james_nicoll

For this to be more like global warming (rather than, say, bird flu or antibiotic resistant bacteria or the Y2K problem) I think there'd have to be very very few human zombies anywhere yet. Maybe a handful of zombies in distant places, maybe widespread but generally unnoticed zombie worms and bacteria. With a clear progression leading to an upcoming ZomPocalypse but still plenty of wiggle room for people to claim that, no, nothing has actually changed, there've always been a few zombies here and there, and the apparent exponential growth pattern (still 'way before the knee) is just some sort of trick for the eggheads to get more funding…

Hmmmm, it also kind of puts me in mind of the Chtorr books, now that I think of it.

Maybe the problem is that the mechanism behind zombies has started to affect other species and while the odd undead chimp is just annoying, undead ants could be very bad indeed.

Especially if you have to shoot each one in the head to get it to stop.

Wasn't this pretty much the backstory for World War Z?

Or you could flip this around and do the OSC version, where the heroic square-jawed survivalists know that it's time to kill these motherfuckers, but namby-pamby liberals and their insistence on "zombie rights" keeps them from acting until it's too late.

Aren't there a few vampire universes like this? (Including, actually, the Buffyverse in its current comics incarnation.) Except that usually it's the vampires themselves who are secretly very powerful & pulling strings behind the scenes to get public sympathy and to have their "rights" recognized, as opposed to humans having brainwashed *themselves* into namby-pamby bleeding-heart liberalism via Mr. Rogers and so on.

So rarely do zombies mastermind from behind the scenes...

Well, yes, exactly. Personally I find it far more plausible that there would have to be some kind of Secret Mastermind pulling strings to change public opinion, as opposed to humans just naturally deciding NOT to hate and fear the new, strange, threatening Other type of person that is suddenly moving into their neighborhood. (Unless of course, as others have said in this thread, there's some kind of major financial/economic incentive.)

Now I'm picturing people complaining about zombie labor because everybody knows they send all their earnings back across the border Styx...

Two coins at a time?

I did read one book where the zombie protagonist spends a lot of time pushing for zombie rights (and the rest of his time eating people).

You would need there to be a huge economic incentive to do nothing, such as industry which is completely based on a principle which actively promotes zombies.

Maybe undead slaves are the norm and the problem is that they're starting to go rogue.

Exactly the plot of Fido. (Not trying to be repetetive -- I just commented with this one comment down, but you summed up its plot so precisely that it was hard not to mention.)

Wasn't that a movie starring Billy Connolly? Fido?

Oh, come now; you know perfectly well that there's no consensus among the scientific community as to whether the number of zombies globally is increasing or not. And even if it were, how do we know this isn't a purely natural cycle of zombification? The idea that human activity could be contributing towards creating zombies is frankly ridiculous, and the Kyoto standards on undead activity would dampen our economy if we adopted them. Surely it's best to wait and gather more evidence before we do anything drastic like requiring people to give up their zombie elephant utility vehicles.

Besides, in the 70's scientists were worried zombies were going extinct - any increases in zombification will only offset that!

Anyway, nuclear winter is nature's answer to zombies, right? No people, no brains, no problem.

The rise and fall of zombie numbers is a perfectly normal cycle... zombie reports were common in the medieval period before dropping off drastically for hundreds of years. Just a couple decades ago the scientists were telling us that anthropogenic effects were leading to a severe decline in zombies numbers leading to their extinction... and now they expect us to believe that human activity is causing zombification to fall into an out-of-control feedback loop that's going to lead to some zompocalyse! It's all poppycock! Zombie numbers will fall off naturally without any need for human intervention like they always have... there's certainly no need for government restrictions that would needlessly hurt the economy or for government intervention which would be payed for by raising taxes.

ZomPocalypse denial is all a conspiracy by the necro-industrial complex.

Aaaarggh. :)

"An occasional outbreak was no problem to keep under control. With hindsight, deciding to send the victims' remains to the Soylent Green factory was a mistake."

(There's probably less "I would enjoy more zombies" than "I would enjoy warmer weather".)

I could see funeral homes pitching zombiefication as a way to keep loved ones around forever (Toss in some plastic surgury to keep them looking presentable).

Have them start out zombifying loved pets, or even killing-and-zombifying puppies and kittens so they can sell you a pet that never grows out of the cute stage, and you can consider my disbelief suspended.

> Have them start out zombifying loved pets

Worked for Stephen King....
(Well, sort of, in a not-really zombies as such way.)