Talk:Zombie/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

There needs to be a "self-help" page on how best to survive a zombie apocalypse. --

I made some minor edits to other sections in regard to information being repeated over and over again, but mostly focused on "Zombies in film." I put a little bit about the situation today, and tried to clarify when directors "invented" different parts of today's popular zombie mythology. I also got rid of a lot of the information about Resident Evil, as I thought it was more suited for the Resident Evil article and not for the zombie page. While Resident Evil is, I suppose, responsible for introducing today's teenagers to zombies, I really don't think it's an important enough movie to the zombie subgenre to justify multiple paragraphs, details about its soundtrack, and a bulleted list of plot points. Inanechild 9 July 2005 04:12 (UTC)


Can anyone cite or give more info about the legal section? I have searched the New Orleans Municipal Code for "somnambulism", "zombi" and "zombie" and found nothing. Is this real, or an urban legend? --Jkonrath 19:53, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)


The content *is* copyrighted, works of fiction *can* be copyrighted, and for the credulous and gullible, "The Zombie Survival Guide" is a HUMOR book! Ever heard of straight delivery? At the very least you should have done a book review search, would have found that out quickly. Geez.


Paraphrasing content does not constitute copyright violation. Pacian 15:17, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)


I have moved the "Zombies in Science" section the the "Zombies in Fiction" section, as this is more a appropriate place for it. The "Zombie Survival Guide" is not a valid scientific document, and its claims have never been tested. Indeed, most of the claims paraphrased here stretch the limits of credulity to the breaking point. Don't get me wrong, it is a well thought out piece and the writer who did the original paraphrasing did a good job, but it is not science. It is science-fiction. Brian Schlosser42


I do not understand why someone keeps coming in and deleting the section of this article entitled "Zombies in Science." It seems very well researched and there seems to be no justification for it's deletion. If someone chooses to delete this section for a THIRD time, would you please have the courtesy to the original writer, who obviously worked very hard, to JUSTIFY or EXPLAIN your deletion here on the "talk" page? 204.251.1.189 20:47, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

In Chinese legends, corpses are transported over long distance to their home town for burial under the command of a wizard who can control the zombies to hop on their own feet. If a person were touched by a hopping zombie, he dies instantly. Imagine a column of zombies hopping along in the middle of the night. What a scary sight! No one I know have seen such mode of transportation except in movies. However, my mother remembered there were such zombies passed by her village once in her childhood. Of course, she was too scared to go out to check what happened. Some people speculate that those zombies were just smugglers in disguise who wanted to scare off the law enforcement officers.


The above moved here until it has been shaped up a bit. Besides, does this not truly belong under the chinese title for the "hopping undead"? :-) --Anders Törlind


There are also zombie processes in Unix. -- Error


Why was everything that I typed removed completely? It was taken directly (though paraphrased and re-written, not copied directly) from "The Zombie Survival Guide", which is a thoroughly researched work on the mythology of zombies. I worked very hard on writing that it and there is no reason why it should have been removed. Certainally you can't claim it was removed due to lack of factuality since the majority material on "zombies" is widely considered to be fictional ANYWAY. 68.222.10.9 23:36, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Zombie Squad !!!


Does a zombie really engage in cannibalism? Zombies in fiction will eat humans but not other zombies. It seems to me that if a zombie ate a zombie or a human ate a human, both would be cannibalism. But since a zombie is no longer human, a zombie eating a human or a human eating a zombie would not be cannibalism. This argument was pointed out in Dawn of the Dead (1978).--Burzum 4 July 2005 03:10 (UTC)


That's a pretty good point. I think there are some aspects to the use of "cannibalism" in describing zombie behavior that I could expand on. Since zombies are still human in form, when a zombie attacks and begins eating a human, there really isn't a word to describe the living/dead difference. For example, in nature, when a lioness takes down a gazelle and begins eating it, its actions are described as "hunting" and then perhaps "feeding". But what if a zombified lion (if such a thing were possible!) attacked a normal lion? A lion started eating another lion, even if the one lion is now undead. I think it's the same with zombies and humans - though zombies aren't human in personality anymore, they still are (more or less) in physical form. So you're absolutely right that really only a zombie eating a zombie would be truly cannibalism, for lack of a better descriptor, zombies eating humans could be called cannibalism, since zombies and humans are technically the same species.

On a further zombie-note, if zombies are so interested in consuming the living, how is it that so many living humans get turned into zombies? I suppose at the start of an outbreak, the incidence of those being bitten but escaping is much higher, so there's a turning point where the infected start outnumbering the un-infected, but still - a full-sized, ravenous zombie could probably rip enough flesh off of a struggling victim to render them immobile (living or dead). I mean, a zombie missing half of its leg muscles is going to have a tough time chasing down anyone. Any thoughts? -- thesmokingmonkey 06JUL05

Contents

JEAN ZOMBIE

i just found another wikepedia article concerning an actual former slave named jean zombi from the hatian revolution.It says this maybe the actual origin of the zombie since the person in question would have french colonialist walk and then evicerate them while thay were walking,hence the walking dead,sounds pretty gruesome but its interesting check out the article concerning hatian history or santo domingo slave revolt.It seems that the myth of zombie is the ideal of people who revert to sadistic and violent actions as a result of violent society,it stems from a fear of returning to slavery after the revolt and and that fear motivating the violence.

Picture?

I suggest we change the zombie picture. No offence to the artist, but it really looks nothing like a zombie.

I agree. With the hundreds of zombie movies we could screencap as fair use, there's no reason to have such a crappy picture for this article. And I have no problems with offending the so-called "artist"---just because some lame kid with a pencil, a scanner, and a copy of "Gradients For Dummies" can contribute to Wikipedia is no reason to support the practice. Normally I'd suggest that we clean up the sub-par text first but a message needs to be sent to any other tortured 15-year-old goths with notions of uploading their homework scribbles. For a laugh, check out the image history and note how the submitter tried to legitimize the image by listing it as "used with permission"---then check out the submitter's user page to verify that yes, he is the "artist". Let's trash the crap sketch while getting a screencap from a "Shaun of the Dead" press kit or a similar source. 138.88.100.140 00:36, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
Update: check out the history for Image:Zombie.jpg. See, there was a decent image, but the tortured 15-year-old goth (identified as user "Thesmokingmonkey") killed it b/c of copyvio. Someone with fairuse experience should tell us if publicity photos are safe. 138.88.100.140 00:44, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Done. Picture changed to a movie zombie. Thiste 10:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)



Should some info about Zombies in board games be given?

Zombies in REAL LIFE

Crickets can get infected by a parasite that kills them and then takes control of their minds and bodies to take the corpse to water and be able to reproduce!

ZOMBIES!: A possibility?


According to the article, the parasite does not kill the cricket, but manipulates it to dive into water, whereupon the parasite leaves the body of the drowning cricket in order to continue its own reproductive cycle. The cricket is still alive while being manipulated by the parasite and hence, technically, isn't a zombie. --143.127.3.10 20:59, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds a lot like what happens to rats (and possibly humans!) infected with Toxoplasmosis.--Wasabe3543 07:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Both the cricket and human toxoplasmosis examples are cases of "parasite mediated host behaviour", but the toxoplasma literature (principally Flegr et al.'s work) shows a subtle effect on personality for latent toxoplasmosis infection. There is some suggestion that (childhood?) toxoplasma infections contribute to schizoprenia risk. I woudn't say that the Human cases really reach the scale of what is implied by "Zombie". Pete.Hurd 03:45, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

More on the topic see Moore J. (2002) Parasites and the behavior of animals" . Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514653-0 Pete.Hurd 21:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Removed a link

The story is no longer available. --Arny 11:05, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Other uses of the word

Figuratively, a zombie is a very apathetic person, who may have little awareness of their surroundings, or may be easily manipulated by others. "Zombie" may also be used as a more critical alternative to "couch potato" to describe someone in the thrall of television. In fact seemingly healthy, well-adjusted individuals are zombies in the sense that they accept uncritically the tenets of consumer culture and behave unconsciously in the service of that culture.

-- removed the above as it belongs somewhere else - either on wiktionary, or the disambiguation page, or its own article. Niz 21:13, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Not so -- the "couch potato" use is derived from this use. It is a cultural consequence thereof. - Che Nuevara: Join the Revolution 22:22, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The Combat Guide Link

Why do people keep removing the link to the combat guide? It is a working, legitimate website with media relating directly to zombies. I consider the site as one of the best zombie sites on the web.

Wikipedia:Talk page highlights

A quote from this page has been added to Wikipedia's humor category. Durova 17:29, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Article is messed up

I don;t have time to sort this all out, but somebody put that ugly nonencyclopedic fan art drawing back up at the top and put the plan 9 zombie down lower, so the section reads:

Zombies in fiction
games]].

Which clearly means something got majorly cut off there.

Also, the Internet section is completely pointless and just a way to get things that don;t qualify for external links into the article itself, so I am removing it. DreamGuy 03:52, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

yes somthing got cut off (half a sentence). i restored it. agree internet section is 10-y-o schoolboys cruft and was correctly removed. BUT regarding image: the discussion above is NOT about the "zombie in sugarcane" picture, it was about some 10-y-o's "artists impression" that was there previously (which was removed). the sugarcane one is a PD image taken from wikimedia, and its perfectly fine, and useful, depicting a voodoo zombie rather than a fictional one. cheers. Zzzzz 09:49, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Frankly, the one there now looks like some 10 year old's impression. The image is rather poor art just made by somebody and not actually related to the voodoo zombie tradition other than being a rather poor artistic interpretation. Wikipedia articles are not for amateur art. Real images from movies or actual references are needed. I am removing it again. DreamGuy 06:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


-The internet section was muddled, so away it goes. But, those external links have a place on this page, and deleting over and over is doing no one any good. Give up and move on to more emotionally satisfying endeavors.

Says the spammer who keeps linking to his own site. DreamGuy 06:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

-Obviously a harsh cruel existence has hardened to the world, Dreamguy. You are so used to darkness and despair that you fail to apreciate the spiritual enrichment some extra external links would add to this site. I ask you, not as a random stranger and zombie advocate but as a friend, please, open up your heart. Let go of the hate, Dreamguy, let it all go.