Zombie Cliche Lookout: The Clean Up
Fights in zombie stories are often messy, chaotic affairs. This makes a lot of sense, usually, the people doing the fighting are by no means professional soldiers. And, even when they are, they’re facing an extremely unconventional enemy. After all, zombies don’t feel pain. They can’t become afraid. They don’t have to worry about keeping up morale. They simply press the attack, which results in ugly, chaotic battles… not that more conventional battles are beautiful or anything.
At any rate, once the hostilities have ceased, the survivors often have to go around and make sure all the zombies are taken care of. Otherwise, they have a nasty tendency to pop up and bite people once they’ve let their guards down.
About this Episode:
This poor zombie. All he wants to do is get up and try to eat Sam, but he just keeps getting kicked to the ground. Oh, and having his head brutally removed from his trunk with an axe. That’s a rough day, right there.
Other News:
Don’t forget, I’ll be taking next week off from the comic, although I’ll still review The Walking Dead. I may have another post too. We’ll see.
Discussion Question: Decapitating Zombies?
Decapitation always looks cool, hence why I’ve featured it twice in two successive comics. This, however, makes me wonder: just how effective would decapitation be against zombies? Obviously, the zombie would no longer be able to make use of it’s body to move around and help it attack, what with it being only a head and all. But, in a lot of zombie fiction, the head still functions, which means it could still bite and infect if someone happened to, say, step on it.
I’d always found this an interesting idea, but I don’t know how practical it really is. Obviously, the brain would be intact, which means things would might keep working, depending on the mythology.
So how do you think it works? Would cutting a zombies head off kill it? Render it harmless? Or simply severely limit it’s mobility and range of attack? Also: would they look good in an aquarium?
Typo alerts for Dave to clean up when he gets the chance:
” often messing, chaotic affairs” messing–>messy 😀
“once the hostilities has ceases,” Change “has ceases” to “have ceased” Two typos right next to each other, wow!
“having his head brutally removed from his trunk with an axe” trunk–>neck
I’m not sure how elephant trunks or heavy unwieldy luggage would get into this comic, but if either one did, it’d probably be because of a typo! 😀
“just how effected would decapitation be” effected–>effective
Five typos, wow! 😀
He’s using “trunk” as another word for torso, here, but I’ll bump it back up to five for you:
ugly chaotic battle -> ugly, chaotic battle
My reasoning for using “neck” was that the stud- sized cylinder that sticks out like a neck is that that’s what the head was coming off of, or being separated from, hence “neck”. Up t o Dave if he wants to fix or not.
Fixed all except for “truck”, which was intentional as BB points out.
Thanks! I find trunk to be a bit foreign sounding, as I’ve always known it as my neck. It’s probably because I don’t have that detailed of a medical background in my life, but I do know a lot about anatomical terms for most of the human body parts.
That doesn’t mean to say other region-specific variants aren’t valid, and that’s why it was left as Dave’s call. He’s writing this by how he understands terminology, not how others understand it. Thanks again, Dave! 😀
“Trunk” in this case doesn’t mean neck, it means the body, or torso. It might be an American word, I’m not sure. I just liked the sound of it in that sentence.
Regarding the zombie decapitation thing, it might mean something if the zombie head was intact, but if it was killed by hitting it in the head, which made the head cease to function, whilst being decapitated, then no, I wouldn’t expect the head to do anything.
If the head was intact, it might be capable of thought – as zombies know it – and reacting to people stepping on it, it might even continue to track prey for a time, but I feel as though a true zombie head would require a body to continue being any kind of threat to someone.
Part of zombie mythology sometimes includes that the fact the body is undead and ingesting raw flesh through the mouth, indicates to me that some kind of zombie process keeps the zombie going. That’s another discussion question, though, it certainly would mean the zombie’s body would cease to function without a head, if true.
I agree with you on the fact that a Z body isn’t 100% dead. Eating is a great example of that!
Regarding the plumber, was he wanting to fix the leaky pipe before he became a zombie, or afterwards? If it was afterwards, that’s one intelligent zombie, such a thing i do not believe to be in this comic! 😀
Regarding Sam’s finishing off of the zombies outside, let’s hope he catches a break and doesn’t immediately encounter any more zombies. There’s probably a pharmacist zombie or three inside, though, most decent sized pharmacies have twp parhmacists, maybe three, if it’s in a busy location there could even be more than that. I therefore hope he has the good sense to take a peek inside before wandering in and confining himself to close quarters combat! This would probably also not bode well for the medications, if he accidentally smashes some he needs with the axe, he’ll need to find alternatives or another pharmacy! 😀
What were these three zombies doing at the doors of the pharmacy though? Is there other survivors in there already? Or just other zombies making noise and attracting the others?
Questions we will get answers to soon enough!
I like the idea that an intact brain, even with only the head remaining, should be enough for a Z. Plus that’s some crazy and horrific stuff LOL. Very appropriate.
Now, I can’t understand how a brain, even a Z’s one, could still be working without blood (and I think heart should still be working too for Z). So as much as I love the idea of head only zombies, (I’m using it in my own comic), I’m still very doubtfull this could work. My guess: heart/brain combo. Without it you can forget it!
Have to say you are wrong about zed battles. Realistically they should be much easier than human on human battles. Chaos comes from unpredictability. Zeds only attack in one way. No morale or fear means you know what they are going to do attack attack attack. This was the whole point of The Walking Dead this season. The horde was going to break out one day and that was all. They could be herded because they were predictable.
It is always the humans who screw things up. Who blew the airhorn? Who shot his friend in the leg? Who knocked Glenn off the dumpster? Not the Zeds.
Agree with what you have said Rattraveller, until you get to melee. Melee combat becomes more chaotic again doesn’t it? Even if you know how your enemy attacks, there are still a lot more variables like strength, fatigue and balance etc.
So if a horde comes and you can just sit secure somewhere with enough ammo, you could just take your time and shoot them methodically knowing that they aren’t going to change tactic. In melee, you could trip which changes things and creates “chaos” from there, and with a horde vs multiple humans in melee it would be hard to track everything that’s happening, again creating chaos.
I think it comes down to the brainstem–if our (Living) brains have their stems severed the brain dies. Slaying the brain is how you kill a zombie. So, if Sam had severed the brainstem it will remain inert and dead.
That all being said, there is still much debate if decapitation kills a brain immediately. There’ve been several scientists over the years who’ve wanted to hook up sensors to condemned criminals and see if their minds still work after they were killed, but no one has volunteered for this yet.
You’re outdoing yourself on the panel fours at the moment Dave.
Two awesome panel four decapitations in a row.
PS: I began reading BotD from the first episode again yesterday to remind myself of what has happened in the overall picture. I like to do this time to time, good to remember old characters and see how far this comic and storyline has come over the years. I’ve read it start to finish multiple times over the years I’ve been following this site 🙂
Hmmm … It’s now Friday evening where I am, and still Dave hasn’t commented on the typos – did he forget to leave us a note saying he left early for Thanksgiving, or is there another family crisis happening? Guess we’ll find out soon enough!
No matter what happens, Dave, deal with the crisis don’t worry about us, we’ve always got other sites to look in on! When you can manage to get updates working again is fine with me! Just relax and remember we understand! 😀
Maybe the zombie apocalypse has started and he is near ground zero so he can’t get communication out at the moment.
I’m thinking it’s just the early thanksgiving has caught him.
In my zombie ebook (check the link!), braining kills the first zombie. The protagonist later decapitates a different zombie. I never addressed whether that head was still a viable on its own as a threat because he leaves the scene and the head was unable to follow him.
I do not know for how long the human brain can actually function when decapitation occurs in a normal human. There’s some apocryphal stories and that one guy supposedly blinked several times. Since it’s not something we can ethically experiment on, I have to go with what we “know” regarding the issue. The brain would continue to send signals for a short amount of time, and it might even allow for movement of the facial muscles during this time (though this seems less likely), so it might be able to bite during this period. After that time, I would think of it more like a decapitated snake’s head: still capable of transmitting the virus but only as a passive instrument of doom.