(The Wacky World News Group) Want some odd news? Come here and read up! Mods - Clegg - imacartoon - Doopliss - The__Overlord(FP #4567890) You must be a member of this group to post here. You must have a member level of 2 or greater to post new topics here and a level of 1 to post replies.
A ZOMBIE attack would need to be countered hard and early to give civilisation any hope of surviving, according to a mathematical study.
A Canadian team - which includes an Australian researcher - has done the maths on what would happen should zombies really appear on the streets.
Modelling various outcomes, including what happens when quarantine is implemented or a cure found, the group found a failure to "hit hard and hit often" would be devastating.
Professor Robert Smith? - an Australian now working at the University of Ottawa - told the Wall Street Journal that even finding a cure for zombie-ism left an unsatisfactory situation.
“Unless the cure was 100 per cent, which it would never be in reality, you can’t turn all the zombies back. (You achieve) this equilibrium where people are always switching back and forth.”
While the study may just be telling us all what we should have learned from every zombie flick ever made, the mathematical modelling has applications beyond the rise of the undead.
The researchers defined zombies using the typical movie portrayal of slow-moving, not particularly bright, ex-humans.
By looking at variable parameters, it’s a model that can be applied to an outbreak of serious diseases.
The summary of findings makes it clear what needs to be done if coffins start opening - or a potential pandemic starts:
"A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly.
"While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.
"As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble."
The research paper, ’When zombies attack!: Mathematical modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection’ will be published in the book, Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress.
*Yes, that’s his real name, not a typo. Prof Smith? discovered sharing a name with the lipstick-wearing lead singer of The Cure lead to Google invisibilty. "If you haven’t lived with an incredibly common name, then you have no idea what it’s like to be entirely invisible on Google," he writes on his homepage. "Not that the question mark actually solves that, but at least it differentiates me from that guy from The Cure. It’s been twenty years now and sadly his career shows no sign of drying up."
Power Egg
Member Lvl: 11
Egg Points: 23428
Posts: 690 AIMYIM
Posted: Aug 24, 2009 10:35 p.m. - Subject:
The original novel entitled "I Am Legend" is a really good read, and does not particularly resemble any of the movie versions of it that have been made ("Omega Man" and the most recent "I Am Legend" with Wil Smith are two examples).
In the novel, the protagonist is literally the last regular human left alive in a world populated with the vampiric results of an epidemic. He comes to realize that the vampires are now the norm, and that he’s the anomaly. He starts to feel guilty about killin so many of the critters, becomes despondent and depressed, and ultimately allows himself to be killed. (Not a terribly uplifting message, there.)
Personally, however--any excuse to blow shit up is a good one, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t really care about preserving humanity, civilization, or whatever. If I end up being the last person left alive, I’m ok with that.
