THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
Zombie Rats
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DESCRIPTION:
Zombies are one thing - you can learn how to avoid these slow, lumbering figures - but Zombie Rats, how can you possibly defend against that? Zombie Rats have come up in the book I'm reading at the moment, The Living Dead by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus. These miniature monsters did not appear immediately; first it was humans, then it was chimpanzees (and probably other apes), then came the undead rats. In true Romero style, it's never clear what started the Zombie pandemic or how rats became infected. The infection is not spread by bites, so that rules out the theory of a human Zombie biting a rat and transferring the plague that way. It is, however, not that unlikely that Zombie rats would appear somewhere down the line during a Zombie apocalypse. Rats have very similar brain-structures to humans, science has shown, implying that a pathogen that could manipulate human brain-function would not need to evolve that much to also manipulate rat brain-function. Additionally, rats, like human, are very sociable animals and can exhibit and range of emotions other animals cannot such as empathy for one another and grief. With rats living in large groups and spending so much time nearby rats that are about to die - and rise again as Zombie rats - it is very easy to see how the plague, virus or whatever it is that causes resurrection of the dead, could spread rapidly around the rat population; one rat dies, comes back, bites the rat that came to help it, that rat dies and so on. I do not see Zombie rats as being remarkably different to Zombie humans; they would still be the same undead, lumbering brutes, just rat-sized. This does pose a significant problem though. Rats can get everywhere; crawling through small holes, weaving between objects humans could not, pitter-pattering on tiny feet, climbing up near vertical surfaces using their versatile claws and stabilising tails, even chewing through metal pipes if they need to. Your cobbled-together barricade may well keep out regular human Zombies but even the smallest hole could let in a swarm of hungry Zombie rats, searching for their next meal.
DESCRIPTION:
Zombies are one thing - you can learn how to avoid these slow, lumbering figures - but Zombie Rats, how can you possibly defend against that? Zombie Rats have come up in the book I'm reading at the moment, The Living Dead by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus. These miniature monsters did not appear immediately; first it was humans, then it was chimpanzees (and probably other apes), then came the undead rats. In true Romero style, it's never clear what started the Zombie pandemic or how rats became infected. The infection is not spread by bites, so that rules out the theory of a human Zombie biting a rat and transferring the plague that way. It is, however, not that unlikely that Zombie rats would appear somewhere down the line during a Zombie apocalypse. Rats have very similar brain-structures to humans, science has shown, implying that a pathogen that could manipulate human brain-function would not need to evolve that much to also manipulate rat brain-function. Additionally, rats, like human, are very sociable animals and can exhibit and range of emotions other animals cannot such as empathy for one another and grief. With rats living in large groups and spending so much time nearby rats that are about to die - and rise again as Zombie rats - it is very easy to see how the plague, virus or whatever it is that causes resurrection of the dead, could spread rapidly around the rat population; one rat dies, comes back, bites the rat that came to help it, that rat dies and so on. I do not see Zombie rats as being remarkably different to Zombie humans; they would still be the same undead, lumbering brutes, just rat-sized. This does pose a significant problem though. Rats can get everywhere; crawling through small holes, weaving between objects humans could not, pitter-pattering on tiny feet, climbing up near vertical surfaces using their versatile claws and stabilising tails, even chewing through metal pipes if they need to. Your cobbled-together barricade may well keep out regular human Zombies but even the smallest hole could let in a swarm of hungry Zombie rats, searching for their next meal.