Zombies, good for the environment?

ScumLord

How would a worldwide Zombie epidemic that wipes out the vast majority of humans on the planet really impact the planet.

The assumption would be that it would be a very good thing for every other life form on the planet, with humans no longer spewing it's waste into the global environment and a full stop to the destruction of many different environments it could mean many animals would be saved from the brink of extinction.

However there are nearly 7 billion humans on the planet, we are a force of nature and have an effect on how the planet works, we play roles in many animals lives. If humans where wiped out rapidly you can expect the natural world to be in turmoil as many animals like rats, dogs and livestock who are in vast numbers and depend on humans lose their place in the natural pecking order.

There would undoubtedly be widespread deaths in artificially inflated livestock numbers but I'd expect the same to happen to vermin numbers, the world would be littered with billions of dead rats. Along with the rotting 6 or more billion humans that would mean a massive dump of elements like methane (greenhouse gas) into the environment.

Many birds in Europe depend on human farming cycles to breed, so you may expect a big dip in their numbers as their habitats disappear.

How else do you think earth will change and how different will the world be for survivors?

Micky Dolenz

It would be interesting alright. Zeds would probably kill large slow animals. I wouldn't worry too much about the rotting corpses, since they are natural and nature would find a way of dealing with it. Although what effect would large quantities of the zed virus in the soil etc cause? probably very little or no growth.

Cities would be mad to roam around after a couple of decades of complete extermination.

ScumLord

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

It would be interesting alright. Zeds would probably kill large slow animals. I wouldn't worry too much about the rotting corpses, since they are natural and nature would find a way of dealing with it.

All the waste output we put out as a species like the greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide are natural there's really no such thing as an unnatural chemical or element it's just the form and concentration of them that causes problems.

Massive, massive amounts of methane would be released if billions and billions of animals died over the course of a few years. Rotting organic waste already accounts for most of the release of methane into the atmosphere as far as I'm aware, a huge surge in organic waste being broken down through natural processes could bring about the actual climate change we're afraid is happening.

Although what effect would large quantities of the zed virus in the soil etc cause? probably very little or no growth.

It's hard to know, the virus is probably still prone to the natural processes that break down organic molecules. Once it's turned back into it's base elements it's harmless again.

Cities would be mad to roam around after a couple of decades of complete extermination.

Did you ever see the "life after humans" documentary, the original one was done by Channel 4 I think. The Americans dragged it out into an entire city but it's still not as good as the UK one.

London would be gone according to them it's below sea level and needs to pump out water constantly to stay above water.

Micky Dolenz

In balance though, industrial activity would cease and tonnes and tonnes of toxics wouldn't pollute the planet, although industrial accidents would be common at the start while things broke down unmaintained.

I checked out that show "life without humans" on youtube. Interesting stuff.

ScumLord

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

In balance though, industrial activity would cease and tonnes and tonnes of toxics wouldn't pollute the planet, although industrial accidents would be common at the start while things broke down unmaintained.

Hopefully they'll be able to shut down nuclear facility's like Sellafield, isn't it difficult to shut them down without them exploding?

Micky Dolenz

ScumLord wrote: »

Hopefully they'll be able to shut down nuclear facility's like Sellafield, isn't it difficult to shut them down without them exploding?

Maybe Ireland isn't so safe after all.

The Snipe

Coming from a science point of view, (Sorry for ruining the zombie idea, but Its input), The word for this is mass-extinction, it happens every so often, when the dinosours became extinct etc. it influences the entire world, and a lot of different species become extinct, but more take their place through evolution, afterall we only know about 1/100 of all the life that exists on earth.

ScumLord

XiledSniper wrote: »

Coming from a science point of view, (Sorry for ruining the zombie idea, but Its input), The word for this is mass-extinction, it happens every so often, when the dinosours became extinct etc. it influences the entire world, and a lot of different species become extinct, but more take their place through evolution, afterall we only know about 1/100 of all the life that exists on earth.

It'll be a fairly unique mass extinction. The one that wiped out most of the life on earth at the time of the dinosaurs was caused by a natural disaster, every extinction to date has been the result of a catastrophic change to the planets environments. This one would be caused by the lose of one species when humans die out. It would be a slow death for any of our dependants but you would see most dead within months.

This is really where you'd want to invite people from the science and biology forums in to give a more informed opinion.

Ginja Ninja

guys,I think you're getting the wrong impression about this.

Humanity's advantage over everything else is our higher brain functions and social structure.Take that away with,I dunno, zombie virus and we drop so far down the foodchain.Even domesticated cowa[although many would die out] once they learn to feel threatened by zombies,which they will,in a matter of weeks if not days.They could quite easily take down a zed and not be bothered doing it,a cornered cow[or any farm animal tbh] could kill a human one on one if it was a matter of survival.They would also live quite well on wild forage,given the overgrowth of unkept greenery,newer and larger pastures open up.

As for the zombie virus effecting other species or the soil,highly unlikely,viruses tend to be very specific to species and those that cross the species barrier are few and far between,not extremely effective at killing the multiple species they can infect.

as for the greenhouse gases,not really a problem on a global scale all the methane released from humanity rotting away,while being quite a lot wouldn't change the global climate to arid desert or anything a la Resident evil.

as for the breeding according to farming practice,that's adaptation,remove the farming and the breeding practices will alter to suit the current environment[Sex is a VERY powerful instinct;),dontchaknow]


long story short, humans drop down the food chain and the world continues on,when you take out all the bad crap humanity does to the world,we naturally don't have much of an effect on the world tbh

awesome topic btw ScumLord

Seloth

A zombie might build up methane though:rolleyes:

sean corcoran

to be fair if a zombie outbreak occurred the military would be dispached immediately and we all know to aim for the head, personally i am not worried, i already have my plan and my weapons

Cianos

Would a rotting human race really produce a significantly higher amount of methane than us living and breathing indefinitely? The fact that a lot of organisms will no longer be exhaling carbon dioxide or running production lines or driving cars?

I think our extinction would leave a surprisingly small impact on the world and one that would easily be recovered from by most species.

In terms of volume we take up very little room. No animal except for those that are domesticated and farmed depend directly upon us as a source of food. The discontinuation of pesticides will allow some species to flourish but their growth will be capped by the limits of their natural food sources.

I think everything will balance quite quickly.

ScumLord

Cianos wrote: »

In terms of volume we take up very little room. No animal except for those that are domesticated and farmed depend directly upon us as a source of food.

There are no species that depend totally on us for food, but animals like foxes, rats, mice, pigeons, raccoons and other animals that we consider to be vermin have massive numbers due to living off our waste. Your easily talking about a few billion animals worldwide that won't be able to survive without us. You will see allot of turmoil as predator numbers explode possibly wiping out wild heards that where carefully managed by humans.

Cianos

ScumLord wrote: »

There are no species that depend totally on us for food, but animals like foxes, rats, mice, pigeons, raccoons and other animals that we consider to be vermin have massive numbers due to living off our waste. Your easily talking about a few billion animals worldwide that won't be able to survive without us. You will see allot of turmoil as predator numbers explode possibly wiping out wild heards that where carefully managed by humans.

If there was a cut in the supply of food to pigeons, rats and so on, their numbers would drop drastically, but not many animals depend on rats/pigeons/foxes as a food source themselves so I can't see how it would impact greatly on the overall animal population?

If these vermin depend on us for food it's largely in urban environments whereas those same animals in rural environments have to survive in more natural settings where the dynamics of population control are more in play.

Kess73

Cianos wrote: »

If there was a cut in the supply of food to pigeons, rats and so on, their numbers would drop drastically, but not many animals depend on rats/pigeons/foxes as a food source themselves so I can't see how it would impact greatly on the overall animal population?

If these vermin depend on us for food it's largely in urban environments whereas those same animals in rural environments have to survive in more natural settings where the dynamics of population control are more in play.

The likes of rats and pigeons are a food source for many different species. The feral pigeon, for example, can make up more than 80% of the prey taken by the peregrine falcon in urban areas.


There is also the implications of having millions, even billions, of rotting corpses from a disease pov.


And one other factor which could prove the dealmaker or dealbreaker with regards to any kind of survival depending on what way it went. And that is the presumption that humans are the only species that can be infected by a zed virus.

Many of the zed books out over the last few years are exploring the possibility of animals being infected, and are taking possible mutations in the virus over time which would allow it to jump species.

Brian Keene has touched on this in a few of his books, and took it to a global scale in Dead Sea. In that book he came up with a very clever way for the infection to have gotten a huge grip in terms of numbers even before the first human outbreak.

He had rats as the first species to become infected, so by the time humans started to get infected, there were already millions upon millions of infected rats carrying the virus.

Just imagine a world where dogs, cats, cows, tigers, foxes, fish etc all can become Zeds, then try to come up with a viable survival plan for a regular Joe Soap in a country like Ireland.

ScumLord

Kess73 wrote: »

Just imagine a world where dogs, cats, cows, tigers, foxes, fish etc all can become Zeds, then try to come up with a viable survival plan for a regular Joe Soap in a country like Ireland.

They wouldn't be all that much more deadly than a human Zombie in that their walking dead (I'm taking the superhuman running Zombie out of the equation). 4 legged animals would be able to walk for longer as I think humans will turn into crawlers fairly quick as balancing on two legs isn't an easy thing to do. Birds could become very ineffective rapidly as flying is an even harder thing to do and the muscle mass in their legs isn't particularly impressive.

Fish would more than likely float ruining their effectiveness.

Brain size could play a huge role in an animals ability to pick up the Virus, if the virus is causing brain damage which it seems to, other animals don't have much brain to damage. I always thought it was our large brains that kept turned us into walking dead while killing other animals.

Ginja Ninja

gotta go with ScumLord on this the most effective way to make a human into a zombie is to radically damage the upper brain functions,of which animal have much less brain power devoted to,some social structures would be damaged,like wolf packs etc. but over all it wouldn't make much difference.

To be fair animals danger is in their ferocity and speed,without sharpened senses and lower reaction times,they would be far,far less dangerous than current wild animals are at the worst of times.

It's the in-between period I think would be the worst,when the primal fear all creatures have[the fight,in fight or flight] is in control is when you have to be worried a cornered,but still fully functioning creatures is a serious danger,even if it's just a house cat,never mind a badger/fox/predator

Kess73

ScumLord wrote: »

They wouldn't be all that much more deadly than a human Zombie in that their walking dead (I'm taking the superhuman running Zombie out of the equation). 4 legged animals would be able to walk for longer as I think humans will turn into crawlers fairly quick as balancing on two legs isn't an easy thing to do. Birds could become very ineffective rapidly as flying is an even harder thing to do and the muscle mass in their legs isn't particularly impressive.

Fish would more than likely float ruining their effectiveness.

Brain size could play a huge role in an animals ability to pick up the Virus, if the virus is causing brain damage which it seems to, other animals don't have much brain to damage. I always thought it was our large brains that kept turned us into walking dead while killing other animals.

If animals were infected, it would not matter if they were crawlers or shufflers. Size would come into it. The larger ones would have sheer bulk on their sides, but the deadliest would be the smaller ones that could fit into gaps in safehouses or barricades.

Plus imagine having to cross a field with foot high grass during an outbreak if animals as small as rats or mice could be infected?

The thing is that animal Zs would not have to be any more deadly than human ones in terms of speed etc, but what they would do is add literally billions of extra sets of mouths/teeth/fangs etc that would spread the virus, and in my opinion add an impossible problem to overcome as the numbers game would make it impossible to hide.


Plus I don't buy into Ninja's assessment that the main danger from animals is when they are alive as they have speed and ferocity when alive.

If that were true then the same arguement could be used to dismiss human Zs as a threat because when humans are alive they have intelligence, speed and dexterity but when dead all that goes.

A dead animal holds just as much threat as a dead human in terms of being a z. As long as it has the virus and the teeth/jaws etc to spread that virus further, then it would eventually be game over.

Cianos

Would infected animals be driven to attack humans or would they only be interested in their fellow specie members, in the same way that human Z's don't attack animals?

Kess73

Cianos wrote: »

Would infected animals be driven to attack humans or would they only be interested in their fellow specie members, in the same way that human Z's don't attack animals?

I think that if the virus could cross between species, then it would be open season on anything living.

Micky Dolenz

Kess73 wrote: »

I think that if the virus could cross between species, then it would be open season on anything living.

Which it could very easily do to be fair. Once the virus starts to die off, It would try and find ways to mutant so it could survive.

DakotaYoda

Cross species infections are exceedingly rare without some kind of viral mutation... and even then it's a less than slim chance.

But then any virus that turns something into a zombie would be more than rare also so I suppose it's valid to consider.

If that happens everyone is done... whoever commented on the smallest animals being the problem is right on.