| Michael Parker wrote: |
| Nathan, your parting strike is a "scheitelhau". :)
The "perfect anti-zombie weapon" debate is always pretty hairy just because people don't agree on the characteristics of zombies. "Classic" zombies shamble around slowly and infect you by biting you. Of course, whether the plague is a bacteria, virus, or a magical curse depends on whose story you are referencing. We get our zombie legends from African voodoo and bo traditions, but clearly a lot has been lost or changed in translation. Lately, so-called "fast zombies" have become a lot more fashionable, such as in the movie of 'I am Legend" and the videogame "Left 4 Dead" (though in "I am Legend", the zombies share characteristics with vampires such as hatred of sunlight, while I hear the book was about vampires). One crucial difference is whether zombies are defined as "the undead" or more loosely as the "infected". In those versions the zombies aren't so much shambling rotting corpses as they are grotesquely infected and rabid people, who run at you at top speed trying to turn you or eat your flesh. The whole "aim for the head" thing also varies with what source you like best. Max Brooks' "World War Z" and "Sean of the Dead" with Simon Pegg are more traditional in insisting the zombies will keep getting up unless you remove the head or destroy the brain. Max Brooks explains this by showing how zombies' bodily fluids become more viscous and their brain stops relying on the body for nourishment, so that even if you cut one in half the zombie will not bleed to death and its top half will stay alive. It's even scarier if you imagine that zombies can hibernate or survive for long periods without food. However, Left 4 Dead just throws that out and says that if you shoot or dismember them enough then they will bleed to death, even if the head stays on. The method of infection is important too. If your infection transmits only by being bitten you have some leeway, but if it is by coming in contact with zombie fluids then you have to avoid physical contact at all costs and close range fighting is likely to get you infected even if you survive combat. On the other hand if the virus is depicted as airborne and especially if it were capable of being carried by vectors other than humans then you might have a hard time not getting infected anyway. If you're still around when everyone else has been turned into zombies it might mean you're immune to the airborne form, bite-transmitted form, or both, in which case risking a few scratches in melee combat might be a viable option. Which of these rules apply would basically determine whether you stand a chance in close combat. A quick survey of our monsters shows that zombie is in fact a very flexible term for all manner of flesh eating rabid human creatures, who are so different from each other that they are probably suffering from very different diseases or curses. It's all up to the author's imagination and there is no right or wrong way to do it. Regular human cannibals, of course, can be dispatched with the sword since the sword is designed to kill people, but in order to determine what weapons are fit to kill zombies we need to specify which zombies we are trying to fight. |
Thank you Mr. Parker. I had it's name mixed up with a schilhau (I'm sooo butchering these spellings! :p ) and I really didn't want to accidentally advise someone to try to use one of those on a target's head. ;) I personally go by the Max Brooks standard. He to me gives the most comprehensive study of the zombie as we know it.
BTW, my melee weapons are a short pollaxe and a falchion/messer. Or maybe my warhammer.
Attachment: 16.05 KB
