hehehe... The Zombie apocalypse is nothing more than a thought experiment.
Of course real viruses and contagions don't behave like that.
The US government is accused of planning for the zombie apocalypse. The truth is of course yes.
But they don't expect the undead to be walking the streets. It's just a good model for testing contagions and how to control them.
Of course you can test extreme or impossible variations. They might not sound very realistic, but they can map to other unexpected outcomes.
Try this example. Think of what just the thought of a nasty virus might do to an economy.
Imagine a virus with a short incubation period and a 30 day period before symptoms appear that has a 30% mortality rate but a short recovery time.
Think of it as a very long presentation period kind of smallpox.
So the virus breaks out and starts spreading. Think how far a stealthy virus could get in 30 days?
It is scary how far it could spread before anybody noticed. Now imagine that we're 40 days in and you have no idea who is infected.
Even with a lower mortality rate, imagine what happens to the public. How do thy react?
Some of them will flee, others will sit still. Reduce the mortality to something like SARS at 2.5%.
In a month you have a 1 in 50 chance you'll be dead. How to you behave?
This is the kind of think the zombie model is good at. And it can be tweaked to suit different variables.
So the undead is not going to be a real thing, but the way the undead behave models real human behaviours well.
Think of just minor behaviour adjustments. You might just decide to stay safe, take appropriate virus prevention and control and not move around much.
But imagine if everybody just decided to do something minor like not pay their mortgage repayments for 2 months and spent that money on booze and hookers.
Economic chaos, but there will be a very good recovery. But there are going to be a lot of very cranky living people and some banks wanting to make them pay.
Even that behaviour can be modeled using the zombie model.
I'm personally hoping that a virus comes along that just kills lawyers.
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