Go check it out. It's funny, it's a reminder to keep memory alive and the dead presidents in their graves. Go check it out at: The Pagan Science Monitor where truth never sleeps.
2 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Zombies are a fitting topic for this blogging ghost-town! Please post something new, soon!!!
Fast-moving, efficient zombies ought to be good at eating their victims, resulting in just the initial zombies and nobody else in the vicinity. Inefficient slow zombies might just be able to bite their victims and hence produce more zombies, but they are unlikely to be able to spread since they are bad at catching anyone. Ergo, no risk of zombie epidemics.
I think Rex is making a mistake in his reasoning. First, there is of course always a slight chance of incompetence from efficient zombies and competence from inefficient zombies. This will lead to growth in any case.
Second, there might also be an evolutionary pressure on zombies. Assuming zombieness is in some sense heritable (why not? nothing about zombies makes sense anyway), there would be an evolution towards reduced virulence (i.e. biting, not killing as often). This is just as how many non-vector transmitted diseases evolve towards more benign forms where the host is not killed (diseases transmitted by vectors on the other hand have a weaker incentive to become less virulent). So the initial zombies would evolve towards an optimal speed to injure enough people to keep the spreading high, but not be too efficient.
2 comments:
Zombies are a fitting topic for this blogging ghost-town! Please post something new, soon!!!
Sincerely,
Your devoted fan
Epidemiology of zombies
Fast-moving, efficient zombies ought to be good at eating their victims, resulting in just the initial zombies and nobody else in the vicinity. Inefficient slow zombies might just be able to bite their victims and hence produce more zombies, but they are unlikely to be able to spread since they are bad at catching anyone. Ergo, no risk of zombie epidemics.
I think Rex is making a mistake in his reasoning. First, there is of course always a slight chance of incompetence from efficient zombies and competence from inefficient zombies. This will lead to growth in any case.
Second, there might also be an evolutionary pressure on zombies. Assuming zombieness is in some sense heritable (why not? nothing about zombies makes sense anyway), there would be an evolution towards reduced virulence (i.e. biting, not killing as often). This is just as how many non-vector transmitted diseases evolve towards more benign forms where the host is not killed (diseases transmitted by vectors on the other hand have a weaker incentive to become less virulent). So the initial zombies would evolve towards an optimal speed to injure enough people to keep the spreading high, but not be too efficient.
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