Which Zombies are the worst?

[Ultravanillasmurf]

The book World War Z by Max Brooks (there is no film) covers a scary scenario (it and the 1975 series Survivors came to mind during recent events).

The initial problem is that nobody believes in the beginning, so it builds up rapidly.
Brooks has one character saying countries with large numbers of firearms are at disadvantage due to relying on them and not knowing that only a headship works.

For a classic example of what happens is a scene in the series Black Sunday where there is a massive pink on pink incident.

Armour does turn up, CRM and the Commonwealth utilise armour, the prison riot armour gets used and someone builds their own using telephone directories (ask your parents) in Fear.
The problem is it is heavy if you are on the move, and you can easily get overwhelmed.

In Closure, Limited and Other Zombie Tales there is a story that includes a Chinese tank that ends up as a mini Redeker plan, that takes some of the stress off the new Great Wall.

[dwbullock]

While I understand 28 Days Later aren't 'technically' zombies, they fit the trope and are often discussed as the alternative to the standard zombie.

And the destruction of society is definitely an undercurrent of the zombie trope.

One idea that I think should be explored more to make the traditional zombies 'scarier' ... what if the zombies ate everything.  Or if the plague could be spread by animals?  Not only would society be crumbling, but you would also face the idea that the wilderness is scary.  28 Days Later touched a bit, with the idea that a bird eating a not-zombie dropped blood on someone, infecting them, etc.  But what if the bird WAS the zombie?  What if any animal, no, EVERY animal was a threat?  That would make the trope a bit scarier.  Sure, walls would keep out traditional bad guys, but what happens when a crow who hasn't decayed so much it can't fly heads over the wall and bites the one guy who refused to tell anyone he was bitten?  Or a cat sneaks through a crack and claws someone?  That would become much more intense and scary.

The scariest idea ... vegans could tell us all they were right the whole time! 

I also think 2020 showed us that, if zombies were real, a significant portion of the world would refuse to believe it, do their own research, not think the disease could be transmitted, etc etc.  The Walking Dead never offered us a view of the 'This is all just an internet hoax' civilization

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

The book World War Z by Max Brooks (there is no film) covers a scary scenario

Oh, but there is:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_World%2520War%2520z

And that, at least according to some people on the internet who enjoy messing with our minds, is not all:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_3BIzLoLI&pp=ygULd29ybGQgd2FyIHo%3D

[Jemima Fawr]

The ones that staff the local big barn hardware chain as seasonal labour over the summer. Dead eyed, effectively brain dead, they shuffle lifelessly around the aisles, impervious to repeated queries as to where to find fixtures, tools or fittings, animated by some unearthly force.

As the great Milton Jones said, "Locked up in a shed without daylight for 12 hours a day, forced to wear orange jumpsuits and interrogated with questions you don't know the answers to... It's not easy working for Homebase."

[Ultravanillasmurf]

The book World War Z by Max Brooks (there is no film)

Oh, but there is:
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_World%2520War%2520z

Next you will tell me there is a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy film (there is not).

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

Clearly my IDS* needs to be upgraded.

* Irony Detection Sensor.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Clearly my IDS* needs to be upgraded.

* Irony Detection Sensor.

^__^
I am glad you clarified that, I was wondering what sort of upgrade you were proposing for the MP for Chingford.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Possible spoilers for series two of TWD (though there are clues) but if you watch Z Nation it is upfront about it - everyone is already infected so if you die you turn (subject to not dying of traumatic head trauma).

There is a joke in Fear where an old lady dies in the night and tries to bite her husband, but to no avail as she took her teeth out before she died.

[zemjw]

I enjoyed the book called World War Z more than the film bearing the same name, much as I vastly prefer the books and radio shows of HHGTTG to the tv show and film bearing the same name (and don't get me started on what they did to poor Marvin)

As for scariest zombies, probably the tsunami like approach of the slow ones. They just never stop

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

The scariest zombies are the living ones staring into their cellphones.

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

^__^
I am glad you clarified that, I was wondering what sort of upgrade you were proposing for the MP for Chingford.

Hadn’t thought of that - I was just concerned that it might be taken as a reference to an ailment I used to suffer from. (In case anyone’s wondering, I can recommend veganism for that.)

[Ultravanillasmurf]

For those of you who can find it, I can recommend the the audio book of World War Z. The author provides the links and the interviewer, and  there is a large and famous cast doing the interviewees.

Every time I listen to "The Fall of Hamburg", it chills me.

[Easy E]

Which zombies are the worst?  The ones closest to me? 

I actually find Voodoo Zombies to be the worst, because they are the personification of Slavery in the Caribbean.  An actual horror attached to the horror.

[carlos marighela]

Which zombies are the worst?  The ones closest to me? 

I actually find Voodoo Zombies to be the worst, because they are the personification of Slavery in the Caribbean.  An actual horror attached to the horror.

I'm inclined to agree but for very different reasons. Hollywood voodoo is mired in racist tropes designed to malign the religious practice of African descendants by distorting and focussing on those aspects most alien to its audience. Voudou, like Candomblé and Santeria are outgrowths of a variety of West African religious practices, in large part those of the Yoruba people. Whilst there are significant differences, in of themselves unsurprsing given the physical distance between parts of the diaspora as well as the differing origin of its members they do share common traits. They are syncretic religions, adopting aspects of the dominant religious practice of the colonising power, in this case Roman Catholicism. The initial reason they are syncretic was in large to mask their existence as continued African cultural expression was suppressed, often extremely violently by the colonial power.

Hollywood's adoption of the voodoo trope goes back to the 1920s. It's a complete miscast of how the religion operates and it's hard to divorce from the prevailing racist sentiment aimed at further dehmanising and marginalising the formerly enslaved African diaspora. It's now shorthand for 'black magic' and yes you can read that in both senses.

[carlos marighela]

Oh and as aside to all of this, that marginalisation and mis-characterisation continues across the hemisphere. Largely thanks to the influences of US originated evangelical Christianity, there is a growing movement to shun and eliminate the practice of traditional African religions like Candomblé and its hybrid offshoots like Umbanda.

In recent years we have even seen the growth of the bizarre phenomena of narco-evangelicos in Rio. Drug gangs won over to Pentacostalism who have been closing places of traditional worship (the terreiros) and threatening the lives of its practitioners*. Leaving aside both the moral contradictions of drug vending and professed Christianity or the religious intolerance of fundy evangelical types, it's worth noting that the Hollywood trope sparked its own local version back in the 1960s and '70s. The association of macumba or black magic with traditional religious practice follows the same, essentially racist, path as its Hollywood progenitor.

*It has recently spread in one part of the city to Catholic churches which just goes to show that in religion, market positioning, branding and market dominance is a big thing.