Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Christian Seger. Robert, what,
Speaker 1: what do you think your chances are of surviving if
Speaker 1: like a real zombie apocalypse hit us, a real full
Speaker 1: blown zombie apocalypse? Like, how well would you fair? Do
Speaker 1: you have a you have a plan? Well? Here here's
Speaker 1: here's my thoughts on this. So when we start thinking
Speaker 1: about zombie apocalypse, it's easy for us to start putting
Speaker 1: ourselves in survival mode because we're thinking that black and
Speaker 1: white um view of Okay, I shoot the zombie, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, look out for bad people, and then look
Speaker 1: after my own I can do it. I can do this.
Speaker 1: I can pull this off. However, any kind of zombie
Speaker 1: apocalypse is still essentially like the collapse of civilization, collapse
Speaker 1: of order, and I tend to have low expectations about
Speaker 1: my ability to survive that in any in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form that would it would feel like a victory,
Speaker 1: right yeah. I On the other hand, so I used
Speaker 1: to work right where they shot the first couple episodes
Speaker 1: of The Walking Dead in downtownta tank ye right where
Speaker 1: the tank was exactly. Tank still there. They just keep
Speaker 1: it up. Yet it is, funnily enough, it's active to
Speaker 1: you can shoot buildings down with it. No, uh but
Speaker 1: yeah at the and so at the time, like I
Speaker 1: was working on horror projects, and my collaborator E. C. Steiner,
Speaker 1: who we know from the show because he's helped out
Speaker 1: with monster science stuff before. Um, he and I put
Speaker 1: a plan together and he where we've got like some
Speaker 1: people in our lives that our go to, like if
Speaker 1: something like this hits, we get them. We put together
Speaker 1: a band, and we have a location, like a secure
Speaker 1: place where we're gonna go. It's the might be the
Speaker 1: library downtown because it doesn't have any windows up until
Speaker 1: like maybe the fourth floor. Problem is, I just found
Speaker 1: out yesterday they instituted thumb print biometric authentication scanners at
Speaker 1: this library, So you can't get in unless your thumbprint
Speaker 1: is like in their database. So but that means that
Speaker 1: zombies with thumb prints they could theoretically, yeah, like if
Speaker 1: students had been turned into zombies, just marginally smart zombies,
Speaker 1: which whole plans Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. See. My my
Speaker 1: view tends to run more along the lines of Karma
Speaker 1: McCarthy's The Road, Uh, And so I envisioned my place
Speaker 1: in a zombie apocalypse being a daily struggle to see
Speaker 1: if I mercy killed those I love and then myself.
Speaker 1: I've told this on other podcasts I know, but have
Speaker 1: ever told you how I read The Road. I listened
Speaker 1: to it on audio tape while I was running and it, Man,
Speaker 1: that was a depressing workout. Like it was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, two weeks or whatever it took me to
Speaker 1: get through it during my daily runs. But it was
Speaker 1: like you just like running along and it's just everything
Speaker 1: was gray, everyone was dead. There was depression. You know,
Speaker 1: you've read the book, so I've I've read a couple
Speaker 1: of times. I have not read it since I became
Speaker 1: a father of this. So yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'll ever be ready for that. It's
Speaker 1: good stuff, which leads us to why are we Why
Speaker 1: are we talking about zombies? Well, today we're doing a
Speaker 1: sort of quick version of monster Science here where we're
Speaker 1: going to tackle to very They're called micro studies that
Speaker 1: came out of the University of Leicester. UH. A couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago we actually posted these to our Facebook page.
Speaker 1: So if you follow us on social media, you might
Speaker 1: have seen these. You may have even commented on them.
Speaker 1: Some of the comments from those Facebook posts are gonna
Speaker 1: show up in today's episode. But we we saw these,
Speaker 1: we thought they were interesting because they were along lines
Speaker 1: of what we do with Monster Science, especially what Robert
Speaker 1: has done in the past with the video series Monster Science.
Speaker 1: If you haven't seen it, I recommend go watch it
Speaker 1: on our site or on YouTube. But zombies come up
Speaker 1: quite a bit when we talk about very various parasitic organisms.
Speaker 1: The Court accepts organism different different parasitic zombifying agents in
Speaker 1: our world, so zombies are very much on the plate
Speaker 1: here and stuff to blow your mind. So when a
Speaker 1: new study came out and grabbed the headlines, we figured
Speaker 1: out we should cover. People really gloamed onto this one
Speaker 1: way or the other. They either loved it or they
Speaker 1: hated it. There's a lot of you out there who
Speaker 1: follow us on social media said please do an episode
Speaker 1: on this, So that's why we're here. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people too were like, this study is bogus and
Speaker 1: here's why, and we're gonna talk about that as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to start off, what what what are
Speaker 1: your favorite zombie films? Like, let's let's establish some ground rules.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of zombie entertainment out there right now,
Speaker 1: and it's funny, like I was looking at sort of
Speaker 1: the gamut of all of it, and I forgot about
Speaker 1: some really great movies. Will you go first, Well, what
Speaker 1: are your what are your favorites? Well, my favorite is
Speaker 1: twenty eight Days Later, So so that's the wonderful one.
Speaker 1: That's the one that scared me the most, and I
Speaker 1: and I really like it, like both in terms of
Speaker 1: story and how it shot the most. Um. In fact,
Speaker 1: I got this really great poster at New York Comic
Speaker 1: Con last year by the artist Jacque and it's just
Speaker 1: a big landscape picture of the main character walking down
Speaker 1: a road that's totally abandoned in London, and it's really
Speaker 1: evocative and you can get two of them. The second
Speaker 1: one it's the same thing, except for there's a horde
Speaker 1: of zombies chasing after him. But I prefer I prefer
Speaker 1: the lonely walk. Yeah, that was a great film, especially
Speaker 1: the I would say the first two thirds of that
Speaker 1: film are just just very difficult to beat in terms
Speaker 1: of zombie cinema and there, of course, people are split
Speaker 1: on this. There's some there're some zombie fans out there
Speaker 1: and say, oh, fast zombies not a zombie film. They're
Speaker 1: they're probably cursing us right now for even bringing it up. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but it's actually the zombie slow zombie argument is going
Speaker 1: to be important to the science today. I will come
Speaker 1: in and say that one of my favorites is actually
Speaker 1: a fast zombie film and that is a dead set.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that. What's that? Yeah? Dead Set? This
Speaker 1: was a two thousand and eight British kind of a
Speaker 1: mini series and it was created by Charlie Brooker, who
Speaker 1: of course everyone is now familiar with because of Black Mirror.
Speaker 1: But this one had fast zombies in it and had
Speaker 1: to do with the cast of a big Brother uk
Speaker 1: Um not being aware that the whole world is is
Speaker 1: falling into zombie chaos. And that's a brilliant premise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like it's going to be a comedy.
Speaker 1: I went into it. This was this It wasn't available
Speaker 1: in the States at the time. I think now it's
Speaker 1: on Netflix, but at the time you had to get
Speaker 1: a like a pirated copy, and so I obtained it,
Speaker 1: and I was telling my wife it's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: got this new comedy but about these reality people, reality
Speaker 1: star people and their zombies. And we're like, oh, that
Speaker 1: sounds great, and we sent out to watch it and
Speaker 1: it is terrifying. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a great it's
Speaker 1: a great, great zombie film. But the fast zombie thing
Speaker 1: is interesting because when it came out a lot of
Speaker 1: people were criticizing Brooker's use of the fast zombies, including
Speaker 1: Simon Peck. He came out in one of the of
Speaker 1: Shaun of the Dead came out and was criticizing it,
Speaker 1: and Brooker basically said, look, we didn't have the budget
Speaker 1: for a horde of zombies, and if you don't have
Speaker 1: the budget for a a full mas of zombie flesh,
Speaker 1: you've got to make the most out of individual zombies
Speaker 1: and the best way to do that is to have
Speaker 1: them run really fast, and you play some Aphex twin
Speaker 1: over it, and while you've got some dead set so
Speaker 1: wait twenty eight days later and probably what the remake
Speaker 1: of Donna the Dead were like, the two big fast
Speaker 1: zombie movies like the start of that, I guess. So
Speaker 1: though you do see some fast and semi fast zombie
Speaker 1: movements in other films as well. Yeah, one of which
Speaker 1: I'll get to in a minute. Well, the original Donna
Speaker 1: the Dead is one of my favorites as well. The
Speaker 1: zax And one is fine, but I really have a
Speaker 1: soft spot for the original one where they're i mean
Speaker 1: both of them, they're in a mall. But it's just, um,
Speaker 1: everything that's great about zombie cinema. Right, it's not about
Speaker 1: the zombies. It's about like the themes of humanity and
Speaker 1: what happens to humanity as a microcosm in the middle
Speaker 1: of this crisis, right. Yeah, Like basically the idea of
Speaker 1: this one is that you have a some survivors and
Speaker 1: they find this shopping mall that has been untouched. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's zombies in it, but nobody's looted it. It's it's
Speaker 1: like a little paradise. Yeah, and reminds me a lot
Speaker 1: of a Michael Caine film that came out I think
Speaker 1: before this, called The Last Valley. I believe it's Uh.
Speaker 1: He's a general and it's uh and they end up
Speaker 1: him him and his troops end up finding a valley
Speaker 1: that's untouched by I want to say it was the
Speaker 1: hundred years War, but it's been a while since I've
Speaker 1: seen it. Okay, huh, that's interesting. Yeah. I think stories
Speaker 1: like that now get like, why don't we throw some
Speaker 1: zombies in there? That'll that'll sell it a little bit better. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's not a bad strategy. Like instead
Speaker 1: of saying zombies first, now, let's find a now I
Speaker 1: need a craft a story around it. Go ahead and
Speaker 1: steal a good story from somewhere else and sorrow a
Speaker 1: good story. Add zombies and you've got something new. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the theme of the studies that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today. Some other of my favorites
Speaker 1: are I don't know, Shaun of the Dead. You mentioned
Speaker 1: that's a great one just to pull out every once
Speaker 1: in a while and have a good laugh. I really
Speaker 1: also like uh for funds, Knight of the Creeps and
Speaker 1: the Omega Man, the Charlie Omega Man. Uh, And Pontypool
Speaker 1: was one that popped up I had forgotten about as
Speaker 1: a great zombie film. That's just really small, low budget
Speaker 1: smart movie. Yeah. Um one that one more that I
Speaker 1: want to mention. Well, I'll mentioned just a couple in passing.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of some of the Lucio Fulsey
Speaker 1: Italian zombie films, like The Beyond to a limited extent
Speaker 1: The House by the Cemetery that there's only one undead
Speaker 1: creature in that and he's more of a mad scientist.
Speaker 1: But one of the best that I would I would
Speaker 1: just be remisfected to mention is Return the The Return
Speaker 1: of the Living Dead. This one was directed by Dan O'Bannon. Wow. Really, Okay,
Speaker 1: you were talking to me about this beforehand and I
Speaker 1: didn't know much about it. But now that you've said
Speaker 1: Dan O'Bannon, I have a much clear head idea in
Speaker 1: my head of what what this is going to be, Like, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's Dan O'Bannon. Maybe the crankiest person in any
Speaker 1: of the Alien behind the scenes interviews, Like if you
Speaker 1: ever watch any of the like DVD extras where they
Speaker 1: talked to Dan O'Bannon, he's just not a happy camper.
Speaker 1: Well he luckily for us he did. Uh. He did
Speaker 1: have a role in some some pretty cool films here
Speaker 1: and there, and this is one of them. This this
Speaker 1: is a zombie film that it's fun, it has it
Speaker 1: has some some gore moments, some wonderful zombie effects, but
Speaker 1: the zombies talk, the zombies eat brains. It's it's faculous.
Speaker 1: I think he had something to do with Life Force too,
Speaker 1: didn't he the Toby Hooper one, Yes, you wrote the screenplay. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he was involved. That was right after this,
Speaker 1: So yeah, Alien, Blue, thunder Dead and Buried. He's had
Speaker 1: he's had his hands Carpenter on what was Carpenter's first thing.
Speaker 1: They worked on something together. Anyways, So you know you're
Speaker 1: probably wondering, well, why are you guys nerd ing out
Speaker 1: about this? Stop nerding out. Well, one thing that we're
Speaker 1: actually starting to do along with some of our episodes,
Speaker 1: and you may be familiar with this if you follow
Speaker 1: us on social media, is, uh, we're trying to do
Speaker 1: every couple of Fridays a Facebook live event where we
Speaker 1: do trailer talk about the science that we cover in
Speaker 1: the podcast that week over movie trailers that are related
Speaker 1: to what we're doing. So probably uh, this week that
Speaker 1: we're recording this, so those of you who are listening
Speaker 1: that this will have happened in the past, but we'll
Speaker 1: do a zombie trailer thing along the lines of this episode.
Speaker 1: It will be on our Facebook and you can watch.
Speaker 1: It will be Robert and I talking over trailers, basically
Speaker 1: applying what we what we learned here today and what
Speaker 1: is that. Well, so this is the general idea here
Speaker 1: seems to be and this isn't just the University of Lester,
Speaker 1: but it seems to be using theoretical zombie science to
Speaker 1: teach the public about the importance of public health and
Speaker 1: disaster preparedness. Um. Now that the university's press release for
Speaker 1: the specific thing that we're going to talk about today,
Speaker 1: they say that their science Topics module is trying to
Speaker 1: add a sense of humor to teaching sound scientific principles
Speaker 1: to help communicate science to the public. Now, I have
Speaker 1: to note here, though, there was a huge disclaimer from
Speaker 1: the university at the top of the press release to
Speaker 1: make sure that everybody knew that the release didn't actually,
Speaker 1: uh like represent the institution's views. Uh. And I find
Speaker 1: that funny having formally worked in academia. I'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that later in the episode. But basically,
Speaker 1: they've got this undergraduate program, and these undergraduates are assigned
Speaker 1: to write and critique and publish their own research papers
Speaker 1: in a group. Uh. And they apply the scientific principles
Speaker 1: to phenomena from things like pop culture or everyday life.
Speaker 1: So you get these zombie studies, you get, um, something
Speaker 1: similar to the episode that you and I did on
Speaker 1: vampire physics and stuff like that. The purpose isn't to
Speaker 1: actually learn zombie science. The purpose is to teach these
Speaker 1: students in the public that's reading their work about how
Speaker 1: scientific principles can be applied in the real world. So
Speaker 1: it's it's really a communications method. Yeah, and for the
Speaker 1: most party tends to work these studies, and this was
Speaker 1: not you know, like you said, this is not the
Speaker 1: first study to do this. They've been a few different
Speaker 1: that have tackled zombies, vampire one. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's been a werewolf one or one that tackles Frankenstein's right,
Speaker 1: but somebody get on a franken staff, how how how
Speaker 1: do frank Stein's spread? Let us know, um, But but
Speaker 1: you know that these are the studies that do capture
Speaker 1: public attention. They show up on stuff like the Colbert Report,
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's worth it's worth keeping. They're worth
Speaker 1: doing in my opinion. So the papers, the way that
Speaker 1: it works is they're openly published in the university's own
Speaker 1: online journal, and this is an open access journal that
Speaker 1: anybody can read, and they're scrutinized at the same level
Speaker 1: that you know, regular academic papers would be that are published.
Speaker 1: They encourage these undergraduates to have a realistic introduction to
Speaker 1: how difficult academic publishing and peer review is, and it
Speaker 1: prepares them for a career in scientific research. Uh So
Speaker 1: they introduced this their department. It's actually not that new
Speaker 1: of a thing. They started doing this in UM. Of course,
Speaker 1: some people have criticized them for taking trivial there. They
Speaker 1: say they're trivializing science, and they also say that they're
Speaker 1: wasting public funds unquote zany non topics. The scholars who
Speaker 1: are running the program actually argue, well, it's more about
Speaker 1: the communication and teaching than it is about the actual research.
Speaker 1: Now this is where I'm going to talk about my
Speaker 1: own experience here UM with this type of thinking in academia.
Speaker 1: So I've mentioned this before, but I used to work
Speaker 1: at a state university here in Atlanta. I was in
Speaker 1: public relations there, so part of my job was to
Speaker 1: get people interested in the library in particular, and while
Speaker 1: I was there, they there were a couple of instances
Speaker 1: that popped up that were like this, and I saw
Speaker 1: firsthand the gnashing of teeth of these academics who saw,
Speaker 1: this is trivializing what we do, This is such a waste.
Speaker 1: One of them was that the library wanted to do
Speaker 1: like a zombie gag kind of video trailer, uh, that
Speaker 1: taught people how to use the library. So like the
Speaker 1: gag was like students were trapped in a study room
Speaker 1: and there were zombies all around them and they needed
Speaker 1: to use like library resources to to get help, right. Um,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Also around the same time, and you
Speaker 1: and I talked about this the c d C. This
Speaker 1: was in two thousand nine, the CDC started this public
Speaker 1: advocacy program where they did a whole thing about zombies. Uh.
Speaker 1: The CDC is based here in Atlanta, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I think it's it's safe to say a
Speaker 1: lot of the universities here feel like a sort of
Speaker 1: affinity and connection with the CDC and that it represents
Speaker 1: them somehow. And man, did I hear people complaining about that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: what is the CDC doing? This is such a waste
Speaker 1: of time. And it was the same effort. Basically, the
Speaker 1: idea was like I think they had like a zombie
Speaker 1: kind of like preparedness guide or blog or something like that.
Speaker 1: It was silly, but it was the idea wasn't like, hey,
Speaker 1: zombies are real. It was Hey, we're the CDC, We're real.
Speaker 1: You should know about us, and like maybe if you
Speaker 1: come and you take a look at this stuff, you'll
Speaker 1: learn about what we actually do. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: criticism here also reminds me of the critics of the
Speaker 1: Ignoble Prize. You have in the past said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this trivializes science. You're high you're you're making fun of science.
Speaker 1: You're you're highlighting studies that aren't important, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think, uh, those tend to be just
Speaker 1: a few outliers for the most part, I feel, but
Speaker 1: I think it's obviously more about just having fun with
Speaker 1: the topic and generating some attention to to the to
Speaker 1: these particular studies that are in the case of the
Speaker 1: Ignoble Prizes, and none of them are ridiculous. We've we've
Speaker 1: covered them before on the show two years running, where
Speaker 1: we really highlight that, yeah, each of these studies actually
Speaker 1: is doing something of scientific importance. It may not be, uh,
Speaker 1: it may not be curing cancer, and it may seem
Speaker 1: a little bit shrimp on a treadmill to you, but
Speaker 1: it's all part of the scientific effort. Yeah. And in
Speaker 1: my experience, like most of the people who get upset
Speaker 1: about this are are old guard academics who you know,
Speaker 1: it's threatening to them. They feel like it's threatening their routine.
Speaker 1: It's just, you know, I think, a regular kind of
Speaker 1: cyclical thing that happens in academia. And you do see
Speaker 1: other outlets engaged in this sort of thing on a
Speaker 1: regular basis. For instance, the British Medical Journal, they put
Speaker 1: out a Christmas edition every year where they play around
Speaker 1: with the format a bit more. And in two thousand
Speaker 1: fifteen they actually put out a paper Zombie Infections Epidemiology,
Speaker 1: Treatment and Prevention by Tara Smith, Associate professor at Kent
Speaker 1: State University in Ohio. And this was a tongue in
Speaker 1: cheek article that that explored the idea of a zombie outbreak. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so we've got a lot of stuff like that
Speaker 1: out there. I think if you've heard about it, like
Speaker 1: we've heard about it, and you've seen them running on
Speaker 1: sites like I think I first saw it on Live
Speaker 1: Science and then actually here at how stuff works. We
Speaker 1: ended up running an article about it. Um. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I see it as like this is a great way
Speaker 1: to get people interested in communicating about actual, real life
Speaker 1: public health issues. Um. And it's interesting we saw that
Speaker 1: in our Facebook thread and so some of those comments
Speaker 1: I want to bring into it today after we go
Speaker 1: through these studies, because there was a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of react is a lot of arguing that was
Speaker 1: very logical. But if they had read the studies all
Speaker 1: the way through, I think most of their questions would
Speaker 1: have been answered. And not to mention, this kind of
Speaker 1: project really speaks to our own mission here. It's suptable
Speaker 1: in your mind what we try to do with the
Speaker 1: show as well make science accessible and fun Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, I think maybe we should take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back, let's jump into
Speaker 1: the study and talk about exactly what it consists. Off. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So there's actually two studies that were done
Speaker 1: here at this at the University of Leicester, uh. And
Speaker 1: the students that were involved. Their names were ct Davies,
Speaker 1: kJ Cheshire are Garrett Lee and Jay Moore, and they
Speaker 1: used a real epidemiological model to figure out how long
Speaker 1: it would take zombies to wipe out humanity. They did
Speaker 1: two studies, the second of which concluded that there would
Speaker 1: be less than three hundred survivors remaining after one hundred
Speaker 1: days of a zombie outbreak, So there's some hope. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm tentatively calling this a hundred days later
Speaker 1: because they're using them basically like what would what what
Speaker 1: would it look like? Specifically a hundred days after the outbreak?
Speaker 1: They assumed the following in their study. The first was
Speaker 1: that a zombie can find one person each day, and
Speaker 1: the second was that a zombie has a nine chance
Speaker 1: of infecting their victims, which seems pretty high. By day
Speaker 1: one hundred, they calculated there would only be two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy three remaining humans, with a million to one
Speaker 1: zombies to that, so there would be two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy three million zombies. They considered that the probability of
Speaker 1: infection would actually become less realistic as the zombie to
Speaker 1: human ratio increases, so that that will be important later
Speaker 1: because that was a common complaint of some of the people.
Speaker 1: Would just be harder for the remaining humans to be
Speaker 1: infected because there would just be too many zombies too
Speaker 1: few humans, and the humans that are left are probably
Speaker 1: hardened to the realities exactly like we see on Walking Death, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're by the later seasons, you should know when
Speaker 1: to reach into the zombie horde with a hammer exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've developed the necessary skills. So the model they used
Speaker 1: is a real model. That's called the S I R model,
Speaker 1: and it describes the spread of a disease throughout a population.
Speaker 1: It considers the rates at which infections spread and die
Speaker 1: off as individuals and the population come into contact with
Speaker 1: each other. So this seems like an important thing that
Speaker 1: we should, you know, have a basic understanding of. It
Speaker 1: splits the population into three categories. The first is those
Speaker 1: who are susceptible to the infection, that's the S, those
Speaker 1: who are infected that's the eye, and those that have
Speaker 1: either died or recovered, and that's the R. It's considered
Speaker 1: the rates at which infections spread and die off as
Speaker 1: individuals in the population come into contact with each other,
Speaker 1: and it's defined by three equations. There's a bunch of
Speaker 1: math in this. I'm not going to read out like
Speaker 1: sigma whatever to you. You know, you can go look
Speaker 1: at these if you want to. They're readily available online. Um,
Speaker 1: but we want to make this accessible to you as well.
Speaker 1: The team here they re christened the s R s
Speaker 1: I R model as the s z D model because
Speaker 1: because the z I infected are their zombies and are
Speaker 1: is actually they're dead, which includes both dead zombies actual
Speaker 1: dead not undead, and and dead people. Uh and this
Speaker 1: reflected susceptible zombie and dead categories. Now, a constraint of
Speaker 1: the model that we should note is that each person
Speaker 1: in it moves from being susceptible to being a zombie
Speaker 1: to being dead. This model does not account for simply
Speaker 1: going from being susceptible to being dead. Okay, so doesn't
Speaker 1: account for ways that human beings could die other than
Speaker 1: by being killed by a zombie in a zombie apocalypse, which,
Speaker 1: as we've seen in all kinds of zombie entertainment, more
Speaker 1: often than not, your fellow humans are even more dangerous
Speaker 1: than the zombies are during crises like that. All right,
Speaker 1: So here's the first study. It was called a zombie epidemic,
Speaker 1: and it did not factor in the following natural birth
Speaker 1: or death rates during this hypothetical epidemic. They assumed that
Speaker 1: over the course of a hundred days that these would
Speaker 1: be negligible compared to the impact of the zombie virus
Speaker 1: within that time frame, and their calculations suggested that with
Speaker 1: an equal distribution of global populations, the human race would
Speaker 1: get totally wiped out. Now another thing to consider here
Speaker 1: is their calculation had estimated a zombie outbreak as being
Speaker 1: roughly twice as contagious as the Black Death was. So
Speaker 1: they had they had to have some basis point basically
Speaker 1: to to set up what their numbers would be, right,
Speaker 1: So they looked to it's the closest thing we've had,
Speaker 1: and they saw Black Death and said, let's use that.
Speaker 1: In addition, they estimated that a zombies lifetime would only
Speaker 1: be twenty days before they starved to death, basically and
Speaker 1: rendering them effectively dead. Now this brings to mind, like
Speaker 1: some of you out there going well, zombies are already dead.
Speaker 1: Why would why would they need to why would they
Speaker 1: need to drink? Right? It reminds me of the end
Speaker 1: of twenty eight days later. Uh, where the zombies you
Speaker 1: know they crave like coming into contact with people. In
Speaker 1: that case, they're like rage zombies but but they do
Speaker 1: they need to like consume energy the same way any
Speaker 1: other being does, and so like they run out of steam. Basically,
Speaker 1: that's the question that always comes. But from me when
Speaker 1: I watched The Walking Dead? At what point do you
Speaker 1: outlast these things that right that they're they're standing there,
Speaker 1: they're rotting, They're reduced to skeletons. You've got to think
Speaker 1: if they're craving flesh or brains or whatever, they must
Speaker 1: need it for something. It's probably fuel the same way
Speaker 1: that like we crave food and water. Yeah, do they
Speaker 1: do they put out heat? If not, then they must
Speaker 1: be freezing during the winters. Uh. And if so, that's
Speaker 1: going to damage the tissue even more. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can go on and on picking scientific calls in the
Speaker 1: zombie myth. Another aspect of the study was factoring in
Speaker 1: the rate of the infection and how it would spread
Speaker 1: across geographical boundaries. So to do this, they added to
Speaker 1: the formula as a system that prevented a very low
Speaker 1: amount of zombies being able to start an infection when
Speaker 1: a regional population was much higher in proportion. I think,
Speaker 1: like for example, they said like point ten zombies versus
Speaker 1: like a hundred humans, it would be totally unrealistic for
Speaker 1: the zombies to really do anything, right, the numbers have
Speaker 1: to sort of come closer to one another in terms
Speaker 1: of population. However, this assumes that the global population is
Speaker 1: evenly distributed across the regions that are all adjacent to
Speaker 1: one another. Right, So they're basically like, let's say it's
Speaker 1: county to county that like, there's fifty people in each county, right,
Speaker 1: even though like in real life, our populations are much
Speaker 1: more diversely and spread out. So that basic model in
Speaker 1: the first study found that it would take twenty days
Speaker 1: for the infection to spread to a noticeable fraction of
Speaker 1: the population. Once that happened, the remaining population would be
Speaker 1: quickly overtaken, with only a hundred and eighty one survivors
Speaker 1: versus one point nine times one hundred and eight zombies
Speaker 1: after a hundred days. But if you stagger the infection
Speaker 1: due to geographical segregation, and I think what they're talking
Speaker 1: about there is what I mentioned earlier, like that there
Speaker 1: would be a variety in how many people would be
Speaker 1: in each adjacent area to the I guess h ground
Speaker 1: zero for this, then they would have two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy three survivors on day one hundred versus one point
Speaker 1: nine times one hundred and six zombies. But still a
Speaker 1: shred of hope. Yeah, little, I mean, you've got yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got a couple of people. What they didn't do
Speaker 1: is extrapolate how much longer out it would take for those,
Speaker 1: you know, two hundred seventy three people to be overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by the one point nine times on SI zombies. But
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of hope there. Yeah, maybe if
Speaker 1: you hold up, if you follow my plan available online. Now.
Speaker 1: Uh So, they recognized that there there were some flaws
Speaker 1: in this study, right, as you know, as we'll find
Speaker 1: a lot of people pointed out to them online. Uh
Speaker 1: So they did a second study, and they called this
Speaker 1: another zombie epidemic, and they introduced parameters that allowed for
Speaker 1: the zombies to be killed and for people to have
Speaker 1: children during a zombie apocalypse. Now, this made human survival
Speaker 1: more feasible, and it suggested that eventually the zombies would
Speaker 1: be totally wiped out and humanity would recover for reproduction.
Speaker 1: They assumed, and this was kind of wild to me.
Speaker 1: They assumed that any given half of the population would
Speaker 1: be able to pair up and reproduce, and they gave
Speaker 1: birth to one baby every three years. They acknowledged that
Speaker 1: this was unstable if we had a population level like
Speaker 1: our current one, right, but they said it was suitable
Speaker 1: for their purposes since the population was so small from
Speaker 1: the zombie devastation. They also factored in that half of
Speaker 1: the population of the susceptible people would be female, and
Speaker 1: half of those females would be able to bear children.
Speaker 1: So I mean, okay, they're they're just kind of going
Speaker 1: with some averages here. It sounds like to me. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: of course, I know a number of people were thinking
Speaker 1: out there, these children are going to be nothing but
Speaker 1: a liability until at least Oh, I don't know what's
Speaker 1: a good zombie fighting age. Yeah, I mean from the
Speaker 1: I guess the Walking deads are best. Example. Carl like
Speaker 1: starts off at like, I don't know, eleven or twelve,
Speaker 1: and he's probably like fourteen by the time the show
Speaker 1: is currently up to play. Yeah, Like, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of, like TVs Trust to Kill Zombie. Could could
Speaker 1: Opie have killed children? Have not killed children? Could Opie
Speaker 1: have killed b could definitely have killed children? You know, Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, you know what I mean, It's like,
Speaker 1: at what point are they actually gonna be able to
Speaker 1: contribute to the survival effort? Hear? I wonder if it's
Speaker 1: a sort of along the Lenes what we were talking
Speaker 1: about in our expense episode in terms of like the
Speaker 1: ages for draft ability for warfare. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I theoretically, I guess high schoolers would be great. I
Speaker 1: mean red don Yeah. But hey, that also reminds me
Speaker 1: of my favorite zombie movie, Night of the Comment. The
Speaker 1: two girls in that are high school aged girls and
Speaker 1: they do a pretty good job, but their dad like
Speaker 1: taught them how to shoot doozies I think, or something
Speaker 1: like that. Okay, back to this study, and they had
Speaker 1: some other parameters to to try to make it more
Speaker 1: quote realistic. They altered the infection probability to vary as
Speaker 1: the system evolved, accounting for survivors being able to kill
Speaker 1: the zombies and considering the population the reproduction rate. So
Speaker 1: they also extended the lifetime of the zombie from twenty
Speaker 1: days to one year to make them more formidable. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the rationale behind that was. What do
Speaker 1: you think I mean, twenty days seems like a legitimate
Speaker 1: time for okay, assuming a zombie needs to eat to
Speaker 1: keep cruising along and not just fall apart. Twenty days
Speaker 1: sounds reasonable to me. That's longer than you and I
Speaker 1: could go. Yeah, I guess you can make a case
Speaker 1: for either one. And it's one of those situations where
Speaker 1: if you start trying to pick it apart, it's kind
Speaker 1: of fall apart pretty easily. A year seems long to me.
Speaker 1: But then, like you know, most of our zombie entertainment,
Speaker 1: you see zombies that look like they've been totally rotting
Speaker 1: away for longer. Yeah, I mean it. It raises the question,
Speaker 1: is this the creature continue to rot because it's are
Speaker 1: it's muscles contributing to its movement or if there's some
Speaker 1: just how supernatural is the effect? Exactly? Good call? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: when they introduce this, it'll loud for the rate of
Speaker 1: change in the zombie population to change by the rate
Speaker 1: at which the susceptible population could kill them, So there's
Speaker 1: some more fluctuation and variety here. It also increased the
Speaker 1: rate of change of the dead population by the same amount,
Speaker 1: so that kind of makes sense to write. Is that
Speaker 1: like that as they're killing off zombies or as the
Speaker 1: zombies are dying from hunger, or as the people are dying.
Speaker 1: Theoretically that the dead, the number of dead would pile up. Now,
Speaker 1: with these alterations, the students found that it was more
Speaker 1: likely that humanity would survive a zombie apocalypse under these
Speaker 1: constraints and could wipe out the zombies after one and
Speaker 1: three days. So that seems significantly better than what we
Speaker 1: got last time. Last time it was there was a
Speaker 1: glimmer of hope, but it seemed pretty daunting. Now here's
Speaker 1: my question. We talked about this earlier. Fast zombies versus
Speaker 1: slow zombies. There's no in these papers, there's no definition
Speaker 1: of what kind of mombies we're talking about here. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna assume they're fast zombies. An probability of infection
Speaker 1: rate seems really high to me. I mean, if those
Speaker 1: were slow zombies, then what would the infection rate of
Speaker 1: a fast zombie like or something? Yeah, I mean, based
Speaker 1: on just our viewing of various zombie films, that for
Speaker 1: the slow zombies, you're you're really only in danger A
Speaker 1: in the in the early goings and you don't know
Speaker 1: what's up B when there is a very high population
Speaker 1: density of zombies. You're dealing with zombie horde, and maybe
Speaker 1: you're factor into a constrained space, urban environment, etcetera. Uh,
Speaker 1: and beyond that, just like sheer human stupidity, right yeah,
Speaker 1: which granted, never, never should we we underestimate pure human stupidity,
Speaker 1: students stupidity to get in our way of survival. This
Speaker 1: is true. Watch any episode of The Walking Dead for
Speaker 1: further reference. Uh. So yeah, I mean I'm going to
Speaker 1: assume that they're fast already, but I'm curious what you
Speaker 1: guys out there think. Okay, let's take another break, and
Speaker 1: then when we get back, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the commentary that surrounded this, at least for us, and
Speaker 1: then we'll look at one more zombie study. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, yeah, you belief you were the one
Speaker 1: who shared the original study on Facebook. How did folks react? Well,
Speaker 1: it was very popular. I mean, we pay attention to
Speaker 1: our our Facebook metrics and we see what succeeds and
Speaker 1: what doesn't. It help us. It helps us to choose
Speaker 1: what to talk about in the future, right Uh. And
Speaker 1: it was extremely popular, but several people took issue with
Speaker 1: the student's methodology, though not all of them seem to
Speaker 1: have read past the headline or the first paragraph. So
Speaker 1: for me, I was considering, like, what their mission here
Speaker 1: wasn't the zombie research, it was the communication. Like if
Speaker 1: we go back to what what their actual goal was here,
Speaker 1: Let's remember these are undergraduate students there. I'm presumably the
Speaker 1: same age as we would be here in the United States,
Speaker 1: like eighteen to twenty two years old, um, and that
Speaker 1: the goal was for them to learn what it's like
Speaker 1: to put their research out there in the world and
Speaker 1: then to have it hacked a bits, right, And I
Speaker 1: thought it was an interesting lesson in terms of that,
Speaker 1: especially in terms of consumption of digital media. I'd also
Speaker 1: argue all these comments showed that the university's campaign to
Speaker 1: get people to think about public health we're pretty effective
Speaker 1: because as as uh, you know, interesting and kind of
Speaker 1: argumentative and pedantic at some as some of this stuff is,
Speaker 1: it got people thinking about public health in a logical way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the arguments that they make are things that
Speaker 1: we're actually addressed in the study. So here's one of
Speaker 1: the first ones that I pulled. Somebody on our Facebook
Speaker 1: said this about the study, except there are some very
Speaker 1: bad assumptions In their model, they basically assumed that people
Speaker 1: the most powerful predators on Earth won't or can't fight back.
Speaker 1: Now that's something that they address in the second study.
Speaker 1: They ignore travel time e g. It's going to take
Speaker 1: a long time for zombies to swim to continents and
Speaker 1: islands not connected to the one where the outbreak starts
Speaker 1: if people are smart enough not to fly them there
Speaker 1: on airplanes, etcetera. That's true, But they do also address
Speaker 1: the geographical adjacent population density, which I think was their
Speaker 1: attempt to tackle that. And of course, the zombies are
Speaker 1: going to run out of energy stored fat, etcetera. Before
Speaker 1: they cross an ocean unless they're really good at grabbing
Speaker 1: fish along the way. They also tackled that right and
Speaker 1: that they gave the first study they had the twenty
Speaker 1: days limit and then they had the one year limit
Speaker 1: in the second study. Yeah, the the energy argument, I feel,
Speaker 1: is one of those that it's it definitely blows a
Speaker 1: hole and pretty much any zombie idea, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's kind of out of out of the box
Speaker 1: for the thought experiment, like where where is the first
Speaker 1: couple of points that this person raised our are very
Speaker 1: much in keeping with the thought experiment. Yeah, it's exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like breaking the premise. Yeah, because I can't I
Speaker 1: can see the validity here and saying you know, woulden
Speaker 1: people fight back. Now you can make some arguments to
Speaker 1: say that, hey, we we can look at real life
Speaker 1: threats and help. People often fall back on normalcy bias.
Speaker 1: They just they just assume this can't be happening, and
Speaker 1: they have trouble actually reacting and readjusting to to the
Speaker 1: new set of circumstances and the danger they're faced with. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we can go either way on that.
Speaker 1: And as far as zombies traveling to other places, certainly,
Speaker 1: the the idea of a full blown zombie being permitted
Speaker 1: to board an airplane by T. S A is uh
Speaker 1: what is hilarious and and maybe not practical. But but
Speaker 1: the idea of an infected individual, certainly in a time
Speaker 1: of chaos, is trying to flee to different places. Did
Speaker 1: you see World War Z? Wasn't that like a big
Speaker 1: plot point in World Wars? I think I did not
Speaker 1: see the movie. I read the book and really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: So I remember a scene where there's a zombie that
Speaker 1: was like trapped in the landing gear or something like that,
Speaker 1: and like a stewardess goes and like opens up the
Speaker 1: thing to figure out why the warning alarm is going off.
Speaker 1: And those are fast zombies and like basically like the infected.
Speaker 1: You have this instance in that movie where that one
Speaker 1: zombie infects her and then just like this wave of
Speaker 1: people getting infected moves from the back of the plane
Speaker 1: toward the front of the plane. And it's like worst
Speaker 1: case scenario right where you're on a plane and just
Speaker 1: like there's no way out. What do I do? And
Speaker 1: spoilers for World War Z, I guess, but like I
Speaker 1: think what happens is like they crash the plane and
Speaker 1: somehow Brad Pitt just like lives through a plane crash. Um,
Speaker 1: I you know, I take you back. I think I
Speaker 1: did see the movie, and the only thing I really
Speaker 1: remember is that they did have a very not only
Speaker 1: fast zombies in terms of their speed, but just fast
Speaker 1: in terms of the infection. Like you could see the
Speaker 1: infection spread from street to street. And remember they could
Speaker 1: like they moved like waves. Right, there was some kind
Speaker 1: of it wasn't there even like a scene where that
Speaker 1: like the zombies were sort of like ants, like a
Speaker 1: hive and they would like pull helicopters down and stuff.
Speaker 1: It does make me realize that one of the advantageous
Speaker 1: things about using zombies to study the spread of infectious
Speaker 1: disease is that despite the fact that we all know
Speaker 1: what diseases are essentially, you know, we experience illness, we
Speaker 1: know how these things work, we know to wash our hands,
Speaker 1: these are still kind of invisible forces to us. And
Speaker 1: the zombie makes the invisible visible, and therefore we're maybe
Speaker 1: a little more inclined to engage in in these thought experiments,
Speaker 1: and then perhaps the residual knowledge will be useful in
Speaker 1: thinking about actual legitimate diseases. We'll give you an example
Speaker 1: that's pretty grounded and close to home for us. A Bola. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the c DCS here you may remember, like, what
Speaker 1: was it like a year a little over a year
Speaker 1: ago when there was an abola scare. We had some
Speaker 1: doctors who were infected with a bola brought back here
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, and they were in a public hospital, not
Speaker 1: in a CDC hospital, quarantined to be taken care of
Speaker 1: for this, and there was huge concern throughout the city
Speaker 1: of oh They're bringing this infection to the city, We're
Speaker 1: all gonna die. There's gonna be a huge bowla breakout.
Speaker 1: And I remember just thinking like, well, clearly a lot
Speaker 1: of these folks aren't educated on public health and transmission
Speaker 1: of disease and how a bowler works. But like, well,
Speaker 1: and people get emotional, paranoid and paranoid yeah about things
Speaker 1: that threatened them. Yeah, absolutely, Uh but you know it
Speaker 1: kind of makes you think, like, well, maybe if we
Speaker 1: all just sat down and walked through the S I
Speaker 1: R model, maybe maybe we've did that on CNN instead
Speaker 1: of some of the stuff that's on there, we would
Speaker 1: have a better understanding of what the likelihood of it
Speaker 1: of a traveling was. Right. Anyway, back to these zombie questions. So, okay,
Speaker 1: the second one was another comment on Facebook, and this
Speaker 1: person says, yes, but this study is super flawed. Is
Speaker 1: zombie wouldn't have a nine chance of infecting someone every
Speaker 1: day forever? Maybe the first weeks, but after that, I
Speaker 1: know the percentage would stop would start dropping. Now, again,
Speaker 1: that was something they addressed in the study that they
Speaker 1: They definitely said that they accounted for the fluctuation at
Speaker 1: least in the second study of whether would hold because
Speaker 1: as we as we mentioned, right, like, if once you
Speaker 1: reach kind of a saturation point of zombies, they're not
Speaker 1: really that many other humans for you to be able
Speaker 1: to infect, so that rate's going to go down. So
Speaker 1: they did address that, um, and that's that. It's a
Speaker 1: good point, but that's part of the study. Alright. Third
Speaker 1: one here, the numbers here just don't make sense. As
Speaker 1: the human population dwindles, so would the chance of a
Speaker 1: zombie encountering a human. And you really can't predict stuff
Speaker 1: like strategy, preparation, et cetera. Chances are there's going to
Speaker 1: be a few communities scattered across the world that adapt.
Speaker 1: So same thing they're basically arguing about, right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't account for things like strategy and preparation, of course not.
Speaker 1: But this is a model, you know, it's it's not
Speaker 1: predicting the future. But at the same time, yeah, nine
Speaker 1: seemed high to me, you know, but basically the math
Speaker 1: works out either way. Right, If you just change nine
Speaker 1: to another number, you would it would just spit out
Speaker 1: different results, right. Yeah. And then the last one was
Speaker 1: what we've talked about already. Somebody said zombies would last
Speaker 1: less than forty eight hours because of phenomenon called bacteria
Speaker 1: that would eat them up. Well, again, I think that's
Speaker 1: totally fair, but it breaks the thought experiment. So it's
Speaker 1: it's we kind of have to dismiss it, even though
Speaker 1: that is again one of one of the most valid
Speaker 1: criticism the idea of zombies. Think we even have an
Speaker 1: article on how stuff works that Joe adapted into a
Speaker 1: video that it's something along the lines of like five
Speaker 1: or ten ways why zombies would never work, and that
Speaker 1: of course is one of the very first ones. But
Speaker 1: you're breaking the premise of the thought. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: I would just say, like, if the project was designed
Speaker 1: to teach these students anything, I think it taught them
Speaker 1: how to have thick skins while people pop out of
Speaker 1: the woodwork and I tell you what's wrong about something,
Speaker 1: and I guess what. Welcome to academia. That's totally what
Speaker 1: it's like. Well, welcome to U speak and social media too.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be an academic to encounter people
Speaker 1: who don't read the entire article. But if or have
Speaker 1: legitimate issues with the study, I mean, that's that's part
Speaker 1: of it. We we stuff to about your mind. We
Speaker 1: we invite everyone to to give their their take on
Speaker 1: a particular topic or you know, criticize it, what have you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, the way I was taught at least
Speaker 1: was that like, when you are going through the rigors
Speaker 1: of preparing a study like this, you should be prepared
Speaker 1: to defend it in a public forum. And honestly, based
Speaker 1: on all of these criticisms, I feel like these students
Speaker 1: did a pretty good job. I'd give him an a.
Speaker 1: You know, there are a couple of weird things here
Speaker 1: and there in the paper, but like, for the most part,
Speaker 1: they did what they're supposed to. Now, I do have
Speaker 1: to to point out that there was a study that
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand nine that covered basically the
Speaker 1: same territory. This was a titled When Zombies Attack Mathematical
Speaker 1: Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection and this was
Speaker 1: by months Hudiya Ammad and Smith from the School of
Speaker 1: Mathematics and Statistics at Carlton University. And this was published
Speaker 1: in Infectious Disease Modeling Research Progress in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: right around the same time that the CDC was doing it.
Speaker 1: That maybe that was our peak zombie zombie science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is a really cool study. It's actually available
Speaker 1: online I'll try try to remember to include a link
Speaker 1: to it on the landing page for this episode, because
Speaker 1: a lot of it, I'll of it breaks down into
Speaker 1: equations and these different models, but I'm going to just
Speaker 1: give you the high level of how it, how it
Speaker 1: flows together, and you will definitely notice some similarities between
Speaker 1: their approach UH and UH and the approach in the
Speaker 1: previous study. So they first defined as much of a
Speaker 1: generic pop culture zombie as possible, you know, falling back
Speaker 1: on the slow zombie factoring in just the basic mundane stuff,
Speaker 1: not going with the more fun stuff like the idea
Speaker 1: that they can talk and they only eat brains. I'm
Speaker 1: awaiting that step like a reanimator kind of zombie. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and how can we forget reanimated? It's a tremendously fun zombie. Um.
Speaker 1: So they busted out the model along three basic cases. Susceptibility,
Speaker 1: s zombies, z and removed are very very similar, yeah,
Speaker 1: like one letter difference. So these three classes are then
Speaker 1: used in equations to spell out how zombie human interactions
Speaker 1: lead to zombie removals, death and resurrection as zombies, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Then they revised the model to include latent or infections,
Speaker 1: the idea that you'd be bitten and then you're infected
Speaker 1: for a while and then you turn into a zombie.
Speaker 1: Then they factored in a model for treatment and essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, curing it. They model though the effects of
Speaker 1: partial quarantine of zombies. Uh. Then finally they factored in
Speaker 1: impulsive eradication as they put it into the mix. What
Speaker 1: is impulsive eradication? It sounds fun. Just kill the heck
Speaker 1: out of So it's like, yeah, it's like one of
Speaker 1: those scenes like where somebody just goes in with a
Speaker 1: sledgehammer and machetty and yeah, yeah, okay, just destroy our
Speaker 1: zombies especially uh. And it's all very equation based. Um,
Speaker 1: you can look at the study, but unless this is
Speaker 1: your thing, you're going to get as much out of
Speaker 1: it as I'm describing here. But but here's what they
Speaker 1: decided in the end quote. An outbreak of zombies infecting
Speaker 1: humans is likely to be disastrous unless extremely aggressive tactics
Speaker 1: are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate
Speaker 1: the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A
Speaker 1: cure what only result in some humans surviving the outbreak,
Speaker 1: although they will still coexist with zombies only sufficiently frequent
Speaker 1: attacks with increasing force will result in eradication, assuming the
Speaker 1: available resources can be mustered in time. So also this
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting in comparison to the previous study.
Speaker 1: They say the longer the time scale of the of
Speaker 1: the outbreak, the higher the likelihood of complete human extinction.
Speaker 1: I think. I think if you took the math and
Speaker 1: you pushed it past a hundred days, I bet that
Speaker 1: study would have found the same thing. Okay, they said
Speaker 1: that the key difference though, between this model and other
Speaker 1: real world infectious disease models, like, really the only key
Speaker 1: difference is the resurrection of the dead. Otherwise you're talking
Speaker 1: about the same variables that play into considering the spread
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, of plague orrible or what happened.
Speaker 1: But they said, as far as the zombie scenario, if
Speaker 1: if these fictional creatures were to suddenly rise up against us,
Speaker 1: they say, hit hard, hit often, that's the only hope. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm really impressed that they added the idea of a
Speaker 1: cure in there. I don't think I've ever seen that
Speaker 1: in any zombie fiction. I want to say that it
Speaker 1: was I remember watching all the special features on a
Speaker 1: Man Well, Mega man. And of course some fans are
Speaker 1: probably gonna criticize and say, technically, that's a vampire film,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of a hybrid, to be honest. I
Speaker 1: want to say that when I watched the special features
Speaker 1: for Twenty Days Later, there was originally a different cut
Speaker 1: for the third act, like, oh, the only story boarded it.
Speaker 1: They never filmed it, but it involved something about a
Speaker 1: cure or a possible cure, but they ended up deciding
Speaker 1: it didn't work. I remember hearing about this that, like
Speaker 1: the idea was that the gym character would be infected
Speaker 1: at the very end and they would be trying to
Speaker 1: cure him. Yeah, and they're like having a conversation with
Speaker 1: somebody on the other side of the door. I found
Speaker 1: it really interesting, especially since, like I said earlier, I'm
Speaker 1: less in love with the third act of the film.
Speaker 1: But I mean third acts are often difficult in films.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a third act. That's like a happy
Speaker 1: ending third act. And I think the other ones that
Speaker 1: they had planned would have been like like real dour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this one was more dour, but yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't see the cure for the zombie plague invoked a
Speaker 1: lot no, not really. Well, maybe give us examples if
Speaker 1: you if you use some of you out there are
Speaker 1: going no, it's in this or whatever. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it was kind of a there was a false idea
Speaker 1: of a cure in The Walking Dead, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's something like along those lines. And I think they
Speaker 1: frequently run into characters who refused to accept that they're undead,
Speaker 1: and so they like are hoping that they can cure
Speaker 1: them and they'll come back. Well, here's here's the thought
Speaker 1: to sort of close out on here. I guess it
Speaker 1: has been people have commented before that you see this,
Speaker 1: You see zombie zombies have never gone away. We've just
Speaker 1: continually are into zombies. But they say that there's this
Speaker 1: relationship between political power in the United States and the
Speaker 1: popularity of zombies, uh and or vampires. I heard about this.
Speaker 1: They say that if you have a Democratic president, then
Speaker 1: vampires are in, and if you have a Republican president,
Speaker 1: zombies are in. So if this holds true at all,
Speaker 1: I guess we can expect to encounter even more zombie
Speaker 1: fiction over the next four years unless you classify President
Speaker 1: elect and I guess at the time this publisher's President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump as something else, and both supporters and opponents
Speaker 1: have certainly framed him as such. So maybe we're going
Speaker 1: to see a new craze. Maybe it'll be mummies, maybe
Speaker 1: it'll be uh fish people. That Mummy movie is coming
Speaker 1: out next summer, And man, didn't we talk about this.
Speaker 1: They're they're remaking Creature from the Black Lagoon in theory.
Speaker 1: I don't. I have not checked in on the project
Speaker 1: to see where it stands, but that's one that's been
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're relaunching the whole Universal Monsters shared universe.
Speaker 1: I think the Mummies the spearhead for that. So maybe
Speaker 1: that'll be and I would I would love to see that.
Speaker 1: Would be something positive to come out of the next
Speaker 1: four years. For sure. If we see just Gil people
Speaker 1: take over of Gil People, moving shadow over in Smith
Speaker 1: comes in the full full swing as a as a
Speaker 1: motion picture, I'd go for that. I'm down Dagon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great movie remake of Z a K. Blood Water is
Speaker 1: the Doctor Z. So to close out, I have a
Speaker 1: question for you. If I was bitten and you knew
Speaker 1: I was gonna turn, would you kill me? Would you
Speaker 1: be able to do it? Or would you just like
Speaker 1: lock me in the podcast studio. Mm hmm, that's a
Speaker 1: tough question. Um, I guess I would. I would lock
Speaker 1: you in the podcast studio, but I would I would
Speaker 1: make sure, I like put a lethal amount of snacks
Speaker 1: in here or something, just so you could you could
Speaker 1: make the decision for yourself. That's nice. And yeah, like
Speaker 1: I would just eat myself to death before that's very likely. Well,
Speaker 1: those of you out there, let us know, would you
Speaker 1: kill me if I was bitten by a zombie? Uh?
Speaker 1: There's places that you can let us know, or you
Speaker 1: can let us know more about what you thought about.
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