"What's Causin' All This?!"

[Yojimbo]

Read the book. Great stuff, until about halfway through. Then, it gets stupid for me. Anyway: Cell phone rings. Someone answers. Some mysterious signal ('The Pulse") comes through their phone, and erases their minds. They eqaute the brain to a computer hard drive, and "The Pulse" served to "system restore" their brains. So, none of the "software" (everything a person learns from birth) is there anymore. Then....they head into the second half of the book, and I stop liking it. Sounds cool, I'll have to check this out. Yeah, like the Stand, the first part of the book rocked, but once they got into the entire good vs. evil mystical magical religious battle he lost me. Stephen King does write a good half novel some of the time!

[hadrian0117]

Some very bored gods and/or space aliens.

[Chakobsa]

I rather like the fact that we're never told. I think that if we'd been spoon fed some corny reason like a virus or some sort of mysterious radiation the films would not have been as powerful or as enduring. Zombies in this context, much as we love to speculate, are nothing more than a plot device enabling a talented storyteller to ask some uncomfortable questions about human nature in a popular mass medium.

[suicide22]

We Did!

[Legion2213]

Al Gore... Honestly though, I don't give a ****. They are butchering the neighbours and trying to smash down your front door....defend yourselves!!! BTW, Yojimbo - Spot on, the first part of "The Stand" is excellent, but I also started losing interest once the initial die off/plague was done with and we got into "ma whatsername" and the cornfield crap.

[strayrider]

I would blame it on George Bush. -stray-

[C5NOTLD]

It seems every "zombie flick" has its own take on what causes the outbreak, in the first place. The Romero films, however, are famous for "never explaining" how the dead are able to rise. I think that's part of the appeal. . Well a early press release from Walter Reade (distributor of NOTLD) stated that the reason was due to man's use of atomic power.

[MissJacksonCA]

My thing about zombie movies and horror flicks in general is that they're seemingly sparked by real events or creatures or folklore. So I deeply enjoy the possibility of something plausible... because it makes it a potential threat and that's kinda exciting to me... Recently i've been working on a scenario on the dead coming back to life because of a muscular transplant... its really intriguing to me that they use parts from dead bodies and put them into living beings (possibly why i'm an organ donor) but also that they continue to try to recycle more and more parts from dead bodies to prolong the life of the living. And well from these expiraments who's to say that the host wont die from the dead transplant? I know organs can be rejected but instead of rejection I'm aiming for something more along the lines of a mutation to the dead cells rather than the dead cells mutating with the living parts.

[Publius]

Sorry but the virus is the only one that makes any sense to me,i dont buy the radiation and falling satellites stuff!stephen kings "cell" was interesting though,even if they werent strictly zombies... Agree. Aside from supernatural explanations, a virus (or bacterium, maybe) makes the most sense. It's more difficult to imagine radiation or an electrical disturbance doing something as complicated as reanimating a dead corpse. Taking over another organism for its own purposes, on the other hand, is what a virus does.

[darth los]

I would keep it as Romero has kept it with his series. It doesn't matter what started it....we have to deal with it and we wouldn't be able to. That's what it's about - dealing with it. F*ck the cause of it all. If Dr. Frankenstein couldn't figure it out, I don't want to know. In the event that "it" ever did happen it's highly unlikely that the average citizen would have any clue as to what was causing it anyway. There would be too much widespread anarchy. You' have to watch your ass on multiple sides. From the zombies as well as other humans looking to survive even if it means killing you. Day is arguably 3-5 years into it and the scientists still didn't know what the hell was going on.

[MissJacksonCA]

Yeah but with todays advanced technology and education you'd imagine that they'd be able to find out whats causing the zombie stuff and making it happen.

[AcesandEights]

In the event that "it" ever did happen it's highly unlikely that the average citizen would have any clue as to what was causing it anyway. There would be too much widespread anarchy. You' have to watch your ass on multiple sides. From the zombies as well as other humans looking to survive even if it means killing you. Day is arguably 3-5 years into it and the scientists still didn't know what the hell was going on. It really would depend on the cause and how quickly things are happening with the infection and the fall of civilization. If it were a virus though, it would probably be easily detectable by modern medical research, though understanding it would be the difficult part.

[SRP76]

It really would depend on the cause and how quickly things are happening with the infection and the fall of civilization. If it were a virus though, it would probably be easily detectable by modern medical research, though understanding it would be the difficult part. Viruses don't use dead flesh, though. Anyway, under some theories (like the pole-reversal thing) civilization would fall in 1 day. Reason being, ALL the dead would rise, EVERYWHERE, all at once, worldwide. There would be no "spreading". Just BOOM, here it is, in every backwater on the planet.

[AcesandEights]

Viruses don't use dead flesh, though. I wasn't one of the people arguing for a viral cause, just pointing out that were it to be a virus it could be discerned relatively easily.

[SRP76]

I wasn't one of the people arguing for a viral cause, just pointing out that were it to be a virus it could be discerned relatively easily. Oh, yes, it certainly could... Wait. If it were a virus, and viruses don't attack dead flesh, it could get tricky: This virus could do...well, something...to the victim, to cause them to die, then reanimate. After death, the virus flees the body, since it has no more use for it. That would make detection all kinds of difficult. You'd have to have someone who is infected, but not dead yet. And if they aren't dead yet, how do you know they're infected? Bad news.....