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Monday 20 May 2013

A Treatise on Animal Zombism; Part 1.

A short while ago I lost all my computer documents. With it was the map of my MOORE CITY campaign. What I remember of it was there were cattle pens on the edge of the city. Now my main characters are making their way back to the city through these pens. So the subject of this treatise is;

This is just for fun.

'Can Animals Become Zombies?' Debate.



Just for you know who!

The essential issue here is what is a zombie? And what causes zombism?

Initially it is clear that a zombie is one of the undead, more appropriately a reanimated corpse. The 'undead' concept is a bit woolly as will encompass other creatures particularly vampires.

Zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe) is an animated corpse resurrected by mystical means, such as witchcraft (OED,1998: p. 1426). The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotised person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli. Since the late 19th century, zombies have acquired notable popularity, especially in North American and European folklore.

McCullough (2012) maintains that zombies are an aberration of the human condition being formed as a result of human or demonic intervention. The creation of a zombie can take many forms; Voodoo, Atomic, Viral to name three. Essentially, in order to create a zombie the soul of the being is ether seized our controlled. Now as animals do not have souls they, theoretically, cannot be turned.

“Interestingly, wielders of voodoo black magic are not able to create any zombie animals. Voodoo zombification requires the incarceration of of the zombi astral, the soul of the deceased. Since animals do not posses souls, there is nothing for the bokor to imprison”‘(ibid: p. 56)

However, Mearls (2008) asserts that animals as well as humanoids can be turned into undead beasts, most commonly a zombie. Zombie animals look like the animal they were in life only with rotting, falling off flesh (some are completely skeletal), and are completely feral and mindless creatures which stalk around, searching for flesh. Zombified horses are sometimes employed by humanoid zombies to act as mounts. They cannot speak, and are neutral evil in alignment. How can this be?

12 comments:

  1. I'd love to comment on your treatise, Bob, but my eyes got drawn to that gorgeous Vampirella model. I'm almost certain it is Leslie Culton, but incredibly, I have never seen this photo before! Well, it's going straight into my Vampirella Models folder. Cheers, mate!

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    1. Hey impressed that you can recognise individual models, outstanding!

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  2. My very personal opinion, I go with what looks "cool" not what makes sense, so there are no zombie animals for me...perhaps dogs, that I feel are generally accepted, but why would a dog be able to become zombified and cats not...and birds and mice and fish and mosquitos...I guess it just gets overwhelming and there wouldn't be many survivors to game with, if they'd be zombified by a mosquito bite or bee sting!

    Sorry to hear about your computer, that is really a bummer.

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    1. Hmm, I hear what you're saying! Those ducks look pretty savage.

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  3. An attack from Howe was "like being savaged by a dead sheep", Healey 1978.

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    1. Now that's scary! Get in touch with Ed Tex (the 2hwg) there's a game there!

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  4. As it's all in the blood so to speak and hyman blood is not compatible with animals thenmy current thinking is that it's non-transferable - do animals contract human viruses ?

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    1. Yes I see. But once a virus becomes zootonic it can cross the human/animal boundary. CF part 2. But I like the argument.

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  5. It all feasible it all depends on how much a hard time you want to give your survivors. Personally I don't like zombie animals. Dogs maybe. Perhaps its one of those questions as to whether infected host survive does it effect only certain sized animals.

    Mind you a certain movie with a zombie tiger at the end was pretty good nice to have an end boss of some sort that isn't a huge mutated zombie.

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    1. I'm with you on this. Dogs OK other animals ? But damn, how can you argue with a zombie tiger!!!!!

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    2. Zombie Apocalypse is the movie its come back to me now. In Monster Island had zombie pigeons at one point.

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  6. I think that animals should be allowed to become zombified, as with Rabbies I imagine that once it starts to spread and being Zoonotic, it could easily be passed onto other animals or even humans, just like Rabbies, I'm all for it.

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