Can the Snow Stop and Kill Zombies?
Before going home yesterday, I received an email from the corporate big brains advising employees that can work from home should work from home during the upcoming “Snowpocalypse 2: The Revenge”. It was a difficult choice for me requiring hours of thoughtful contemplation before I arrived at the conclusion that yes … I would spend the day in just my underwear slouching on the couch while dreaming of some place tropical yet considerate to my Irish complexion.
So the flakes haven’t started really coming down yet, but my thoughts have shifted to the walking dead and the question of a questions: would a zombie apocalypse be put on pause, or even extinguished during the winter months?
If we are talking about Russo zombies then the answer would be no. Those zombies seemed to want to eat brains regardless of the score whether their bodies are fueled by blood, formaldehyde, or even dust. The only thing that stopped them was a nuclear blast. With Romero zombies, I would think the winter might be the chance for humanity to overcome the apocalypse.
Think about this for a second. In the Romero universe, a zombie is a partly functioning brain inside a dead body. Romero never really explains how this works. We just accept the fact that there is some brain activity which controls the rotting husk. Since the brain can be destroyed by a bullet, it would logically suggest that zombies would be equally vulnerable to the cold.
I don’t need to live Minnesota to know it gets balls-to-the-wall cold there. Here in New England, sometimes it feels as if the cold were reaching into your gut and freezing the very essence of you. Unprotected zombies would freeze and while the thawing be irrelevant to the already dead body, it would be curtains for the gray matter.
What do you think? Would we have a chance to survive during the snow days and if so, would there be a chance to recover come the spring thaw?
Filed under: Articles about Zombies · Tags: Dead Snow, Snow, Surviving the Apocalypse
They freeze and reanimate come spring. Like tulips.
Cool book, Robin … I also checked out your blog which is pretty funny with your “getting to know your galley” post. Keep me in the loop with any updates!
I think you’re talking about the ice crystals that form in the brain of humans…right? It’s why we can’t unfreeze frozen people yet…their brains got damaged when the water in their brains froze and expanded. I don’t think that would happen with zombies. They don’t really have the same water content as humans. So yeah, I’m thinking they would thaw and still be…”viable”.
That’s an interesting thought, Nicole. I’m not quite a bio hound or understand how the body works outside of avoiding sharp pointy things, but wouldn’t ice crystals equally effect a zombie as well as a human? Or do you think it doesn’t matter since the zombie requires so little brain power?
I think that there just isn’t enough water left in the zombie body for the ice crystals to form.
So much easier to smash zombie faces when they aren’t trying to eat you. Kill as many as you can while they are frozen. I am one that follows the belief of the other commentors in that they would reanimate when they thawed out.
I think that the cold would most likely not kill a Z, it would for sure slow them down and make them easier to kill, but I doubt that the cold itself would kill them.
The real question here becomes, are you willing to take the chance that they won’t?
[...] blogger ponders the all-important question: can the freezing cold and snow stop (or at least slow) the zombie apocalypse? (A World on [...]
This is the same fundamental question as ‘Do zombies need to eat to keep moving?’ I.e. if the undead are powered by some sort of supernatural force, or by some kind of natural phenomenon, such as a virus. If its the former, then no, cold might freeze them, but they would come back ‘alive’ upon the thaw. However, if you’re talking about a 28 Days Later style zombie, then a hard-freeze would destroy them. Mind you, they’ll be more resistant to cold than the average human.
28 Days Later zombies weren’t undead. They starved and could be killed the way normal humans could. They were just sick…with RAGE!!! (that’s not a spoiler, it was right there in the beginning.) I mean no disrespect to the movie, it’s one of my favorites, but it wasn’t a zombie movie.