Doctor Blake pulled on her rubber gloves and leaned over the cadaver on the table, which half an hour earlier had tried to kill us. "Strictly speaking," she said, probing the body's skull with a scalpel, "the true Haitian zombie is a victim of the so-called 'Zombie Cucumber'. It's a powerful drug that puts the subject in a cataleptic state. The subject is presumed dead and actually buried alive. The effects of the drug and oxygen deprivation on the brain leaves the subject docile and highly suggestible, and they make lovely lab assistants…"
She paused, as she noticed that we were staring at her.
"…hee! Or so I've heard!"
Basic Information
A zombie is a human or animal corpse reanimated through magic (especially necromancy), super-science, or other means. In many stories and settings, zombies will attack people on sight. In some cases, their bite will infect humans, causing them to become zombies after death as well.
There are three generally recognized categories of zombies, especially in regards to film criticism.
- Romero Zombie - The slow shuffling brain-eating monsters popularized by Night of the Living Dead and it's imitators.
- Rage Zombie - The frenzied blood-dripping manic zombie popularized by 28 Days Later and other recent Zombie films.
- Voodoo Zombie - Undead servants of a Voodoo Bokor.
The fantasy undead zombie arguably belongs to none of these categories but combines elements of the voodoo zombie (in being a spellcaster's puppet) and the Romero zombie (in being the shuffling, rotting corpse). Some of them may be "free willed" - or at least not directly controlled - but in general they are never infectious or hungry. Most fRPGs assign those tropes to the ghoul.
In addition, a few other subcategories of Zombie may be relevant to gaming.
- Zombie Legion - An army of non-infectionious zombies and Skeletons created by Necromancy.
- Zombie Pirate - Taking the Zombie Legion one step further, sometimes a Ghost Ship will have an undead crew.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot - A trope that happens when writers take things overboard and combine multiple sources or concepts into one bizarrely layered amalgam.
- Our Zombies Are Different - A trope about Zombie categories.
Scientific Causes:
Just in case necromancy, a curse, or "some sort of virus" aren't scientific enough for you, here's a few possible causes of zombie-ism. Any of these could change via mutation, genetic engineering, or weaponization (for bioterrorism), and result in a zombie outbreak: [5]
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease - the human version of Mad Cow Disease
- Datura Stramonium - the alkaloid neurotoxin used to turn people into voodoo zombies
- Neurogenesis - a process used to repair brain injuries and revive coma patients
- Nanobots - specifically nano-cyborg zombies
- Toxoplasmosa Gondii - a brain parasite that actually makes rats try to get eaten by cats - see Mind Control by Parasites
See Also
- News: Mathematical Model for Surviving a Zombie Attack
- News: 5 Popular Zombie Survival Tactics (That Will Get You Killed)
- News/Fiction: Zombie Attack at Hierakonpolis
- News: Zombie caterpillars controlled by voodoo wasps
- News: Zombie Cockroaches Revived By Brain Shot
- News: Zombie Fire Ants
- News: Latin America and the Zombie Factor
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Adventure Seed: Texas Red Zombie Chainsaw Massacre
- Zombies make great inhuman menaces - they can't be reasoned or bargained with, and you can only either fight or flee them. The fact that they used to be human (or animal) makes them even more unnatural, and they are usually located within Uncanny Valley.
- Individual zombies are rarely a problem for experienced adventurers, so be sure to use lots of them.
- Here is an example of a scientific writeup of a zombie virus.
