Mathematical Model for Surviving a Zombie Attack
Summary
August 14, 2009: Canadian mathematicians studying infection rates of diseases have developed a mathematical model for describing the spread of a zombie outbreak. Their ultimate conclusion is:
"Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time," they concluded.
Source
Bibliography
2. "When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection" [pdf] by Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad and Robert J, Smith. In "Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress," eds. J.M. Tchuenche and C. Chiyaka, Nova Science Publishers, Inc. pp. 133-150, 2009.
Game and Story Use
- Detail-obsessive GMs can tweak the mathematical model described in the paper to better fit the variety of zombies they are using, and create a plausible scenario for their own Zombie Apocalypse.
- In the best Disaster Movie tradition, you could have these Canadian mathematicians appear in your Zombie Apocalypse campaign as scientific experts. They could either be the Doomsayers the Authorities ignore until it is too late, or they could underestimate the zombie menace and used the wrong model parameters, leading to disaster when the zombies spread faster than anticipated in the model.
- In the latter case, the mathematicians should probably end up getting eaten by the zombies themselves as Karmic Deaths.
page revision: 5, last edited: 24 Aug 2012 13:37