Your Zombie Rules

[Wyldwraith]

1) Slow, slower than snail **** in January. They Shamble and have awful balance. 2) Uncoordinated: If you don't get grabbed/bitten doing it, a forceful shove with index and middle finger will put a zombie over on its butt. Zombies take about as long as turtles on their backs to get up again. 3) Stupid: Dumb enough to shamble directly into a flaming ditch full of other burning zombies if a human can be seen through the flames. 4) NO TOOL USE. Zombies can't puzzle out Rock = Good for window-breaking. 5) See #3, Relentless: Like the other guy said, if they know you're in there and nothing easier comes along they'll keep mashing themselves against the impenetrable steel fire door until collapsing into mush. 6) HIGHLY limited "psychic" food-detection. Zombies do NOT home in ala Resident Evil 3. They can however somehow detect a person hiding inside a house if they're already right outside it. This CAN lead to zombie-daisy-chaining. Where one zombie's racket of beating on the windows draws another zombie's attention, the 2nd zombie drawing a third's attention by its movement as it shambles off towards the 1st. 7) Weak! Healthy 12yr olds can break free of a zombie's grip if they dont just freak out and basically allow it to start eating them. Only way a zombie knocks down a door is if the press of a LOT of bodies does it. 8) Virus origin. Average person doesn't know this and may never know this..but scientists working in bunkers will discover this around the end of Month 6. A select few survivors MAY hear government broadcasts announcing this. 9) All flesh must be eaten. Prefer human flesh, rats will do. 10) No zombie animals, ever. 11) Destroy the brain you destroy the zombie, otherwise it keeps coming. Spinal cord damage WILL render the body paralyzed from point of damaged area downwards. 12) Zombie decay is somewhat slowed. Outside of arctic/near-arctic areas the dead rot to mush in around 18 months. 13) All dead rise, the bitten just do it faster. 14) Reanimation after death is WILDLY variable, ranging from a few seconds to a few hours. 15) Death by zombie bite infections also wildly variable. Might keel over from a 110 degree fever in 60 mins, might last 2-3 days with a horribly festering/rotting wound. 16) No Cure, ever. 17) Humanity not totally extinguished. 90% dead/reanimated. Rest are Nomads or Fiddler's Greening it. Last remnants of the military make an intelligent stand in an area where the geography is overwhelmingly in the favor of defense vs zombies. 18) Zombies never, EVER evolve. ---------------------- That's about all I can think of at the moment.

[Legion2213]

1) Slow, slower than snail **** in January. They Shamble and have awful balance. 2) Uncoordinated: If you don't get grabbed/bitten doing it, a forceful shove with index and middle finger will put a zombie over on its butt. Zombies take about as long as turtles on their backs to get up again. 3) Stupid: Dumb enough to shamble directly into a flaming ditch full of other burning zombies if a human can be seen through the flames. 4) NO TOOL USE. Zombies can't puzzle out Rock = Good for window-breaking. 5) See #3, Relentless: Like the other guy said, if they know you're in there and nothing easier comes along they'll keep mashing themselves against the impenetrable steel fire door until collapsing into mush. 6) HIGHLY limited "psychic" food-detection. Zombies do NOT home in ala Resident Evil 3. They can however somehow detect a person hiding inside a house if they're already right outside it. This CAN lead to zombie-daisy-chaining. Where one zombie's racket of beating on the windows draws another zombie's attention, the 2nd zombie drawing a third's attention by its movement as it shambles off towards the 1st. 7) Weak! Healthy 12yr olds can break free of a zombie's grip if they dont just freak out and basically allow it to start eating them. Only way a zombie knocks down a door is if the press of a LOT of bodies does it. 8) Virus origin. Average person doesn't know this and may never know this..but scientists working in bunkers will discover this around the end of Month 6. A select few survivors MAY hear government broadcasts announcing this. 9) All flesh must be eaten. Prefer human flesh, rats will do. 10) No zombie animals, ever. 11) Destroy the brain you destroy the zombie, otherwise it keeps coming. Spinal cord damage WILL render the body paralyzed from point of damaged area downwards. 12) Zombie decay is somewhat slowed. Outside of arctic/near-arctic areas the dead rot to mush in around 18 months. 13) All dead rise, the bitten just do it faster. 14) Reanimation after death is WILDLY variable, ranging from a few seconds to a few hours. 15) Death by zombie bite infections also wildly variable. Might keel over from a 110 degree fever in 60 mins, might last 2-3 days with a horribly festering/rotting wound. 16) No Cure, ever. 17) Humanity not totally extinguished. 90% dead/reanimated. Rest are Nomads or Fiddler's Greening it. Last remnants of the military make an intelligent stand in an area where the geography is overwhelmingly in the favor of defense vs zombies. 18) Zombies never, EVER evolve. ---------------------- That's about all I can think of at the moment. Amen! Nice set of zombie rules.

[Zombie Snack]

Great Post.... 1. Speed, the fresh zombies would be quick and agile and of normal strength, but after 4-5 days they would start to slow down and become less agile and a bit weaker,and then after a month or 2 they would be slow, slow shamblers. 2. Instinct, The zombies would only act on insinct, no learning, evolving, or plotting by the dead, the more athleic, mentaly and physicaly gifted in life, the more ability of a zombie to compleet tasks, like walking, climbing, pursuing the living. 3. Bite or natural death, YOU ARE GOING TO COME BACK!!! all dead rise. There is no way to win, no matter what you do in the end YOU LOOSE. 4. Decay has been greatly slowed, in warmer climates a zombie could take up to a year to rot away, in the cooler areas decay times could range from 3-5 years. 5. Why do the dead walk? No known cause, Virus? Chemical? Judgement? There is no cure. 6. Kill a zombie by destroying the brain or removing the head from the torso. Zombies are "afraid" of fire. 7. Once they spot prey, they will never ever stop pursuing, unless they are drawn to new prey. 8. Human zombies only.

[Mutineer]

My zombies have a fresh factor The fresher, the faster. Some of them are sprinting after you and some are rambling corpses, depending on how long they've been dead Kill the brain, they die No talking zombies No learning zombies If you're bitten, you're turning in an hour or two If you die after being bitten, you turn immediately My zombies eat you; not just brains or guts, they are cannibals Funny most of these rules everyone is posting goes against Romero's ruining of the franchise

[Wyldwraith]

Well, The overwhelming trend is obvious. Although some of us differ on Origin and Speed, most of us seem to favor "classic" zombies, with none of the stupid bells and whistles that were lamely added later on down the line. I would like to emphasize though that in my zombie rules humanity isn't exterminated, just nearly so before adapting to survival in a world dominated by the walking dead. Humanity is a resilient critter IMO, and our strength has always been in our adaptability. Plus I find no enjoyment in viewing/reading an absolutely certain no-win-scenario. Grim is good and apocalyptic is better, but no-win(s) is just boring. To me all fiction is somehow based on the Man Vs theme. That's my objection to Brian Keene's otherwise very well-written books The Rising and City of the Dead. His premise is so completely a no-win I could find nothing to pique my interest other than the timing/details of each death. That isn't enough to maintain my interest for 400+ pages. How do others feel about that? Do you enjoy the idea of Zombies-as-end of the world or do you like the Survival Horror theme?

[SRP76]

They're all "the end of the world", with various stragglers trying to live through it. That's the only way it can be. There is no way to keep the world as it is, with hordes of the walking dead existing.

[Legion2213]

Well, The overwhelming trend is obvious. Although some of us differ on Origin and Speed, most of us seem to favor "classic" zombies, with none of the stupid bells and whistles that were lamely added later on down the line. I would like to emphasize though that in my zombie rules humanity isn't exterminated, just nearly so before adapting to survival in a world dominated by the walking dead. Humanity is a resilient critter IMO, and our strength has always been in our adaptability. Plus I find no enjoyment in viewing/reading an absolutely certain no-win-scenario. Grim is good and apocalyptic is better, but no-win(s) is just boring. To me all fiction is somehow based on the Man Vs theme. That's my objection to Brian Keene's otherwise very well-written books The Rising and City of the Dead. His premise is so completely a no-win I could find nothing to pique my interest other than the timing/details of each death. That isn't enough to maintain my interest for 400+ pages. How do others feel about that? Do you enjoy the idea of Zombies-as-end of the world or do you like the Survival Horror theme? I like zombies as the end of modern civilisation, that does not mean the total extinction of mankind though. I think humanity has the ability to survive anything that does not take out the planet...we are like rats and cockroaches...born survivors.

[Wyldwraith]

Exactly Legion, Thats what I meant. The dead rising is obviously the end of modern civilization. By "no-win scenario" I meant a premise where it was 100% certain that humanity would become extinct. Example: (SPOILER WARNING!!!): In Brian Keene's two books the Origin is a bunch of "demons" are loosed on earth from a cosmic holding cell God stuck them in. They hijack the corpses of dead people (or even animals) and are completely sentient, suffer no further decay and if you destroy the brain of the body they're inhabiting they just get sent to the "end of the line" for demons waiting to get out of the cosmic holding cell. There's this one important demon that comes back like 6x because he can skip to the head of the line for instance. Anyways, it mentions that once THIS groups of demons kills all the humans then the next group are loosed upon the earth to wipe out all the remaining animal life, before the final group show up to actually burn the world to gray cigarette ash. It makes it clear there is absolutely no way to close the dimensional rift and that the number of demon personalities number in the trillions. That if somehow Humanity bounced back and defeated the corpse-riding branch by say, disposing of every corpse on earth the moment the person died the demons would just skip ahead and let the third group incinerate Earth. For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would enjoy reading through a scenario so doggedly no-win. I read them (guess that gives me my answer) just to see how thoroughly a no-win he had created. Its a good scam I guess. I read them and hated them thoroughly, but by then they'd already gotten 7.40$ from me (Was cheap enough to read the 2nd sitting in Barnes and Nobles) ----------------------- I far prefer my zombie movies/fiction to have the undead destroy civilization and kill like 90% of the people, but then showcase how the other 10% are managing to survive. The struggles they go through etc. What about that?

[DjfunkmasterG]

1.) After re-animation, which would be almost immediate, the zombies can be as agile as they were before death. So running is allowed, although a more uncoordinated style of running. See my Trapped Teaser for what I mean. After a month running would not be a viable options as they would know begin to decay. 2.) Dumb as hell. preferably an IQ of 5 or less. They learn to work in groups (greater strength in numbers), however, they will not be picking up a gun and knowing to shoot humans... they could pick it up and have it accidently discharge and it be-fuddles them. 3.) Cause of the zombie uprising - Virus, or bioweapon. No cure 4.) Decay factor. once the body has re-animated the decay rate is extreme minimum to zero for first 30 days, then slows 1000% of normal rate for a period of 1-2 years. The rate would increase 100% in speed each year after that- zombies can last 5-10 years. 5.) They eat any warm blooded creature. Cats, Dog, Humans, whatever. They eat everything, not just the brain. 6.) No zombie animals... Only humas would come back from bites, or death. 7.) They don't hunt... they more or less walk around until food is insight. Once food is insight they go after it. If they are outside a fortified building trying to get inside they won't give up and just walk away, they will claw and attempt to gain access forever. This means you entry and exit from this building will need to be very careful so you aren't detected. If other zombies come into the area and notice they trying to get into the building... they will not join them because they don't know there is food in there, they will just keep walking aimlessly. 8.) Destroying a zombie - Bullet to the brain, or anything that destroys the brain. If you chop the head off, the body goes limp, the head stays alive. Brain trauma must be severe. If you thunk them in the head and they don't die from the blunt force trauma... they become twitchers... not very functional but will lay there and twitch until put out of their misery. 9.) 10 years have passed and the original zombies still alive will have died off from rot... however, the virus that reanimates will forever be present so even if society is rebuilt another zombie uprising can happen at anytime or place.

[bassman]

My zombies? Romero's. No other.

[MikePizzoff]

-They are about as slow as your average 85 year old. -They must be shot in the head, or take some sort of extreme trauma to the head, to be killed/stopped. -They are about as smart as a 15 month old child. -They don't crave brains; they just crave the human, overall. -They aren't able to adapt over time and learn how to use weapons or build traps. That's just friggin lame. -Depending how bad you are bitten will decide how long it takes for you to turn over. You also don't have to be bitten to come back as a zombie; dying in just about any matter will result in re-animation.

[hadrian0117]

...2.)Learning possible in select zombies (alpha), but most have some form of drawing off of old memories... In order for zombies to be any kind of threat they'd have to remember at least some basic skills from their lives. Walking is a skill that must be learned. As are chewing and swallowing. I'd allow about 5-10% to have some very basic tool-using skills like using stuff as crude bludgeons or stabbing things.

[Yojimbo]

This thread kicks much ass! I will be back with my rules after I tweak them. This thread is too cool to go in half-assed.

[Mike70]

it is interesting how many of us have included cold weather in our rules. to me this makes perfect sense. these things are dead, are not generating their own body heat and are slowly rotting away. so i think it naturally follows that cold weather would slow down, even stop by freezing these things since they are not generating body heat. i ask the folks who have not included cold weather disabilities in your rules- why not? no i am not trying to trash anybody's parade here.

[SRP76]

it is interesting how many of us have included cold weather in our rules. to me this makes perfect sense. these things are dead, are not generating their own body heat and are slowly rotting away. so i think it naturally follows that cold weather would slow down, even stop by freezing these things since they are not generating body heat. i ask the folks who have not included cold weather disabilities in your rules- why not? no i am not trying to trash anybody's parade here. The cold weather isn't as relevant as people think. To freeze a zombie, it would have to be below 32 degrees for an extended period of time. Just a few hours doesn't cut it. It would literaaly have to be freezing for a couple of days, in a row. And that's not taking into account the fact that these things are mobile. It is harder to freeze a moving object than it is to freeze a roast that's just lying there. That's why it takes a river a LOT longer to freeze than a pond.