Will the Government Authorize Killing Zombies in a Zombie Apocalypse Scenario?

[Trollfaz]

As the covid19 spreads it makes me think of a scenario if a virus that turns people into zombies causes a pandemic. This scenario has been featured in many TV shows and games. I wonder if the government will authorise the citizens to kill the zombies or just initiate a lockdown like it is now. But for me I will be roaming around to kill any zombies I see.

 

[ChemAir]

Probably would depend on whether the politicians could get the zombies to vote.

 

[some bloke]

The killing will tend to start when the government collapses.

There are swathes of people who have "zombie plans" or ideas, which tend to revolve around the idea that it's okay to kill zombies, which is normally because the government and civilization has collapsed.

I've not seen an alternative scenario before, where civilization continues, and it is illegal to kill zombies. The level of frustration people would have as they are arrested for killing zombies which would otherwise have killed them or their families. the injustice of being told you cannot fight back against mindless cannibals because they are citizens too, so you should just call the police. You would end up with vigilantes and lynch mobs, working outside the law but inside common sense. you would have people facing not only a governmental system so fixed in its ways it cannot accept the idea of killing zombies, but also the zombies themselves. And no doubt activists for zombie rights.

If you take the "civilization collapses" part of a zombie plot out of the equation, it actually leaves a lot of interesting conflict...

 

[rbelli1]

The level of frustration people would have as they are arrested for killing zombies which would otherwise have killed them or their families.

In order for the government to justify arresting people defending themselves against lethal force there would have to be a complete elimination of the self defense laws. Why would this happen? Currently if someone tries to kill you, you have the legal right to try to kill them back.

BoB

 

[GTOM]

Zombies are lame IMHO. What could they do against a single tank?

 

[hmmm27]

Zombies are lame IMHO. What could they do against a single tank?

Block the driver's view, weigh down the hatches, obstruct the barrel of the main gun, trash the secondary weaponry, pee in the fuel tank ...

 

[some bloke]

In order for the government to justify arresting people defending themselves against lethal force there would have to be a complete elimination of the self defense laws. Why would this happen? Currently if someone tries to kill you, you have the legal right to try to kill them back.

BoB

but such a conclusion must be established in a court of law - you don't avoid arrest by claiming it was self defence, but you might avoid being charged for it.

And then, what constitutes self defence when the person you killed has no control over their actions? If you break into someones house with a machete and they attack you, and you kill them "in self defence", it's not going to stand up in the courtroom. Similarly, if you go outside against the quarantine rules, armed, and kill a zombie, it will be perceived as premeditated, even if the zombie attacks first - you know that they will attack, and they have no control over it, so it's not really self defence. What's to stop people from finding the zombies of people they have grudges against and killing them "in self defence"? if there's a possibility of a cure being found (if the government is still going, labs probably will be too), then any zombie killed would have had a chance of returning to normal had they not been killed.

It's a weird way to look at it (everyone knows zombies are bad and to aim for the head), but if a ruling body declares that zombies are people too, and should be avoided instead of attacked - even if their rules are impossible to follow (case in point, UK's lockdown rules, where you mustn't go to work unless you can or have to or can't not go to wrk, and mustn't go outside unless you want to go outside unless you can't go outside) they will prosecute you for not following them.

Bureaucracy could be the biggest stumbling block in a non-sudden zombiepocalypse.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Don't zombies have rights too? Join the Zombie Liberation Front today!

 

[russ_watters]

And then, what constitutes self defence when the person you killed has no control over their actions?

That's not part of the criteria.

It's a weird way to look at it (everyone knows zombies are bad and to aim for the head), but if a ruling body declares that zombies are people too...

Bureaucracy could be the biggest stumbling block in a non-sudden zombiepocalypse.

Hopefully you are remembering that this is the science fiction forum and not real speculation about how a real government would be have in case of some fictional happening (it would behave fictionally). That's up to the writer.

As far as I can remember I've only ever seen one zombie movie where zombies could recover ("Warm Bodies"), because in general zombies are, by definition, dead. But I'm not a zombie aficionado.

Zombies are lame IMHO. What could they do against a single tank?

Agreed. I have gotten sucked-into a few series/movies, but I really hate myself, the characters and most importantly the writers for it.

 

[some bloke]

That's not part of the criteria.

Hopefully you are remembering that this is the science fiction forum and not real speculation about how a real government would be have in case of some fictional happening (it would behave fictionally). That's up to the writer.

As far as I can remember I've only ever seen one zombie movie where zombies could recover ("Warm Bodies"), because in general zombies are, by definition, dead. But I'm not a zombie aficionado.

Agreed. I have gotten sucked-into a few series/movies, but I really hate myself, the characters and most importantly the writers for it.

The phrase frm the OP I was going off of was " I wonder if the government will authorise the citizens to kill the zombies or just initiate a lockdown like it is now". If a government was still in effect at the time, I doubt they would be happy to say "over half the voting population is infected, everyone just go ahead and bash their brains out, leaving rotting corpses everywhere like they did in medieval sieges to spread disease!". They would not want people killing zombies. They would probebly deploy the military to either round them up or kill them. They would also probably enforce laws such s offering the zombies 3 warnings before they shoot them, and all other means of red tape which would probably give rise to vigilante justice and the police/army deciding it's too much paperwork to save one person by killing the attacking zombies.

It's all hypothetical and fictional - you can't seriously expect a thread on "what would the government do if zombies" to fall under anything other than scifi. If we're disregarding "realistic" then the government would probably jump into their gerbil-blimp (towed by moon-unicorns dressing in top hats and monocles) and invade the gnome king on the moon.

I was just saying that it could be a gritty and emotion-evoking topic to set a zombie apocalypse in the frame of a world where society doesn't actually collapse, and all the snowflakey ways of thinking persist until it's your own fault if a zombie breaks into your home and kills you - all powers to protect the zombies, because they can't protect themselves!

 

[hmmm27]

What's the incubation period of zombieism, and time between infestation and testing positive. Is the only form of transmission through bites ?

 

[256bits]

What's the incubation period of zombieism, and time between infestation and testing positive. Is the only form of transmission through bites ?

Yeah. Aerosol transmission and surface contact transmission is not explored in the "documentaries" of zombie infestation. Can the disease cross species?

They like brains for some reason, which isn't unreasonable. Bears catching salmon chomp down on the high quality internal organs and leave the rest if there is plenty of salmon to go around. What zombies find in brains beneficial for their survival is maybe because theirs in not functioning correctly.

What does on feed an infant zombie?

Governments might have to set up food banks for starving zombies and their infants.

 

[some bloke]

an interesting twist could be that the zombie virus leads people to an insatiable appetite for meat - caused by an allergy to meat, meaning that if people go veggie, they can manage the virus.

"is this vegetarian"

"I think so, I'll check the ingredients. It has gelatin, does that count?"

"raaaaaaargh!"

 

[wrobel]

es. I wonder if the government will authorise the citizens to kill the zombies or just initiate a lockdown like it is now. But for me I will be roaming around to kill any zombies I see.

what if zombies conduct nicely and polite

 

[anorlunda]

I wonder if the government will authorise the citizens to kill the zombies

Wait. I thought the politicians were the zombies.

 

[DrStupid]

As far as I can remember I've only ever seen one zombie movie where zombies could recover ("Warm Bodies"), because in general zombies are, by definition, dead.

In "I Am Legend" there are not really zobies but at least something very similar and the film version from 2007 is mainly about the possibility to cure them. The first movie from 1964 ("The Last Man on Earth") is even better because it also includes the possible ethical problems of killing zombies (or vampires). What if some of them just look like zombies but are actually still human (at least partially)?

 

[Rive]

pee in the fuel tank ...

Do zombies pee?
I'm not really a zombie-enthusiast, but I can't recall any ... 'source', where they do

 

[some bloke]

As far as I can remember I've only ever seen one zombie movie where zombies could recover ("Warm Bodies"), because in general zombies are, by definition, dead.

I think it depends on the type of zombie. If it's the most common "walking dead" style zombie, then I don't suspect that they will be recoverable. If it's the alternative "Infected" style, EG 28 days later, then they are still living creatures (they even keep one in chains so they can learn how long they take to starve to death), so could potentially be cured. I think that World War Z had infected zombies rather than undead ones.

Return of the Living Dead is worse still, where they can't even die unless they are incinerated, it's probably the scariest type of zombie. I remember suffering nightmares from the Tarman for weeks. These zombies are still sentient, and can talk, but have a voracious appetite for brains and are technically dead. They probably have some chance of recovery, though, as their brains don't seem reduced to a groaning shuffling corpse.

If it were just infected people, there would be no expectation for the government to revoke their "human" status, so killing them would probably be regarded as criminal. Self defence might not, but actively hunting zombies would be, legally, the same as hunting people with Covid-19!