Zombies : An Introduction

Zombies!!!!!!!
I promised them and here they are! This is an introduction to my favorite creature of horror, better than werewolves, vampires and witches.
The Oxford English Dictionary definition of a zombie is 1. a corpse supposedly brought back to life by witchcraft. 2. a lifeless or completely unresponsive person
We are dealing the first part of this, the whole corpse thing however I'm going to add something to this and that is that zombies can be brought back to life by science as well as witches. For evidence of this refer to Night of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead where it is implied a satellite crashing and releasing something into the atmosphere caused the recently dead come back to life.
In short a zombie is a walking dead person who wants to eat the living, not just humans once again Night of the Living Dead shows us that zombies will eat animals if need be.

The Detail
Now it's time to go into detail about what a zombie is and what it is capable of. In this section I will be referring heavily to the Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks (a book that I highly recommend if you want to survive) as well as anything I have learned from "films" about the living dead.

• Sight - A zombie's eyes are the same as a humans'. They can spot prey from the same distances that a human can. However it is unknown if they use their sight to distinguish humans from other zombies, Shaun of the Dead demonstrates this theory when they successfully get past a horde by pretending to be zombies. However this course of action is NOT recommended.
• Hearing - They have good hearing and can use sound to determine direction.
  
• Smell - Many believe that smell is how the undead detect humans that are among them (hence why pretending to be a zombie is not a wise move). This could explain why even zombies with poor eyesight or no eyes at all can still move in on prey. With the exception of Shaun of the Dead films back up this assumption.
  
• Feeling - They have no sense of pain, this is why the can carry on even after they have suffered injuries that would kill a human. This is one of the reasons they are so formidable because pain cannot stop them.
  
• Decomposition - A zombie is able to "live" for around 3-5 years before decomposing so much that they are no longer a threat. They are dead so they have no way of fighting off the things that cause of decomposition.
  
• Fluids - They don't have blood or other bodily fluids, well they do, it's just useless and will eventually congeal. This is an advantage to humans because it means there is no risk of infection from getting zombie blood on you. See many zombie films for evidence of this as the people get blood on them but rarely turn. It is only bites that can cause zombification.
  
• Speed - Now this is an issue I'm going to come back to but in short zombies are slow due to rigor mortise and the like setting in. They CANNOT RUN. If you think they can then get the hell off my blog!

Now for the most important thing, you kill a zombie by destroying the brain! Got for the brain, these things aren't vampires, decapitation will not kill them but just make their heads into biting land mines.

And that's it for now. Although zombies will be returning in future posts.