I'm torn on this one. On the one hand the undead angle is easy to approach. It makes for a good story, certainly, and an almost perfect adversary. Something that is very difficult to kill, and nearly impossible to stop en masse. On the other hand it's impossible to justify. We all know that dead things cannot reanimate or come back to life (lol Jesus), so the entire time we're digesting the horror we're logically let down and thus our immersion is broken. Is the undeath an inexplicable plot device or is it passed by a virus, and if that's the case how does that make sense?
Infected, living masses of people are easily believable, and super rabies appears to be the current drug of choice. What if 100 million people suffered from encephalitis and began attacking and cannibalizing anyone who came near? That would be pretty scary. However the infected are still alive and thus killing them is easy. Thermobaric bombs would devastate entire neighborhoods of them, and of course gunshots or even simple knives would be extremely effective too, assuming you're immune to the disease and they don't also have AIDS.
I prefer strictly infected in order to overcome the plausibility obstacle. You can invent virtually any virus you want, with any number of horrifying symptoms and methods of transmission. And the infected can behave in any number of ways. Plus sex couldn't be considered necrophilia and therefore weird. In fact I think I've had infected sex before.
I also don't buy the current trend of s sprinting and climbing, which of course the insane, diseased living are perfectly capable of.
Undead: Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead,
Infected: 28 Days Later, Quarantine, Left 4 Dead (video game)
Hybrid (infection somehow causing undeath): World War Z (book)
Which do you prefer?
Infected, living masses of people are easily believable, and super rabies appears to be the current drug of choice. What if 100 million people suffered from encephalitis and began attacking and cannibalizing anyone who came near? That would be pretty scary. However the infected are still alive and thus killing them is easy. Thermobaric bombs would devastate entire neighborhoods of them, and of course gunshots or even simple knives would be extremely effective too, assuming you're immune to the disease and they don't also have AIDS.
I prefer strictly infected in order to overcome the plausibility obstacle. You can invent virtually any virus you want, with any number of horrifying symptoms and methods of transmission. And the infected can behave in any number of ways. Plus sex couldn't be considered necrophilia and therefore weird. In fact I think I've had infected sex before.
I also don't buy the current trend of s sprinting and climbing, which of course the insane, diseased living are perfectly capable of.
Undead: Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead,
Infected: 28 Days Later, Quarantine, Left 4 Dead (video game)
Hybrid (infection somehow causing undeath): World War Z (book)
Which do you prefer?
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