We have often talked about how
zombie brains seem to be running on auto-pilot. Not all the neurons are firing.
I have seen zoms take bullets to the legs, arms, and chest and keep on coming
at someone if meat is available.
Zoms will walk through fire to get
to meat but that doesn’t mean they will just wander through fire randomly. Now,
I am not talking about if a zom is being bated. (And trust me, some of our
survivors are masters at bating.) Imagine if you will a crashed diesel tanker
truck as overturned, spilled out, and then catches on fire. So this diesel
slick is in flames and burning away. A zom will not just randomly wander into
that burning diesel slick because they can.
Now, change the scenario, a shamble
of zombies is chasing after a sortie team. They run past the same overturned
diesel slick and toss out a lighter as they run past it. The diesel slick
bursts into flames. Now a normal human pursuer recoils from the heat and breaks
off the chase to find their way around the burning slick. A zom will charge
right through that burning pool to keep up the chase.
Now, we have experienced the other
side of the coin too. Last week, we set out to obtain vehicles to build a
palisade fence around the parking lot and a lot of our survivors noted
something interesting. The encountered almost no zombies out in the open. Now,
keep in mind, the wind has been gusting and it is pretty freaking cold outside.
Most of the zoms that we encountered were inside structures.
So there is a thing that maybe these
things were trapped inside and those that were out in the wide open spaces have
migrated on looking for more ample food sources. Or is it possible that there
is some sort of base natural instinct that tells them to get out of the cold?
Now, let’s make it clear. Back in
June, we conducted an experiment we called the Carbone Initiative. Just as a
reminder, we captured a zombie to put him in the freezer. And we did, we froze
that thing solid. When we took it out of the freezer and it started to thaw,
this thing still wanted to come after us. So we have established that the zoms
can freeze but it does not kill them. The only thing that destroys them is
destroying the brain.
So while these things seem to be
running on natural instinct, it seems one of the most basic instincts is to get
in out of the cold. Now, we point this out for a pretty important reason.
Imagine Zombie Stan is wandering around in a city and it is starting to get
colder. He shambles past a business with an automatic door or a home with a
door that is open. Zombie Stan shambles inside and the door closes behind him.
Now, Zombie Stan can get in but it cannot find a way to get back out.
Imagine a whole army of these things
now seeking shelter in any structure they can find. It could be homes,
businesses, hay barns, anything that could shelter them from the cold. If they
cannot find a way out, this means that any business or home that has looting
potential also has the potential to have some zoms trapped inside. Which means
your scavenging for supplies could be more difficult.
It lends to a theory that the zoms
have some sort of migratory instinct. Is it possible that is why we have been
seeing these large contingents of these shambling hordes? Were they migrating
south to avoid the cold weather?
This does throw a monkey wrench into
my theories of how we are going to beat this thing. We have seen the shambles
of zombies empty out of small towns like Adair and Langley. Even smaller cities
like Pryor and Vinita have emptied. And yet, we have heard stories of major
metropolises like Dallas, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa are still populated. My
first initial idea is that they are instinctively searching for food.
But if the cold weather is rolling in
fast and a zom cannot out-shamble it, would a protective instinct override the
feeding instinct? If that is the case, then a zom could shamble into something
like a cave or mineshaft to escape the freezing cold. And if that is the case,
then we could have serious problems.
Imagine that time has passed and we
think that everything is all safe and all the zoms are gone. Then, in a place
that we did not think to check, a zom is hiding. When it comes across a
contingent of people, there is an attack and we have a potential for a whole
new outbreak to begin all over again.
Scary thought.
