The wife was watching one of her horror movies and I happened to go through the room while a trailer was on for some zombie movie. There was the expected scene of a horde of zombies closing in on the hapless victim. The following question sprang to mind:
Why do zombies always travel in hordes?
Yeah, I know it’s scary, seeing a big inescapable horde coming at you, and dramatic tension and all that. But it just doesn’t seem practical to me. So, thinking ait over I give you –
Five Reasons Zombies Shouldn’t Travel In Hordes
1) Sensory overload – zombies aren’t usually portrayed as having a lot of brains. They are drawn to noise and movement. There hasn’t been any indications zombies use smell or taste when hunting prey. If they are traveling in a horde, there’s moaning and groaning and movement all around. How do they know the other zombies around them aren’t their intended prey? I guess this is why some protagonists in zombie tales can get away with shuffling like a zombie in the middle of a horde.
2) It’s hard to maneuver – a large group doesn’t turn easily, stop easily, or handle obstacles in their way easily. Seems to me if you have a cliff, or some other trap, it would be easy to lead the horde to the edge and over, or into your trap, because they don’t move well. A smaller group would be able to get around better.
3) You can predict a horde’s movement – face it, large hordes are pretty easy to spot or detect at a distance. The good guys see or hear them a mile away. That makes it easier to run away from them. Or as in 2 above, set a trap for the horde or lead them over a handy cliff. A smaller group would be harder to detect and more likely to surprise their prey.
4) Big target go boom! – keeping in the same vein as 2 and 3 above, a large horde is easier to hit with weapons, if you got ’em, or to set on fire, if you’re doing it the old fashioned way. Explosions work real well when set off in the middle of a horde. A smaller group would be a bit more agile, as well as being a smaller target, making them harder to hit.
5) Lack of consumables – if a horde descends upon a hapless human, or even a small group of hapless humans, there’s only so much meat to go around. If the zombies are focused on only eating brains, then there’s even less to eat. Clearly the part of the horde that gets to the humans first, get to eat. What’s the rest of the horde do? Do they starve faster? It’s not like they are going to die. Do they fall apart faster because they aren’t getting enough to eat? And how do zombies digest anything anyway, if their stomachs and intestines have rotted away? Do the lead zombies just keep getting stronger and the less fortunate ones weaker? I suppose that would take care of the horde problem as they would thin out from attrition.
Yes, this is the type of stuff that runs through my brain. I can’t help it. I’m a writer.
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