Mathematical zombies

[delphipsmith]

A professor from the University of Ottawa who specializes in mathematical modeling of biological events (flu, plagues, etc) has written a paper analyzing the spread pattern and potential deadliness of a zombie event. It's actually hugely amusing in its seriousness about a completely loony subject (kind of like Ben Bernanke talking about the federal deficit). Herewith some comments on same (or you can read the full paper in all its math-geek-cum-Hammer-films glory):

According to Smith, a major factor restraining normal plagues from utterly devastating humanity is that they tend to kill their victims, after which the sufferers can no longer move about and infect others. This is one reason the frightful Ebola virus has never spread, for instance: it knocks people down and then kills them so fast that they have only a limited chance to pass it on.

Not so with zombification. Once someone has died of Z-plague, they remain a mobile carrier. The factors which have prevented humanity being rendered extinct by the Black Death, smallpox, cholera etc don't apply. Smith?'s models assume traditional dull-witted shuffler zombies rather than the nimbler types popular in some recent film offerings, but nonetheless the dynamics of undead contagion remain implacable.

In sum? "Since all eigenvalues of the doomsday equilibrium are negative, it is asymptotically stable. It follows that, in a short outbreak, zombies will likely infect everyone...The disease-free equilibrium is always unstable."

Basically we're all DOOOOOOOMED.