Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks, and has written two books: The Zombie Survival Guide, and World War Z.
The zombies in his world are the result of a virus which is only transmissible by bites (or by getting a transplanted organ from a zombie, but that's statistically negligible). They have no reasoning capacity, very limited dexterity, don't move faster than 1 step every 1.5 seconds or so.
Bits chopped off of them do not remain animate. The only way to destroy them is to destroy the brain.
If a zombie is decapitated, the body is dead, but the head can still bite, and can still transmit the virus. The virus is 100% fatal, and 100% of the time, will raise the corpse as a zombie about 12 hours later.
Zombies freeze solid in extreme cold -- however, when they thaw out, they are just as dangerous as they originally were. All animals instinctively avoid them -- and this includes scavenger insects, and decomposition bacteria. They decompose very slowly, basically from fungal decompostion, and therefore can remain active for years.
Individually, zombies are not much of a threat, if you know what you're dealing with, but, in World War Z, most of the world didn't know -- and so millions, perhaps billions, of humans ended up as zombies. While ONE zombie is not a threat, a hundred thousand of them ARE.
After much of the world was zombified, humanity eventually went on a resurgence, and the newly-formed militaries discovered that the best weapon against zombies was a line of trained riflemen with scoped .22 rifles who would choose ground where the zombies had only one avenue of approach, and take careful aimed headshots.
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The zombies in his world are the result of a virus which is only transmissible by bites (or by getting a transplanted organ from a zombie, but that's statistically negligible). They have no reasoning capacity, very limited dexterity, don't move faster than 1 step every 1.5 seconds or so.
Bits chopped off of them do not remain animate. The only way to destroy them is to destroy the brain.
If a zombie is decapitated, the body is dead, but the head can still bite, and can still transmit the virus. The virus is 100% fatal, and 100% of the time, will raise the corpse as a zombie about 12 hours later.
Zombies freeze solid in extreme cold -- however, when they thaw out, they are just as dangerous as they originally were. All animals instinctively avoid them -- and this includes scavenger insects, and decomposition bacteria. They decompose very slowly, basically from fungal decompostion, and therefore can remain active for years.
Individually, zombies are not much of a threat, if you know what you're dealing with, but, in World War Z, most of the world didn't know -- and so millions, perhaps billions, of humans ended up as zombies. While ONE zombie is not a threat, a hundred thousand of them ARE.
After much of the world was zombified, humanity eventually went on a resurgence, and the newly-formed militaries discovered that the best weapon against zombies was a line of trained riflemen with scoped .22 rifles who would choose ground where the zombies had only one avenue of approach, and take careful aimed headshots.