How do zombies survive for more than just a few months? [closed]

Question

There is a continent totally taken over by zombies, yet this situation somehow lasts for multiple years. How could we assume it could last for so long?

A human can survive for only about a month without food. A zombie would maybe eat if one sees food and is hungry, but how could they produce it to sustain themselves? They are usually depicted as not very intelligent beings. I cannot imagine them, say, driving and maintaining farm machines, growing crops and animals. Then you would additionally need the industry to provide fuel and parts for these farm machines. OK, then maybe as much as a zombie parliament to govern the country. But if they can do that much, can they really still be considered zombies?

Logically thinking, any "zombie culture" should end by all of them dying from hunger in a matter of months, as they lack the civilization to produce all they need for living. Maybe a very small number could survive in the forests by hunting and gathering, but the ecological system is unlikely to support many this way, while in many stories zombies are abundant. How is this contradiction generally addressed?

This question calls for somewhat "science fictions" approach: zombies have been produced by some virus, runaway experiment, alien technology and the like. If by necromancer, then by raising bodies that are recently dead. At least weak, half realistic explanation would be preferred (science fiction does not require to have all named technologies available today).

Answer 1

Torpor

If you’ve ever played a zombie game, you know that until living prey enters a zombie-infested environment, everything appears quiescent, and the zombies are almost indistinguishable from corpses. Once nutrition becomes available, they wake up, feed, and then return to their rest state. This is called torpor in animals, and is surprisingly common.

Torpor is a state of decreased physiological activity in an animal, usually marked by a reduced body temperature and metabolic rate. Torpor enables animals to survive periods of reduced food availability. (Source: Wikipedia)

This is even easier for cold blooded animals, like reptiles and zombies, who go months between meals. Since their metabolisms are slow, zombies happily chill in torpor for as long as necessary, waking only when prey, either human or animal, becomes plentiful enough to bother waking up and hunting.

Answer 2

You'll have to add more to the zombie lore to justify a zombie starving to death.

Given the entire structure of the human body, the way zombies are depicted in basically every medium is a work of total fantasy. Consider the growling noise. What is filling any lungs to push that air out? What about the ones that are cut in half? Or the ones that are still growling even if they are just a severed head? Blood circulation is necessary for a lot of things as well, so a walking corpse no matter how fresh is not likely to be within the scope of realism without some kind of extra-human addition.

That being said... the only way for a zombie to survive at all would be through the work of the human imagination. By that logic, the only way they die would also be a part of that same necessity. So the answer is really up to you to define, or ignore.

Not a very satisfying answer, but it is along the same lines of asking how the force works in star wars. It obviously works exactly how the current writers deem it to work. Same with Zombies or any creatures of the undead realms.

Answer 3

They are usually depicted as not very sentient beings, I cannot imagine them say driving and maintaining farm machines, growing crops and animals, then you need the industry to provide fuel and parts for these farm machines.

Well, the original zombies of legend were slaves working on plantations in Haiti.

The legend also says that they were controlled by necromancers (voodoo practitioners), so the zombies would only do what they were told to.

Zombies are like flesh automatons. Give them simple commands and they will execute those. If you have enough zombies, even if each one is doing one simple thing, the phenomenon of emergence happens. The zombies are then able to build and operate very complex systems, just like ants in an anthill or bees in a hive.

Granted, you need maintenance here and there. But a single necromancer should be able to handle it. They don't even have to be present in the zombie lands throughout the year. If they pay a visit every once and then, they can adjust what needs adjusting and ensure that the zombie society thrives.

In such a system, a few zombies could efficiently take care of farming to feed all the other zombies. They could raise cattle to satisfy their daily intake of brains. The rest of the zombies would work to bring money into the zombie continent so that they can trade for whatever it is that they and the necromancer need.

Zombies are perfect for jobs such as management, accounting, IT and customer service, since these are areas where having a negative charisma score is part of the job description and a living person would have to leave their soul at the office's door anyway. In this day of remote working, zombies would be even more competitive against the living in the job market.

Answer 4

Automated food production

Maybe they are feeding off fully automated self-sustaining food production factories that were originally built to feed billions of people.

Factories operate on a power source that does not need refueling (at least as of now), and they use artificial photosynthesis and genetically engineered microorganisms to produce stuff that can sustain the zombies. Additional nutrients come from zombies that "accidentally get involved in the process".

Answer 5

Carnivorous skin. Much like a carnivorous plant, a zombie attracts insects. In this case maggots and the like are attracted to that sweet scent of rotten flesh. Once enough prey has established itself in the zombie, a shift in pH or whatever will digest them and provide the zombie with enough nutrients until a big meal opportunity can be found. This requires to sacrifice a bit of one's own skin, though the zombie will not live forever but rot at a much much smaller rate.

Answer 6

Zombies are Gourmands
Just like the rest of us, they eat what they prefer when they can get it - human brains. But when they can't, anything will do in a pinch. That includes even the neural tissue of slugs and insects.

Humans have become very creative in finding things to eat - from roasting termites to eating the accumulated dried spit making up the nests of swallows. Zombies are no different - just less clever in disguising the origin of the protein and it's flavor and texture. Mmmm - crunchy!

Answer 7

The trouble here stems from people consuming modern entertainment uncritically, and changing trends in that entertainment.

There are at least 3 completely different, distinct things that have been called "zombie" over the years. In no particular order, they are:

1. The slave-like servant of a voodoo priest, supposedly created through magical abduction of a newly-buried corpse (or possibly, of a person unwittingly buried alive after having been poisoned by the voodoo priest). Mostly only of interest for historical perspective.
2. An undead (in the original meaning of the term, thus vampire-like) revenant of a corpse, hungry for the flesh of the living, with numbers ever increasing through either contagion, the rising of the buried dead, or both.
3. A rabies-like plague, mostly explicable without resorting to the supernatural.

It's clear why #3 became so popular. Though the Romero movies of the 1980s hinted at it, we didn't really see this until 28 Days Later, and we've only seen imperfect renditions of it since (with shows like The Walking Dead and World War Z falling back to supernatural tropes for lack more clever plot devices). This third option gives it a little more plausibility, improving suspension of disbelief, new anxieties (biohzard concerns, etc). No longer did we have to deal with the overlap of religion (of either the nearly pre-Christian Eastern European superstitious variety, or of the Rapture's "rising of the dead all at once" Evangelical-adjacent mythology).

But it confused people. People conflated #2 and #3, didn't understand that there probably needed to be different rules for each.

Will the zombie limb move around on its own, animated? Can muscles even contract without supply of lung-oxygenated blood? If a bite is shallow enough that it doesn't break the skin, does it turn someone? How about if half-putrid body fluids are being flung around as you machete the still-biting corpses trying to kill you?

These questions simply aren't sensibly answerable, unless you've chosen a zombie model. But you not only haven't chosen a model, you seem to be unaware that there are even such.

In a supernatural model:

• Zombies are animated by a supernatural force.
• Zombies are contagious based on a defilement rule... the bite transmits no virus or substance, it defiles. Defilement makes the person vulnerable to a form of possession which apparently cannot be exorcised (the body likely has already died anyway).
• Though the rules probably aren't well understood, if enough of a corpse remains that it can be possessed, it will likely move on its own and attempt sinister ends. One inch of chopped-off finger? Probably safe. Arm at the shoulder? Probably squirming.

In a scientific model:

• Zombies are animated by biological processes. When the zombie ceases to be a viable biological organism, it expires.
• Zombies are contagious based on pathogens. Bites are the least of your worries. Hissing and spitting zombies, blood and body fluids flying everywhere as you use the hardware store tool rack to dismember them, various carrion insects spreading it like the plague. Bet you didn't think grandma would zombie out just from eating the picnic potato salad someone didn't think to cover, eh?
• Zombies need to more or less remain whole. While they might not feel pain anymore, a severed arm without a tourniquet means they expire in mere minutes. And the arm won't move around on its own.
• They need food, just like everything else. Even starvation rations would have them requiring a thousand calories a day. They need water, potentially lots of it. The vast majority of injuries that causes bleeding will result in infection and even gangrene.

And if this is alot to dump on you, then I have to tell you that pretty much no one gets this. Other than the 28 X Later franchise (yay, just another 8 years before we get 28 Years Later, but damn will we have to wait awhile for the one after that!), no one gets this right. Every single movie, every single tv show, just wallows through, never bothering to do anything right.

Answer 8

Zombie don't eat for hunger and need of self sustenance, they eat out of a sort of rage against the living, induced by the agent causing the zombification, in the same way as a rabid animal bites. Not feeding does not lead to starvation.

And for those who die of other causes, there is a replenishment ensured by the agent diffusion.

Answer 9

I guess that depends on the origin of these zombies! Also the difference between infected and zombies can be a fine line depending the context! Are they intelligent at all? Or are only moved by impulses? If scientists wanted to create "super humans" by slowing a lot aging and decay (like formol but in a cellular level?) at cost of some stopped-necrosis process and regeneration abilities whatsoever. Maybe modified skin cells to make them photosynthetic (with some downside like not being able to get nutrition elsewhere, even if they "eat").

In a book called Apocalypse Z - Manel Loureiro, I remember the main character saying something on the lines of that they would have to wait all winter and spring so zombies would remain calmer (similar to the great answer of @Daniel-b about Torpor), and due to the environment conditions like plants growing wherever, moss, rain, snow, this can affect and make, literally, a zombie be trapped in a wall or grass, due to plant growth, etc.

Most animals have survival instincts and, why not, all zombies somehow gather in covered places whenever the months are harsh (very hot in summer, very cold in winter) (I can't but imagine the infected in I am Legend or vampires during daylight hours). This can also allow for some life to develop during those months so later they can "hunt" (even if it's just for "fun" or instincts).