4 ms·

Slightly OT but Dracula is not the only monster that has no chance in the modern world. The "Quiet Place" movies make me laugh because if those creatures ever

Slightly OT but Dracula is not the only monster that has no chance in the modern world. The "Quiet Place" movies make me laugh because if those creatures ever really came to Earth we'd have them under control in about 5 minutes. Too many monsters? Rig up a battery-powered AM radio with a motion detector and a stick of dynamite. Toss 1000 of these things out in a field somewhere. Monsters go boom. Every human now wears an electronic fob around their neck that emits a loud sound of the proper pitch to drive the monsters crazy. We'd have those Quiet Place monsters driving Ubers for us and cleaning our bathrooms.

twic 3y ago
Reminds me of the bit at the end of Shaun of the Dead, where zombies are seen doing minimum-wage jobs and being used in a wacky gameshow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIG36gncSxs&t=33s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIG36gncSxs&t=33s
hef19898 3y ago
Same with all those zombie scenarios. Quite conveniently, each and every film or series starts with patient zero, skips the part where the whole world order, society and whatnot collapses, and starts with our heros trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. World War Z, the book that is, is the only instance that tried to explain how the collapse occured. I'd expect it to take a lot more than 5 minutes, a lot of my optimism around pandemic control died during Covid, but the full collapse that always happens as soon as zombies show up just won't happen.
- interludead 3y ago
  Yeah, agree.. I think medical advances and public health measures would likely be able to contain and control most infectious diseases
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  My favorite take on zombie fiction was a short story that posited that nearly everyone is globally infected, but infection can take one of two forms: form A is the regular "undead"-style zombies, but form B merely makes humans stupid. This explains the foolish choices movie protagonists must make for the sake of plot.
- strken 3y ago
  The thing I find unconvincing about zombie movies is that the zombies are running around powered by human physiology for weeks in the middle of winter and yet their numbers are inexhaustible and they can get through security doors. It seems like a far more realistic scenario would be a fortnight of chaos where everyone locks themselves inside, possibly enforced by 24/7 shoot on sight curfews, followed by the death of all the zombies and a partial and limited social collapse. Maybe sporadic continuing outbreaks, radically different border policies, and limitations on movement within countries after that.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Or zombies ripping humans litterally apart. No idea where a dead body would take the strength from for that. Take the living dead for example: From what I understood, it is the Wildfire virus that causes it, with everyone (I assume everyone who contracted it) turning upon death. As soon as people figure that out, every dead person is getting his brain stem severed. And there are not that many people dying, outside of war zones and such, for that to be a world ending problem. 28 days later, 28 weeks later is just bad, does mention that: when the rogue army officer states that the indected to build or tend fields, he rightly concludes that one can just wait until they starve or die of dehydration. Zombies should, unless one assumes some magic virus as in World War Z (the book, again), just rot away. Which posses another problem: how to deal with millions of contagious corpses lying around. Using the Black Death as a basis for how such things did play out in real life, would make for a really grim story. Of course, armed survivors scavanging the world has some more fun angles.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      this is all true and it's fun to deconstruct these things. But it's also fun to just roll with it :)
    - pavel_lishin 3y ago
      Aren't our muscles mostly limited by the brain deciding that we should definitely not apply enough strength to rip our own tendons off our bones? An infected "zombie" may not have such limiters. And a human being can survive for weeks without food, days without water.

twic 3y ago

Reminds me of the bit at the end of Shaun of the Dead, where zombies are seen doing minimum-wage jobs and being used in a wacky gameshow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIG36gncSxs&t=33s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIG36gncSxs&t=33s

hef19898 3y ago

Same with all those zombie scenarios. Quite conveniently, each and every film or series starts with patient zero, skips the part where the whole world order, society and whatnot collapses, and starts with our heros trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. World War Z, the book that is, is the only instance that tried to explain how the collapse occured. I'd expect it to take a lot more than 5 minutes, a lot of my optimism around pandemic control died during Covid, but the full collapse that always happens as soon as zombies show up just won't happen.

interludead 3y ago
Yeah, agree.. I think medical advances and public health measures would likely be able to contain and control most infectious diseases
pavel_lishin 3y ago
My favorite take on zombie fiction was a short story that posited that nearly everyone is globally infected, but infection can take one of two forms: form A is the regular "undead"-style zombies, but form B merely makes humans stupid. This explains the foolish choices movie protagonists must make for the sake of plot.
strken 3y ago
The thing I find unconvincing about zombie movies is that the zombies are running around powered by human physiology for weeks in the middle of winter and yet their numbers are inexhaustible and they can get through security doors. It seems like a far more realistic scenario would be a fortnight of chaos where everyone locks themselves inside, possibly enforced by 24/7 shoot on sight curfews, followed by the death of all the zombies and a partial and limited social collapse. Maybe sporadic continuing outbreaks, radically different border policies, and limitations on movement within countries after that.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Or zombies ripping humans litterally apart. No idea where a dead body would take the strength from for that. Take the living dead for example: From what I understood, it is the Wildfire virus that causes it, with everyone (I assume everyone who contracted it) turning upon death. As soon as people figure that out, every dead person is getting his brain stem severed. And there are not that many people dying, outside of war zones and such, for that to be a world ending problem. 28 days later, 28 weeks later is just bad, does mention that: when the rogue army officer states that the indected to build or tend fields, he rightly concludes that one can just wait until they starve or die of dehydration. Zombies should, unless one assumes some magic virus as in World War Z (the book, again), just rot away. Which posses another problem: how to deal with millions of contagious corpses lying around. Using the Black Death as a basis for how such things did play out in real life, would make for a really grim story. Of course, armed survivors scavanging the world has some more fun angles.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    this is all true and it's fun to deconstruct these things. But it's also fun to just roll with it :)
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    Aren't our muscles mostly limited by the brain deciding that we should definitely not apply enough strength to rip our own tendons off our bones? An infected "zombie" may not have such limiters. And a human being can survive for weeks without food, days without water.