Am i the only one who thinks Zombie Apocalypse is the dumbest unrealistic genre to have been made?

[SIgmaBETA 93]

Planet of the Apes for example uses intelligence to win against an enemy = Believable

Zombies,... are legit braindead things. Soldiers would easily kill them before they could win anything

[Venomous 18,813]

@SIgmaBETA

This thread has been approved but it has been moved to Media Discussion.

[Splashee 28,537]

For zombie genre, absolutely yes. So many real life issues are discarded just to get some mindless zombies to stupidly win in the end. And it is the same actions all the time.

[Megas 27,064]

The whole thing about zombie apocalypses is that they’re all about the numbers game. Just a small group of people Vs an entire army of zombies. Of course some media make zombies more aggressive and agile to make them more threatening. Otherwise the ending to Shaun of the Dead would sum it up

[Fluttershutter 2,118]

The idea of zombies is silly but the point is that swarms and overwhelming numbers are ultimately stronger than intelligence. Think of how powerless humans really are against insects and viruses.

[EpicEnergy 22,082]

I love the idea of zombies, it's interesting and cool!

Anyways, I don't necessarily think the zombie genre is unrealistic, but rather, I think that it depends on how well the idea of zombies is implemented and executed. There are multiple ways of introducing zombies into media, and many seem to center around a virus created in a lab. I wouldn't call that unrealistic, unless it isn't implemented correctly somehow. The way the virus usually involves direct contact with the infected. I can see how it wouldn't make sense for a zombie virus to spread very far with the military, but usually the military doesn't get involved until it's too late, depending on how fast the virus spreads.

[Dreambiscuit 8,024]

It’s not the most brilliant genre ever imposed on the public, but it’s easy for unimaginative writers, cheap to produce and can make a profit if it clears a buck-eighty. Good thing protagonists in horror movies are so incredibly stupid and incapable, otherwise we’d never see another zombie flick (tragic!). The only one that stands out is Zombieland because at least they put a sense of humor into it.

[ZiggWheelsManning 7,367]

I agree Dreamy, zombies overpopulate our TVs and it's not just the drama genre  

[Cash In 21,513]

I don't think the zombie genre is inherently bad in concept. I do think it's been overdone though, which is more of a case of recycling ideas and adding nothing to it. It's fine a few times, but when you see Zombie Movie/Show No. 3645, it's not all that impressive.

[Sonic Shimmer 4,116]

The slow moving zombies, yeah. I can see how the faster rabid style zombie (28 Days Later, Train to Busan) could be a serious global threat though.

[Sunset Rose 251]

One thing zombies or humanoid things like them would inspire is an idea of how monstrous we could become as a species. You take what makes a human human and then replace it with a feral, animalistic urge to destroy what it was. Things like Frankenstein's monster worked so well because it played on this kind of idea, and if it were a standalone concept, the ruination of humanity by turning everyone into mindless cannibals is really something. But I agree, it's been so overused as an easy element for dystopian settings that now anything with a zombie horde in it feels about as similar as the last thing you saw it in.

[Justin_Case001 4,855]

On 2023-03-15 at 11:20 AM, SIgmaBETA said:

Zombies,... are legit braindead things. Soldiers would easily kill them before they could win anything

Wow.  Sorry to burst your bubble, but you could not be more wrong.  The zombie apocalypse is one of the most plausible (and probably inevitable) scenarios when it comes to doomsday fiction.  But we need to define "zombie", because that's a pretty vague and unscientific term, and depending on exactly what type you're talking about, it may or may not be plausible.  Old school zombies may be less plausible, but the modern zombie, such as those from I Am Legend, 28 Days Later, and World War Z are incredible plausible.  What we're talking about there is simply a very fast acting, very contagious virus that turns the host into essentially a super-charged late-stage rabies case.  Do realize how fast that would spread?  No, soldiers most definitely could not just easily kill them before the virus could spread and get out of hand.

Look at what we all just suffered through.  Covid was the most benign and mild pandemic that mother nature could have cooked up, given all the potential viruses on the menu, and it still wreaked some proper havoc and f*cked things up pretty good.  It could have been orders of magnitude worse.  It was a dress rehearsal for a far worse pandemic, and we failed miserably and spectacularly.  Using the dress rehearsal for a stage play analogy, the whole world face planted, fell off the stage, and knocked ourselves unconscious before the opening line.  I'm not sure we could have done a worse job.  Now imagine if covid was essentially an ultra fast-acting mutation of rabies that caused people to become raging cannibals within minutes of infection.  You really think we could just stomp that out before it starts?

A World War Z scenario is not only realistic and plausible, but it seems to me that it's inevitable if we survive long enough.  Eventually, nature will cook up a virus like that.  There's no reason to think it won't.  It's only a matter of time.  Our only hope is actually getting our act together before then and being prepared with real, durable, effective pandemic preparedness plans, and hopefully even some kind of adaptive vaccine that protects against pathogens that are as of yet unknown.