5 years - 20 years - 50 years

ScumLord

We've discussed the immediate aftermath of a zombie outbreak, we've made our plans and can survive the worst of it but the zombie pandemic is more than likely going to be a temporary state of affairs, like all disease outbreaks the disease will run it's course and will get to a stage when it can't spread anymore, probably eliminating itself in the process.

So what kind of world would we be left with? What would be left of Europe? Would the American military reappear from their nuclear bunkers ready for world domination? Would the middle east emerge more powerful because the disease couldn't spread as easily through their populations? Would we be thrown back to the dark ages with science disappearing?

After 5 years the zombie pandemic should have run it's course, the threat of zombie attacks should be minimal but large cities would still be a cesspit of disease maybe even allowing the disease to hold on, making them uninhabitable. Surviving groups should be well established, possibly farming and trading.

After 20 years the zombie pandemic is a distant memory, cities may be safe from disease but in ruins. At best they might provide easy access to recyclable materials kind of like how Romes monuments got repurposed for churches.

After 50 years new cultures would have established themselves, there's an abundance of free land and resources. Do people work together or fight for the sake of fighting? Ancient bronze age cultures actually got along pretty well at first, they had little to be fighting over and maybe the same would be true for what's left of humanity if there's more than enough land for everybody.

What do you think the aftermath of the zombie outbreak would be?

lazybones32

A few books/films hold a thought that the 'apocalypse' is only for humans and the infected are the new top-dogs of the animal kingdom (The omega man/I am legend and the girl with all the gifts): I'm assuming that caveat doesn't apply here?

I think Society would return a lot quicker than fiction suggests. Survivors who've experienced Society and then lost it would be keen to see its return and the relative safety and order it entails but I think certain 3rd World communities would be far more adaptable than technology-dependent 1st Worlders. Would Nuclear plants meltdown or would they shut down due to lack of maintenance? Or would they have been shut down when it was obvious regular operations couldn't be maintained?

Some tribes may have more luxury, amenities or innovations than others but when a man with a bigger gun comes along and wants what they have...well...

RiderOnTheStorm

Great idea for a thread. Will give it some serious consideration. But off the top of my head....

5 years - people have just been surviving up to now but are starting to think about long term living. Stockpiles have run out and looting returns less & less. Trading has started with other survivors. Previously farmed animals have multiplied and wander the people-free wilderness. If you have a few friends you can round up anything from horses, cows & pigs to deer & turkeys. If animals in the zoo have lived & multiplied we could have wolves & bears to contend with.

20 years - lots of little colonies / villages now. People still staying away from cities as they need land for crops, clean water , and space for livestock. But available land is plentiful. Its easier to move now. No bills, mortgage or even family to hold you to a particular location. Trade & barter are king. Mechanics, farmers, carpenter and medics rule. We all remember the tech but now its the icing on the cake. Computers are used as reference material. With so much free land avail in every country, I cant see cross-country colonisation at this stage. Everyone is looking at their own country like America during the cowboy expansion age. Don't like your villages rules? Well you can move on with decent supplies and set up somewhere else.

50 years - any country that was not as badly hit as its neighbor, or one that bounced bad quicker, will now look to expand. I reckon nationality will still be strong. And governments will have reestablished themselves (in some form) at this stage. Barter is dead and money is back. Jobs, trade, credit, banks have returned. We will be a bit like the Flintstones, as we have crude tech and trying to make it like it was.

Sorry for skipping around. Will do better when I have a long think.

ScumLord

lazybones32 wrote: »

A few books/films hold a thought that the 'apocalypse' is only for humans and the infected are the new top-dogs of the animal kingdom (The omega man/I am legend and the girl with all the gifts): I'm assuming that caveat doesn't apply here?

I'm going with the traditional zombie here, something that creates a host for itself, turning the host into what is effectively a dead body. It's still suffers the weathering process so it will eventually erode to nothing. The only leap of faith I take is that there's an organism that can take over a human body. After that the real world applies. Dead things can't reproduce so no new zombies once they can't infect new hosts.

I think Society would return a lot quicker than fiction suggests. Survivors who've experienced Society and then lost it would be keen to see its return and the relative safety and order it entails but I think certain 3rd World communities would be far more adaptable than technology-dependent 1st Worlders. Would Nuclear plants meltdown or would they shut down due to lack of maintenance? Or would they have been shut down when it was obvious regular operations couldn't be maintained?

I think you're right, I don't think people would forget as easily and things like writing will literacy would survive.

A comparison that always comes up is the fall of the roman empire, but that wasn't the end of the world we all thought it was, it was just a setback to large scale projects.

The big difference now would be our inflated population. Billions will die when modern global trade stops, we simply wouldn't be able to support the same population. So we would go from a population of 7 billion to something probably below 1 billion.

I'm sure populations will survive that are as advanced as today but would Ireland be one of those places?

ScumLord

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

Previously farmed animals have multiplied and wander the people-free wilderness.

I might have mentioned this before, but back in the colonialism days the Brits brought cattle to the hawaiians but the Hawaiians didn't know what to do with them so the cattle roamed free into the forests and established themselves. They turned vicious once they went back to their old ways. They're a real menace over there and a big bull is damn near unstoppable.

If cattle start roaming free in Ireland they could be a real danger and not something you want to mess with once they start growing horns again. We see cattle as docile creatures, but they're a formidable beast that you really don't want to get on the wrong side of. Without guns we're no match for them.

lazybones32

ScumLord wrote: »

I think you're right, I don't think people would forget as easily and things like writing will literacy would survive.

Books would be very valuable as they would be the source for rebuilding in the 1stW (most of us rely on doctors to heal; farmers to provide food; ESB/Coalman for fuel; builders for housing, etc) and without these trades, we'd have to turn to the books for a lot of stuff. The ability to read and understand wouldn't fade and any kids would be schooled once they were in a safe environment and there was a community.

ScumLord wrote: »

The big difference now would be our inflated population. Billions will die when modern global trade stops, we simply wouldn't be able to support the same population. So we would go from a population of 7 billion to something probably below 1 billion.

I was thinking the same but would it really? It depends how many victims the infection would claim. After that, the less-developed Countries would have less shock to adapt to and would carry on as normal. China and India have 1 billion each and the majority of those citizens would be in poverty by our standards. City-dwellers would bear the brunt of the reduction imo because they are less-likely to have the skills to survive and thrive medium to long term.
I don't know what the population spread is between rural/urban but I doubt it is massively skewed. My own thought is that the Pop. would be reduced to 10% but I'm basing that on everyone being as reliant on commodities as we in Ireland are.

ScumLord wrote: »

I'm sure populations will survive that are as advanced as today but would Ireland be one of those places?

The population would grow very, very quickly afterwards. Across all species, when there has been a very hard winter or a catastrophic event, they start breeding like crazy. The hard winter about 5 years ago killed off a lot of one species (of bird, I think) but they bounced back within 2 years to surplus numbers. I don't know how they know to do it but they do it. People are the same. After the Wars, the baby boomers get busy. A woman who could bear children and be a helper would be a valuable prize and a man who could provide well for a woman would be highly sought after. History would repeat itself, basically.

I think Ireland would be okay. We'd be stunned initially but being an Island would benefit us. A small population, lots of arable land; lots of trees and plenty of materials (minus coal and oil). We'd go back to being smelly but we'd still be complaining about the rain and the zombies.

RiderOnTheStorm

ScumLord wrote:

I think you're right, I don't think people would forget as easily and things like writing will literacy would survive.......
A comparison that always comes up is the fall of the roman empire, but that wasn't the end of the world we all thought it was, it was just a setback to large scale projects.

Yes. We will bounce back, quicker than it took to get to that point originally. As its not trial & error now, we have done it before so we have a road map. A big struggle will be the lack of big industry & organised skilled workforce. Power stations will be damaged beyond repair and/or power lines going nowhere or short circuits in houses / factories. Water treatment plants are kaput. No garbage collection. Dead bodies (Zs and human), rats rampant. Cities are bad places for first 5-10 (?) years. I think our return to status-quo will follow path of industrial revolution, but quicker as we already know where we are going. Things are always quicker 2nd time round. A big leap will be the forming of large communities where workers are near / cheap and not worried about having to grow enough to feed themselves.

ScumLord

lazybones32 wrote: »

I was thinking the same but would it really? It depends how many victims the infection would claim. After that, the less-developed Countries would have less shock to adapt to and would carry on as normal. China and India have 1 billion each and the majority of those citizens would be in poverty by our standards. City-dwellers would bear the brunt of the reduction imo because they are less-likely to have the skills to survive and thrive medium to long term.
I don't know what the population spread is between rural/urban but I doubt it is massively skewed. My own thought is that the Pop. would be reduced to 10% but I'm basing that on everyone being as reliant on commodities as we in Ireland are.

I think at this stage the majority of people live in cities. Farming just doesn't require that many labourers anymore. Cities in India and China would be particularly vulnerable because they cram so many people into each apartment. Disease would spread like wildfire. As far as I know most countries have the majority of their population living in cities, even poor countries, we'd be looking at 50% of the global population being infected and turning into zombies, the disease would have an incubation period like every disease it takes it a few days to set itself up before it can start showing symptoms. Those people will flee the city and end up infecting towns surrounding cities.

Living in the country isn't going to mean you're in a great position, the fact is we all depend on imported food being easily accessible. The vast majority of us have no survival skills, we don't know how to farm, we don't know how to butcher, we probably couldn't even light a fire without modern help. Without global trade our food will be seasonal, it will have to be managed. A person with any crops is probably going to be raided, livestock will be raided, no one person could hope to be able to defend a food source.

There would be a population collapse, even if zombies were taken out of the equation and it was just global trade that wasn't possible billions would die, we're completely dependant on global trade to provide food.

The population would grow very, very quickly afterwards. Across all species, when there has been a very hard winter or a catastrophic event, they start breeding like crazy. The hard winter about 5 years ago killed off a lot of one species (of bird, I think) but they bounced back within 2 years to surplus numbers. I don't know how they know to do it but they do it. People are the same. After the Wars, the baby boomers get busy. A woman who could bear children and be a helper would be a valuable prize and a man who could provide well for a woman would be highly sought after. History would repeat itself, basically.

Having children becomes a life threatening endeavor without hospitals. Before farming and medicine our population was kept in check by natural processes and stayed around 1 billion. I think it's likely that without medicine deaths during childbirth will go up. Without medicine I'd be dead by now, think about all the people you know that have gone to hospital, or had an infection, without medicine those people simply die.

I think Ireland would be okay. We'd be stunned initially but being an Island would benefit us. A small population, lots of arable land; lots of trees and plenty of materials (minus coal and oil). We'd go back to being smelly but we'd still be complaining about the rain and the zombies.

Ireland is in a good position, we already know it's possible for the island to support up 10 11 million, we already produce more food than we can eat, we can go back to a simple diet and survive no problem.

One other interesting thing that could happen is climate change. Without humans pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere the temperature could plummet.

L1011

We do actually have a fair bit of coal, just not really worth extracting with cheap imports. Without imports, people will.

RiderOnTheStorm

Another thought on land re-claiming. Like settlers of old, people will go for good land near a river or road, or a delta, or meeting of rivers, or harbour . Folk will be looking for 'easy' locations. They won't be going to the Scottish Highlands, or back-ass of Connemara. So in Ireland they will be looking for settlements on East coast & South coast, and big towns on rivers (if bridges still standing).

Saw a documentary a while back, discussing how long it will be before nature reclaimed the cities if all humans were to disappear. Answer is about 50 years. Trees (and their roots) will breakup motorways & surface concrete and grass n shrubs will cover it up and it will be unrecognisable as a man made structure in 50 years or so. I thought it would be much longer than that.

ScumLord

L1011 wrote: »

We do actually have a fair bit of coal, just not really worth extracting with cheap imports. Without imports, people will.

That's interesting. where abouts is that coal? I wonder do we have any places that we could mine metals? I know there's probably going to be enough scrap around to make it pointless, it's just something I've wondered about.

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

Another thought on land re-claiming. Like settlers of old, people will go for good land near a river or road, or a delta, or meeting of rivers, or harbour . Folk will be looking for 'easy' locations. They won't be going to the Scottish Highlands, or back-ass of Connemara. So in Ireland they will be looking for settlements on East coast & South coast, and big towns on rivers (if bridges still standing).

There could be a problem with dead bodies polluting water sources. It's not as necessary to be near a river in Ireland either. There are loads of underground water sources scattered throughout the country. Rivers would pose a threat if people decide to go Viking.

Saw a documentary a while back, discussing how long it will be before nature reclaimed the cities if all humans were to disappear. Answer is about 50 years. Trees (and their roots) will breakup motorways & surface concrete and grass n shrubs will cover it up and it will be unrecognisable as a man made structure in 50 years or so. I thought it would be much longer than that.

It's scary how quickly humanity would disappear. They recon within 10,000 years of humans disappearing there would be next to nothing left on the surface that would indicate we ever existed. About the only thing that would remain is the likes of mount rushmore in the states.

Even the great pyramids would be swallowed up by the desert if we didn't keep them clean.

It's quiet possible there was a hunter gatherer civilization around before we settled into cities. The only evidence we have left of it is gobekli tepe and the only reason we have that is because they buried it on purpose.

RiderOnTheStorm

ScumLord wrote:

There could be a problem with dead bodies polluting water sources. It's not as necessary to be near a river in Ireland either. There are loads of underground water sources scattered throughout the country. Rivers would pose a threat if people decide to go Viking.

Bodies contaminating water would not be an issue after a few years, unless its in well / septic tank etc. The rivers & seas will recover (green peace & the whales will be delighted!). It would be great to see shoals of fish swimming up a cristal clear Liffey ).

Historians say that a long time ago (Medieval times I think) a squirrel could cross Ireland leaping from tree to tree. Well, without people around (in any significant numbers), I imagine the woods & forests here would take off. As well as town parks, untended farms and tree-lined streets, there will be a lot of seeds falling & sprouting and allowed grow.

So, how dangerous will cities be in the 5-10 year range? I imagine all the Zs are gone. Structures will be unsafe and lots of damage from storms, fire and just stuff falling over. And you will have little kings holed up in fortresses. But will they be cesspits? Will the rat population be back to manageable levels (after initial explosion)?

ScumLord

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

Bodies contaminating water would not be an issue after a few years, unless its in well / septic tank etc. The rivers & seas will recover (green peace & the whales will be delighted!). It would be great to see shoals of fish swimming up a cristal clear Liffey ).

that's true.

Historians say that a long time ago (Medieval times I think) a squirrel could cross Ireland leaping from tree to tree. Well, without people around (in any significant numbers), I imagine the woods & forests here would take off. As well as town parks, untended farms and tree-lined streets, there will be a lot of seeds falling & sprouting and allowed grow.

I remember my gran used to say you could go from one town to another around here on the tops of trees. It is likely that forest would come back in a big way. the centre of the country may stay clear due to the damage people did to the land when they cleared it for forest. The majority of our bogs are actually a man made natural disaster.

So, how dangerous will cities be in the 5-10 year range? I imagine all the Zs are gone. Structures will be unsafe and lots of damage from storms, fire and just stuff falling over. And you will have little kings holed up in fortresses. But will they be cesspits? Will the rat population be back to manageable levels (after initial explosion)?

I didn't think about the rat population. they'll probably leave the cities in droves looking for populations of humans so they can continue to live off our waste.

Apparently parts of London are actually below sea level at this stage and they actively have to pump water out of the city on a daily basis. If those systems break down parts of London will be underwater. that would flood the underground for a start and probably erode the foundations of buildings.

People might like to see the old capitals repopulated but cities need to be fed, we may have no choice but to stay near the food.

RiderOnTheStorm

ScumLord wrote:

Apparently parts of London are actually below sea level at this stage and they actively have to pump water out of the city on a daily basis. If those systems break down parts of London will be underwater. that would flood the underground for a start and probably erode the foundations of buildings.

Interesting. I wonder what systems we have here that, if untended for long periods, will cause problems. We have no nuclear power plants, so thats good. I think the coal & turf power stations will just run out or shut down. No big problem. But we hhave a few hydro stations. If the water is not allowed through then the dam will break and flood the land / towns downstream.

Any fire starting in a large town / city will spread far before it burns itself out.

Any other disasters that will occur because there is no one manning the switches?

RiderOnTheStorm

....Just thought of another one. Big Pharma companies here. Any chance they will contaminate air/water if left untended?

L1011

ScumLord wrote: »

That's interesting. where abouts is that coal? I wonder do we have any places that we could mine metals? I know there's probably going to be enough scrap around to make it pointless, it's just something I've wondered about.

Mines which were active until cheaper imports were in Cavan, Castlecomer and Athy amongst others.

We have extractable amounts of silver, gold, lead, zinc and copper - not sure about potentially more useful iron.

TheWarChicken

To be honest, I think we may be slightly underestimating people, in a good way. I don't think Ireland will end up in a shoot n' loot deal like the movies say. Russia? Maybe. America? Probably. But Ireland? The majority of the population are quite trustworthy, and would not just turn on each other, not without incentive anyway. For a start there aren't enough guns for people to really wage wars with each other. After 5 years one of two things will happen by my estimation.
1. Big money goes and imports large amounts of arms and ammo, during the first couple of years, after the government has lost control. These guys go around basically re creating the feudal system, offering protection for work, and becoming kings.
2. After 5 years when the situation is more or less stable, people start creating communes and end up creating creating either a communist or socialist groups.

In either case, after 20 or so years, we would likely end up returning to the current system, and after 50 we would be effectively back to normality.

But hey, what do I know.

ScumLord

L1011 wrote: »

Mines which were active until cheaper imports were in Cavan, Castlecomer and Athy amongst others.

We have extractable amounts of silver, gold, lead, zinc and copper - not sure about potentially more useful iron.

We should be good for iron/steel in the short term. There's literally hundreds of thousands of tons of it. It would be worth rounding it up and converting it into ingots. Sheet steel rots pretty quickly.

TheWarChicken wrote: »

To be honest, I think we may be slightly underestimating people, in a good way.

I think your right to a certain extent. The hole idea of someone setting of into a wilderness surviving on their own and getting into gun battles with people is an American fantasy. People are social animals, we need other people or we literally lose our minds. Ireland already has ready made city states in towns throughout the country. Ireland currently produces enough food to feed 40 million people. It won't be a varied diet but we have enough food to feed our current population, it would just depend on the time of year. If the zombie apocalypse hit in the middle of winter we may have already sold the bulk of that food to other markets.

But cities as large as Dublin will be hard to support, I don't see farmers sending food that their neighbours need to Dublin.

It is likely we won't be able to produce as much food though. Without access to maintenance parts for the fancy machines you see on a modern farm they probably will need to reduce production.

1. Big money goes and imports large amounts of arms and ammo, during the first couple of years, after the government has lost control. These guys go around basically re creating the feudal system, offering protection for work, and becoming kings.

Without global trade their wealth disappears. Money is an entry in a database, people with factories and farms will have power but that also makes them targets. If a person has a farm and all his neighbours decide the farm is now the property of the town he won't be able to do much about it and loses all his standing.

Without global trade there is no importing or exporting of anything. It's the real killer blow in any apocalypse scenario. Any interferences in global trade has the potential to cause a feedback loop that makes modern life impossible. Economies are fragile.

2. After 5 years when the situation is more or less stable, people start creating communes and end up creating creating either a communist or socialist groups.

In Ireland it could be stable, that stability could give people the security they need to start fighting each other though.

A real democracy is possible, where everyone votes. Kings are maybe more likely, People like having someone to turn to in a crisis. Often someone needs to be in charge and if he does well people won't want to rock the boat and change things. It's when that first leader dies or makes a mistake that problems arise. Who, or what takes his place? Remember, Caesar was voted in as dictator of Rome, he just didn't let go of the title when he was supposed to.

In either case, after 20 or so years, we would likely end up returning to the current system, and after 50 we would be effectively back to normality.

I think it will be very difficult for things to go back to normal. Especially if the human population is spread out and isolated due to a very low population. I think we'd live in a world of abundance and life would be great over all but radically different to today.

Nekarsulm

Farm output would change, the agrarian ideal often portrayed of people living on grains and pulses would be nonsense.
Without oil and diesel, no tillage would be possible, we don't have draft horses nor horse drawn equipment left to till and plant.
Without the oil industry we wouldn't have fertilizers nor disease control chemicals.
Without electricity no food processing or storage would be possible.
Low intensity livestock farming would be all that would be viable.
Sheep mainly, with a cow or two and a pig or two.
Subsistence farming, a lot like the 1850's Ireland. There would be no way to support cities. We would be back to the feudal "long strip" or "open field" scenario.
If the population was decimated, nature would reclaim land quicker than the population could keep it clear.
Think Pol Pots "year Zero"
Without oil and electricity, most survivors of the epidemic would either starve or die of exposure. 90% of homes have no way of cooking or heating without oil or ESB. Your typical apartment without an open fire would be useless.

ScumLord

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Without electricity no food processing or storage would be possible.
Low intensity livestock farming would be all that would be viable.

That's not exactly true, the whole advantage of farming has been the fact we can store the food. That's why grains and tubers are so popular all over the world, because they can be stored.

If the population was decimated, nature would reclaim land quicker than the population could keep it clear.

Yeah, it's scary how quickly nature grows back, plants will literally tear a house to pieces given half a change. We would lose a lot of land as it becomes unsuitable for planting and grazing. Which isn't too bad as long as the good land is maintained.

RiderOnTheStorm

Nekarsulm wrote:

... Without oil and diesel, no tillage would be possible, we don't have draft horses nor horse drawn equipment left to till and plant. Without the oil industry we wouldn't have fertilizers nor disease control chemicals...

OK we won't have the ability (for a while) to produce oil / fuel, but in the case of a Zombie Apocalypse with 90% death rate there will be loads of fuel around. The problem may be that fuel will loose its spark before we can use it all. Will oil be the same? I cant imagine lubricant / hydraulic oil going off in a few years.

As for electricity, solar & wind generators will supply all the electricity a small industry / farms needs.

There wont be suitable fires / cooking facilities in a small regular 2017 house, but aftet the ZA we would have to move in a range stove or move to more suitable house. There will be loads of empty places around.

But I do think that farming as we know it will change. It will become more labour intensive. A lot of old techniques will be utilised. As for chemical / weedkiller, will they go off after few years? But we will be supplying to much less, especially in first few years. So a few barrels of blight killers will go far.

Following that point about small numbers, I imagine small groups coming together for support in first few years. Along lines of 5 - 10? I think fear (of people turning into Zs) will prevent large communities from forming for a few years. How much land / fuel / oil / chemicals do you need to keep 5-10 alive? Not much, I reckon. At about the 5 year mark we may be running out of scavenged diesel & chemicals, but we could have horses doing the work by then. Plenty of time to round up stray / wild ones and learn how yo use them.

ScumLord

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

But I do think that farming as we know it will change. It will become more labour intensive. A lot of old techniques will be utilised. As for chemical / weedkiller, will they go off after few years? But we will be supplying to much less, especially in first few years. So a few barrels of blight killers will go far.

Chemical fertilizers and weedkillers may not be as necessary though. Farmers try and make their land as productive as possible to feed a global market, we wouldn't need to be as productive, so we could forego the chemicals and do just fine. We also know how fertilizers work now, there are plenty of pretty effective natural ways of keeping soil productive, at least productive enough to support the reduced population. letting clover grow for a year is supposedly a good way of putting nitrogen back in the soil.

We've covered oil in another thread but there are oil production facilities throughout Ireland that convert rapeseed oil into a useable fuel.

Tzar Chasm

Fido is probably one of the best takes on a vision of 20 years in the future

KingBrian2

ScumLord wrote: »

We've discussed the immediate aftermath of a zombie outbreak, we've made our plans and can survive the worst of it but the zombie pandemic is more than likely going to be a temporary state of affairs, like all disease outbreaks the disease will run it's course and will get to a stage when it can't spread anymore, probably eliminating itself in the process.

So what kind of world would we be left with? What would be left of Europe? Would the American military reappear from their nuclear bunkers ready for world domination? Would the middle east emerge more powerful because the disease couldn't spread as easily through their populations? Would we be thrown back to the dark ages with science disappearing?

After 5 years the zombie pandemic should have run it's course, the threat of zombie attacks should be minimal but large cities would still be a cesspit of disease maybe even allowing the disease to hold on, making them uninhabitable. Surviving groups should be well established, possibly farming and trading.

After 20 years the zombie pandemic is a distant memory, cities may be safe from disease but in ruins. At best they might provide easy access to recyclable materials kind of like how Romes monuments got repurposed for churches.

After 50 years new cultures would have established themselves, there's an abundance of free land and resources. Do people work together or fight for the sake of fighting? Ancient bronze age cultures actually got along pretty well at first, they had little to be fighting over and maybe the same would be true for what's left of humanity if there's more than enough land for everybody.

What do you think the aftermath of the zombie outbreak would be?

During the Black Death 1/3rd of Europe was wiped out so we would experience a similar demographic collapse. Also what is left of modern technology would be scattered across the world we humans would have to adapt to a nuclear winter aftermath scavenging for spare parts in the wastelands of the world.

Humans would migrate out of cities and return to an older form of existence. These early humans would need to preserve as much of our present culture as were possible. Were not exactly perfect specimens for living in the wild. This comfort living would be gone and replaced with a cold harsh environment.

On a good note the climate of the planet would steadily improve, the evolution process helps to increase the population of endangered lifeforms on the planet. While I can't see humans going extinct i would say we would fall down the food chain. Humans would also find working with others difficult in this period so countries & land rights vanish causing violence among our kind.

Nekarsulm

Without heavy industry and air travel, (and assuming no runaway nuclear fires,etc) would the lessening of greenhouse gasses and airbourne pollutants not cause the earth's atmosphere to cool?
Harsher winters would follow.

lazybones32

A discovery ch. program about a solar flare reckoned that 90% of the pop. would be dead 12mths after the grid being wiped out. Nuclear plants (+400 worldwide) would suffer meltdown within a month (sooner if the operators were dead) and large petrol distilleries would explode if there is no-one to vent the buildup of pressure or keep the temperatures regulated.
Environmental damage and fallout would be significant.