We need to rest. We need to eat and drink. We need to relieve ourselves. The zombies have none of these biological requirements, and are free to pursue their prey indefinitely.
Because of this, people often have to balance their flight from the zombies against their ability to see to their needs. As a result, they tend to find a place to shelter, and then barricade that, trusting on obstacles and their own vigilance to keep them safe. Unfortunately, this tends to have the negative side-effect of drawing in even more zombies.
Zombies are very simple creatures. They only follow potential prey. If they see, hear, or smell something that might be prey, they start to pursue. Other zombies can follow these cues, and one zombie following a victim can quickly turn into twenty, and that twenty one hundred, and so on. By sheltering in place, survivors will inevitably draw more and more zombies to their location, even as their supplies dwindle.
About this Episode:
Apologies for missing Friday’s episode. I’ve been fighting off a pretty nasty bug all week, and Thursday was the worst of it. I’m feeling quite a bit better today, so hopefully it’s all done now.
In regards to today’s comic, someone suggested a while back that they’d like to see an exterior shot of the house to get a sense of exactly how much danger our survivors are in. Well, here you go. I wish I had the resources and time to build a miniature neighborhood and fill it with hundreds of zombies, but you have to make do with what you have.
Discussion Question: Building a Horde
How much verbal and non-verbal communication do you think zombies should be capable of? It’s pretty common that zombies will follow other zombies if they think it will lead them to food, but how much stimuli should they require? Does another zed’s moan in the distance qualify as a signal, or they need more than that? And does this imply intelligence in any way?
Long time no see! Figured I might actually start conversating again since I’ve been so quiet for a while 😛 . First off, great job with the comic! You’ve come a long way in general, and these past few have been pretty nice. Second, I hope you feel better. The flu sucks 🙁 . And last, the discussion question, I feel like the hive mind would be in play. They manage to be almost telepathic with surrounding zeds. Don’t know why, but it just seems like them.
Hey, glad to have you back around! Thanks for your kind words; I’m definitely feeling better.
Typo alert “and one zombis following a victim” – zombies–>zombie 😉
“have to do with what you have” Change to “have to make do with what you have” 😀
Fixed both; thanks BV.
Question: How does the 2100th zombie even know what the first zombie saw? I feel as if it might be overstating it a bit much to say it would be that many zombies that would follow a single person because one of them started following that person. What would probably happen in real life is that the person would die and get eaten long before 2100 zombies could get to them, and the 2100 zombies would therefore have to be following one zombie who lost his prey because, the prey being a person, they figured out ways to evade the zombies and hide from them in safety. It doesn’t even sound at all realistic that so many zombies would start following one person, there has to be some sort of cap or limitation as to how many zombies would get behind another zombie and follow a particular target. It happens in real life, there can’t be too many lions at one party, so I would figure that a lot of the 2100 zombies would eventually be losing a target with no reward for chasing after it.
I just ascribe it to herd logic. A zombie sees another zombie pursuing something, so they follow suit. A couple chain reactions later and you have a huge horde.
Also, if all of these zombies would follow one zombie that would chase after a target, there would be some extremely simple variations of pit or other kinds of trap which could very easily kill off most, if not all, of the 2100 zombies, and since there are a lot of rather inventive people out there, there could be a wide range of traps that a zombie in a zombie apocalypse could expect to find themselves in! 😀
Right you are, and it would be super cool to see that used more in zombie movies. Use their lack of self-preservation and critical thinking against them.
So wait….
If there was a zombie horde ahojt 1000
and theres 2 humans that split up left and rigth
so will the zombies split up aswell or go for one? Im not smart..
I would imagine they would split up, unless one of the humans is much sneakier than the other, and the zombies don’t notice him/her.
Yeah, take zombieland. Talahasse goes off with an air horn so that Columbus can go without as many zombies, but a few still are able to find Columbus and chase after him anyways.
Shaun of the Dead: Shaun jumps up on something and starts yelling. 100 plus zeds follow him no zeds follow the other 5 humans.
Both excellent examples, even if they prove entirely different things. It all comes down to whoever is writing it, stories aren’t always the most logically-based things in the world.
Perhaps they work like dogs with smell. When a dog comes back from hunting, or it is simply walking, other dogs that it is familiar with sniff it’s nose to see what it has smelled. When zombies get close together they sniff each other to see what one is following. That is, if you believe that they possess a sense of smell.
That’s a cool theory. It wouldn’t work in my zombie universe, because I don’t give me zombies any abilities normal humans lack (other than being undead, of course). This could make a really cool universe though.
Given that the canon seems to be that zombies are attracted to sound, it seems to me that one zombie responding excitedly to prey would attract any others within the sound of its “voice”. Personally, however, I’m not sure why zombies would actually make noise in the first place, given that they do not need to breathe. I guess we could argue that the same parts of their brain that make them mobile also cause the lungs to function on some level.
At any rate, the trope is that if a zombie hears a noise he turns towards it and moves in that direction. So it seems that if a zombie sees prey, and reacts with a noise, others are going to turn towards the noise and move that way.
This leaves open the discussion of whether they understand a zombie’s grunting after prey on some level like many pack animals do. For me, they do not. Zombies are inherently and absolutely unintelligent. But the gathering would happen all the same.
Zombies making noise is definitely an interesting idea. They don’t need to breathe, so why would they bother to inflate their lungs, unless it was only to make noise.
Love to see this.
Thanks!
Since your zeds are Walking Dead type and not Romero or Return of the Living Dead type I would go with the herd instinct of a stimulus like noise causes a reaction others follow stimulus. Since zeds are not sneaky, they make noise trying to get to their prey. This noise (stimulus) attracts more zeds.
I’m curious, what’s the difference between The Walking Dead zombies and Romero zombies?
Walking Dead zeds are just dumb killing machines. Romero zeds especially in Night of the Living Dead could use tools such picking up rockw to smash windows and they organized such as unloading the burnt bodies from the truck before sitting down to eat.
I ascribe the tool usage to just not having nailed down the rules to his monsters yet.
So it seems you use a better method than I do for dark scenes. I usually turn my camera’s exposure down in the manual settings, but it looks like you dim yours in Photoshop. That gives a much cleaner look. I’ll have to start doing it that way.
As for your question, I always assumed that the herds were simply responding in unison to the same stimulus, not that they were paying any mind to other zeds.
Yeah, I cheat. I take the photo normally, then just add a completely black layer in Photoshop and drop the opacity. I need to just learn how to do better low-light photography though, since the end result would likely be much better.
Dave I have decided to start my own webcomic on my favorite to things. Lego and zombies. I have a detailed storyline to use which I have thought up in the last six months. I already have 200 episodes dialogue action surroundings and characters planned out.
Wish me luck
Wow, you’re off to an excellent start! Good luck with your project!
Yes I am building my first set right now for the first scene which includes parkour