Too many of them, not enough ammo!

[Publius]

Everything else I come up with just doesn't seem to have the endurance, ability to widely proliferate, or cause enough deaths in enough places to get a sufficient number of zombies up and killing/infecting others to cause a major undead pandemic. True, bottom line is it's darn HARD to make zombies into a real global threat. Especially without putting together multiple catastrophes that are not logically related in a 1-2 punch, which requires a huge coincidence. Just to remind everyone that a survivor attitude is critical. Hear, hear. I think Winston Churchill woulda put it something like this: "Even though large parts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the undead and all the odious anarchy of zombie rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight in the cities and hamlets, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength from the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and shuffling, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old." The Spartans at Thermoplyae mighta said "molon phage" to Persian zombies.

[SRP76]

Remember the Alamo! Yeah. They all croaked.

[Trin]

I agree the 1-2 punch of national disaster along with some kind of zombie outbreak is too coincidental. Another possible scenario. Let's say some future incarnation of the flu (bird, swine, lemur, vegga-pigmy) runs loose. Assume it is highly contagious and has a high mortality rate (for the flu at least). Then let's assume that the government attempts to hurry through a vaccine for it in hopes of protecting the world's population. The virus mutates and some interaction between virus and vaccine causes anyone who dies to be reanimated as a flesh-hungry zombie. The initial outbreak of flu would tax health and government resources. The high mortality rate would lead to an increase in the number of unburied corpses. A vaccine would be given to large groups of the population. The zombies themselves would blend in to a certain extent because terminally ill flu patients already look deathly and act oddly due to high fever. It's more realistic how this kind of zombie might not immediately become apparent as threatening or as a dead creature. This is still a 1-2 punch, but the infection (1) would lead to the out of control government biological agent (2). The scenario has merit.

[Wyldwraith]

Agreed, Anytime you have human beings messing with microorganisms the chance for complete disaster rises by a huge margin. Just look at how many people whiny patients and lazy doctors have doomed by the unnecessary prescription and ingestion of antibiotics. I could buy the botched vaccine + viral interaction. Still might not go global, but it would certainly make a slaughterhouse of the continent it began on. As to the theory that the zombies might appear less threatening due to their flu-based origins, I think that might go out the window when the cannibalistic behavior made itself evident. No variation of the influenza virus has ever consistently caused psychotic breaks or violence-prone dementia. It might very well get some more medical health professionals killed though. About the natural disaster + zombie epidemic 1-2 punch theory. I wasn't advocating it as extremely likely, or ignoring the huge coincidence required to make the theory work. I was just illustrating the theory I thought had the best chance of going global. Question: In the vaccine + flu interaction = zombie theory, do the zombies then become directly infectious even to non-vaccinated individuals?

[AJ]

Rabies. A new variety created by the vacines they're playing with now. I have enough ammo. - AJ