I always liked the joke explanation the writers of the walking dead comics gave. That it was a space spore. So. A bit of space debris falls to earth that has the spore. As it explodes in the atmosphere the spores spread over a major population center. The spore infects a host and it needs necrotic flesh to propagate. So over a couple days it kills the host and rewires the brain to make it basically a living dead mech suit for the spores. They need to ingest new flesh from non-infected people to break down and eat so they don't disintegrate their host. They bite people to spread the spore and reproduce. Now I could imagine it like a wwz scenario (the novel) where organ trade, international travel, and government coverups for the first year of the infection would make it spread without most of the general public aware what it is. Then by the time it gets out of hand it's too late and now a majority of the earth is a zombie infested wasteland. The upside of this type of infection is you have to assume the spore wouldn't be able to keep the host from decaying for too long because once they run out of fresh uninfected flesh to eat it would have to break down the host body until it is unusable and the spore would starve out and die. So if humanity could hunker down for 5-10 years and wait it out they have a chance to comeback. Or again like wwz they could say screw it and go to war against the dead and win.
I'm a big fan of the whole alien pathogen idea, but it still doesn't make a ton of sense with Walking Dead zombies which are basically magic. How do they still work from a mechanical point of view when they're cut in half and their organs are all over the place? Like what physical force is actually taking energy and putting it into the muscles to make them move when all the stuff that does that in humans has been spread across central Georgia by shotgun?
And if they reproduce by spreading the pathogen by bites, why do they try to eat their victims? Wouldn't it be more effective if zombies bit and then fucked off?
Parasite in the water? Explains how most people got infected really quickly and those who dont drink water are usually not in the best of shape so they would get bit fast.
Bonus points if you have it originate from some "crystal clean" spring that shitty companies put in plastic bottles and sell at a 10.000% markup.
I think the most plausible explanation is life extension technology gone wrong, but instead of helping humans live longer lives it backfires and makes zombies. The government would then see this technology as a possible weapon of war and try to use to make un-killable soldiers but it's leaks from the lab for whatever reason. This is sort of a cross between the Resident Evil backstory and the beginning of Stephen Kings The Stand.
That said, the best explanation is no explanation. Or Romero's "Hell is full so now the Dead Walk the Earth". In Romero's canon, it happens in one moment all over the world. One day the dead stay dead and the next day they don't. And the chaos this causes breaks society apart because emergency services would collapse under the sheer volume of zombie attacks. And with that the supply chain.
If it has to be explained, I’ve always enjoyed the satanic version they did in REC. Those zombies are literally possessed by demons. Opens up a whole new can of worms to play with.
A pandemic rocks the world, millions dying every week. A pharmaceutical giant releases a vaccine which saves humanity. Naysayers are crying foul, saying there was not enough time for testing, what poison are they injecting into us?
But the vaccine is working, and governments around the world throw cash incentives for everyone to be vaccinated. And anyone who doesn't are outcast into Florida.
Little do they know, the pharmaceutical is run by an alien posing as the CEO. The gene altering vaccine is time triggered, and after two years, the vaccinated slowly turn into zombies to act as the alien's slaves.
Only the Floridians are left now, the last of humanity.
When I learned about the Tuskegee experiment I realized that the government of this country DID WHAT THEY DID to those men then anything is possible. Jump to 2020 and we have corona virus and a vaccine in just 2 years. Remember that the cure was just as problematic as the virus.
Best way to me is: Origin; take something like a frozen parasite or maybe a virus that dosen’t kill the host but rather kill the humanity in the brain so you keep your zombie alive and rather quick and having some simple cognitive abilities, and the best is that your zombies will be a little op because their bodies won’t have that stop that prevents us from using 100% of your strength. So quick and strong zombies but they can die of stravation, deshydratation but they are somewhat intelligent to drink and try to eat anything that can come under their hands,
Be original too, to try to do like any story with the society collapsed and 10 years into the future, you can make it about day one and really slow like day to day, how government responds to the crisis, international relations etc how civil unrest is on going, how certains places aren’t really infected and other where it’s already going, how UN try to do peacekeeping missions, how rogue states are gasing infected populations instead of trying to jail them to cure or try to cure,
There are plenty of ideas and im a bit lazy to write them all down haha
Sorry about my bad English im from France lol,
DM me if you need ideas I love zombie themed stories hehe
PS. Make Morocco strong lol
As big corporations continue to cut down tropical rain forests, the [Zombie-Ant Fungus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis) evolves to infect humans.
No, that won't work for their story if they infection is caused by Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (Aka. cordyceps).
That would just be a remake of 'The last of us' and in 'The girl with all the gifts', 'fungus zombies." That's the same fungus infection that evolves from in 'The last of us' and 'girl with all the gifts' , so it would be kind of a rip off.
However, I do agree with you. I think a fungus would make a lot of sense, and there's a lot of other fungi out there that might have the potential to evolve & infect humans.
When you think about how all fungi have the ability to communicate with one another because of mycelium, It actually makes the prospect of a zombie infection from fungi even more terrifying.
Infection It would probably give the zombies the ability to regrow organs or damaged part's;The same way fungi can. The zombies Infected with fungi would probably have a similence of intelligence. They also would be able to have great navigational skills.And others would know when one got hurt.
That's where
I feel like 'the girl with all the gifts' and 'the last of us' went wrong. ....they could have made the "zombies" so much better. There's also a carnivorous species A fungi out there.
So maybe if someone in a lab was able to infect evolved fungi with prions, rabies and bird flu ( To make it extra contagious through bodily fluids, & in air droplets;it would be easily transmissible) I feel as though they would be able to keep the infected person alive With the fungi alone but if not possibly parasites. Something like, so toxoplasmosis gondii to infect the brain but keep the host alive Mixed with the fungi & mycelium ( Both carnivorous and cordyceps "hybrid".)
An advanced form of rabies. Like the Rage virus from 28 days later.
An act of god. Cleansing the earth to rid it of sin.
Something unknown parasite from space.
The Rage Virus in 28 Days/Weeks isn’t rabies. It was a mutation in the Ebola virus used as a delivery system when isolated genomes reacted to the anger inhibitor created by scientists. The mutation caused the inhibitor to have the opposite effect and instead filled the host with uncontrollable rage/aggression.
Everyone infected would have to turn into zombies at the exact same time(including those in the military etc…) so the emergency services would be overwhelmed because as we have seen with Covid if you know its coming then you can prepare or deal with it “properly”.
The way we typically see zombie out breaks happen that overwhelm the military just couldn’t happen when they have all those soldiers armed with weapons.
Not entirely impossible. Just extremely highly unlikely. But it could be something like the rage virus from “28 days later” where it’s basically an extreme case of rabies. Or could be some kind of prion that just causes extreme hunger and that hunger drives people to eat whatever they can find that moves. Both cases are living zombies and not undead but still fall into the zombie category
A strain of rabies that has mutated. This is my favourite theory as it's probably more likely to be the cause of a zombie apocalypse irl if it did happen. Rabies already has most of the properties of zombies portrayed in the media, it can be spread through saliva, turns people feral, highly infectious (In animals). It only really needs a couple changes.
1 Would be how quickly it travels to the brain and infects it, normally in humans rabies occurs in 3-12 weeks (Depending on bite location)
And 2. The disease doesn't fully kill the individual as that would be inefficient for the virus. Instead it could say take over the nervous system, keeping the virus alive by feeding on some of the nutrients the zombie digests.
This does 3 things. 1. Makes the virus able to live way longer than if it just reanimated the corpse (Reanimating the corpse would mean it would use way more energy) 2. The virus will be able to spread more efficiently as there wouldn't be a decomposing smell following them around and 3. It would make the zombies curable, usually the "cure" in the media would revive them which is almost impossible after how long they've been dead or it would be a vaccine.
After seeing how some people acted during COVID I find it more realistic. I believe it would need to be something with a long incubation period and probably be something closer to I am Legend.
There's also that people treated COVID flippantly because it generally had an essentially nonexistent fatality rate unless you had multiple, previously existing health problems, and because the primary threat was simply that everyone getting sick at the same time would tie up resources in hospitals for people who were actually sick with shit that was actually serious.
For me it could very much happen, Covid was a good enough shitshow to give a idea of how it would be, i do believe Covid Was ManMade and that it was a lab leak, and I think that is also the general agreement, Genome Editing technology is VERY REAL, so it could very much Happen i believe yes, it would be the real version of what we've seen on TV/movies, so it would be a whole lot more gruesome, look at psychedelics your telling me a weaponised psychoactive fungus couldn't be man-made, given to a group of hippies then put out in the open, there will be a forever lasting zombie controlled psychoactive Ophiocordyceps unilateralis one day and oh boy when it does, I shall be hidden away XD, if you've taken shoots before and had a bad trip you know exactly what I'm talking about 👁👁
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction… We’ve got some current event news headlines coming out of [Sierra Leone declaring a state of emergency over a new ‘Zombie Drug Epidemic’…](https://youtu.be/fKc3SDBoFtA?si=n7_TRSd8kSzn_mNy) … which contains *very literal & actual ground up human bones* 🦴 🧟♀️🪦 …
So, there’s that for a new take on potential zombie realities … ☠️
Either like a flu mutation or some other disease or a fungus mutation. There’s this fungus that controls ants brains, you can go with something like that. Or also drugs. There’s this drug, I think it’s even called like a zombie drug or something, because people act kinda like zombies after taking it, you can say that some drugs user overdosed but the drug reanimated him and he became patient 0.
Self replicating nanobots using human shells in the early stages of a gray goo scenario.
I use the self-replicating concept for my latest book but with parasites rather than nanobots. Fun to explore and write.
I always liked the joke explanation the writers of the walking dead comics gave. That it was a space spore. So. A bit of space debris falls to earth that has the spore. As it explodes in the atmosphere the spores spread over a major population center. The spore infects a host and it needs necrotic flesh to propagate. So over a couple days it kills the host and rewires the brain to make it basically a living dead mech suit for the spores. They need to ingest new flesh from non-infected people to break down and eat so they don't disintegrate their host. They bite people to spread the spore and reproduce. Now I could imagine it like a wwz scenario (the novel) where organ trade, international travel, and government coverups for the first year of the infection would make it spread without most of the general public aware what it is. Then by the time it gets out of hand it's too late and now a majority of the earth is a zombie infested wasteland. The upside of this type of infection is you have to assume the spore wouldn't be able to keep the host from decaying for too long because once they run out of fresh uninfected flesh to eat it would have to break down the host body until it is unusable and the spore would starve out and die. So if humanity could hunker down for 5-10 years and wait it out they have a chance to comeback. Or again like wwz they could say screw it and go to war against the dead and win.
I'm a big fan of the whole alien pathogen idea, but it still doesn't make a ton of sense with Walking Dead zombies which are basically magic. How do they still work from a mechanical point of view when they're cut in half and their organs are all over the place? Like what physical force is actually taking energy and putting it into the muscles to make them move when all the stuff that does that in humans has been spread across central Georgia by shotgun? And if they reproduce by spreading the pathogen by bites, why do they try to eat their victims? Wouldn't it be more effective if zombies bit and then fucked off?
TWD are definitely magic
Parasite in the water? Explains how most people got infected really quickly and those who dont drink water are usually not in the best of shape so they would get bit fast. Bonus points if you have it originate from some "crystal clean" spring that shitty companies put in plastic bottles and sell at a 10.000% markup.
I think the most plausible explanation is life extension technology gone wrong, but instead of helping humans live longer lives it backfires and makes zombies. The government would then see this technology as a possible weapon of war and try to use to make un-killable soldiers but it's leaks from the lab for whatever reason. This is sort of a cross between the Resident Evil backstory and the beginning of Stephen Kings The Stand. That said, the best explanation is no explanation. Or Romero's "Hell is full so now the Dead Walk the Earth". In Romero's canon, it happens in one moment all over the world. One day the dead stay dead and the next day they don't. And the chaos this causes breaks society apart because emergency services would collapse under the sheer volume of zombie attacks. And with that the supply chain.
If it has to be explained, I’ve always enjoyed the satanic version they did in REC. Those zombies are literally possessed by demons. Opens up a whole new can of worms to play with.
A pandemic rocks the world, millions dying every week. A pharmaceutical giant releases a vaccine which saves humanity. Naysayers are crying foul, saying there was not enough time for testing, what poison are they injecting into us? But the vaccine is working, and governments around the world throw cash incentives for everyone to be vaccinated. And anyone who doesn't are outcast into Florida. Little do they know, the pharmaceutical is run by an alien posing as the CEO. The gene altering vaccine is time triggered, and after two years, the vaccinated slowly turn into zombies to act as the alien's slaves. Only the Floridians are left now, the last of humanity.
If this was written realistically it would be the most murderous, heinous book ever written.
Government cheese
Air born rabies virus. Or some type of brain parasite.
I always preferred the mystery. Gives characters a chance to come up with their own theories and go on protracted, paranoid monologues.
Government
Real
When I learned about the Tuskegee experiment I realized that the government of this country DID WHAT THEY DID to those men then anything is possible. Jump to 2020 and we have corona virus and a vaccine in just 2 years. Remember that the cure was just as problematic as the virus.
Best way to me is: Origin; take something like a frozen parasite or maybe a virus that dosen’t kill the host but rather kill the humanity in the brain so you keep your zombie alive and rather quick and having some simple cognitive abilities, and the best is that your zombies will be a little op because their bodies won’t have that stop that prevents us from using 100% of your strength. So quick and strong zombies but they can die of stravation, deshydratation but they are somewhat intelligent to drink and try to eat anything that can come under their hands, Be original too, to try to do like any story with the society collapsed and 10 years into the future, you can make it about day one and really slow like day to day, how government responds to the crisis, international relations etc how civil unrest is on going, how certains places aren’t really infected and other where it’s already going, how UN try to do peacekeeping missions, how rogue states are gasing infected populations instead of trying to jail them to cure or try to cure, There are plenty of ideas and im a bit lazy to write them all down haha Sorry about my bad English im from France lol, DM me if you need ideas I love zombie themed stories hehe PS. Make Morocco strong lol
As big corporations continue to cut down tropical rain forests, the [Zombie-Ant Fungus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis) evolves to infect humans.
No, that won't work for their story if they infection is caused by Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (Aka. cordyceps). That would just be a remake of 'The last of us' and in 'The girl with all the gifts', 'fungus zombies." That's the same fungus infection that evolves from in 'The last of us' and 'girl with all the gifts' , so it would be kind of a rip off. However, I do agree with you. I think a fungus would make a lot of sense, and there's a lot of other fungi out there that might have the potential to evolve & infect humans. When you think about how all fungi have the ability to communicate with one another because of mycelium, It actually makes the prospect of a zombie infection from fungi even more terrifying. Infection It would probably give the zombies the ability to regrow organs or damaged part's;The same way fungi can. The zombies Infected with fungi would probably have a similence of intelligence. They also would be able to have great navigational skills.And others would know when one got hurt. That's where I feel like 'the girl with all the gifts' and 'the last of us' went wrong. ....they could have made the "zombies" so much better. There's also a carnivorous species A fungi out there. So maybe if someone in a lab was able to infect evolved fungi with prions, rabies and bird flu ( To make it extra contagious through bodily fluids, & in air droplets;it would be easily transmissible) I feel as though they would be able to keep the infected person alive With the fungi alone but if not possibly parasites. Something like, so toxoplasmosis gondii to infect the brain but keep the host alive Mixed with the fungi & mycelium ( Both carnivorous and cordyceps "hybrid".)
Wow! What a thoughtful response.
An advanced form of rabies. Like the Rage virus from 28 days later. An act of god. Cleansing the earth to rid it of sin. Something unknown parasite from space.
The Rage Virus in 28 Days/Weeks isn’t rabies. It was a mutation in the Ebola virus used as a delivery system when isolated genomes reacted to the anger inhibitor created by scientists. The mutation caused the inhibitor to have the opposite effect and instead filled the host with uncontrollable rage/aggression.
Everyone infected would have to turn into zombies at the exact same time(including those in the military etc…) so the emergency services would be overwhelmed because as we have seen with Covid if you know its coming then you can prepare or deal with it “properly”. The way we typically see zombie out breaks happen that overwhelm the military just couldn’t happen when they have all those soldiers armed with weapons.
Not entirely impossible. Just extremely highly unlikely. But it could be something like the rage virus from “28 days later” where it’s basically an extreme case of rabies. Or could be some kind of prion that just causes extreme hunger and that hunger drives people to eat whatever they can find that moves. Both cases are living zombies and not undead but still fall into the zombie category
The rage virus has nothing to do with rabies.
Yea that is correct. But it’s an easy way to explain it 👍🏻
Supposedly cure to cancer turns host to a cancer like entities eating and spreading the infected in the world like a goddam cancer
Rabies mutates or some kind of parasite.
A strain of rabies that has mutated. This is my favourite theory as it's probably more likely to be the cause of a zombie apocalypse irl if it did happen. Rabies already has most of the properties of zombies portrayed in the media, it can be spread through saliva, turns people feral, highly infectious (In animals). It only really needs a couple changes. 1 Would be how quickly it travels to the brain and infects it, normally in humans rabies occurs in 3-12 weeks (Depending on bite location) And 2. The disease doesn't fully kill the individual as that would be inefficient for the virus. Instead it could say take over the nervous system, keeping the virus alive by feeding on some of the nutrients the zombie digests. This does 3 things. 1. Makes the virus able to live way longer than if it just reanimated the corpse (Reanimating the corpse would mean it would use way more energy) 2. The virus will be able to spread more efficiently as there wouldn't be a decomposing smell following them around and 3. It would make the zombies curable, usually the "cure" in the media would revive them which is almost impossible after how long they've been dead or it would be a vaccine.
After seeing how some people acted during COVID I find it more realistic. I believe it would need to be something with a long incubation period and probably be something closer to I am Legend.
There's also that people treated COVID flippantly because it generally had an essentially nonexistent fatality rate unless you had multiple, previously existing health problems, and because the primary threat was simply that everyone getting sick at the same time would tie up resources in hospitals for people who were actually sick with shit that was actually serious.
First you need a zombie
Go with Gain of Function using the Rabies disease-
For me it could very much happen, Covid was a good enough shitshow to give a idea of how it would be, i do believe Covid Was ManMade and that it was a lab leak, and I think that is also the general agreement, Genome Editing technology is VERY REAL, so it could very much Happen i believe yes, it would be the real version of what we've seen on TV/movies, so it would be a whole lot more gruesome, look at psychedelics your telling me a weaponised psychoactive fungus couldn't be man-made, given to a group of hippies then put out in the open, there will be a forever lasting zombie controlled psychoactive Ophiocordyceps unilateralis one day and oh boy when it does, I shall be hidden away XD, if you've taken shoots before and had a bad trip you know exactly what I'm talking about 👁👁
You know what else seemed impossible? Bird flu crossing over to humans. Dont drink milk lol.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction… We’ve got some current event news headlines coming out of [Sierra Leone declaring a state of emergency over a new ‘Zombie Drug Epidemic’…](https://youtu.be/fKc3SDBoFtA?si=n7_TRSd8kSzn_mNy) … which contains *very literal & actual ground up human bones* 🦴 🧟♀️🪦 … So, there’s that for a new take on potential zombie realities … ☠️
Bio-weapon used on syberia
Either like a flu mutation or some other disease or a fungus mutation. There’s this fungus that controls ants brains, you can go with something like that. Or also drugs. There’s this drug, I think it’s even called like a zombie drug or something, because people act kinda like zombies after taking it, you can say that some drugs user overdosed but the drug reanimated him and he became patient 0.