Do Your Zombie Survivors Previously Know of Zombies?

Been toying with more ways to describe my zombies without calling them undead, zombies, etc. I was thinking, as it's a very modern day setting (MC had a 2010 Jetta) zombie movies have been being made long before I was even born (I'm 26 so no comments there LOL) so wouldn't it make some sense for the characters to have seen them? I have yet to see a serious zombie movie/show that puts that in...Is it better to act as though the idea of zombies doesn't exist and this is something completely new, or add it in in a lesser degree for a comparison comment?

I plan on coming up with something like Walking Dead ("Walkers" and "Geeks") but just haven't thought of a good one yet, but this though has been bugging me as I have more and more scenes with zombies in them as I move forwards.

Thanks!

Well seeing as my novel is set in modern day setting, of course they are going to know about it. They'll freak out and think it's some sick joke until it hits them it is real. I mean, my MC even uses facebook because they are on a college campus when it breaks out. One of my characters are going to try to use previous zombie books though as a guide to find that none of it helps seeing as I'm tweaking the type of zombies I have.

haha Very cool! I haven't bothered much with facebook and things, but decided they know from movies but use the term zombie as they haven't figured another out yet. My MC doesn't really believe they are your typical movie zombies but is using it to term them anyway. Thinking my other MC, once they meet up, will have this other name for them when they meet...Just gotta find one that isn't really used...Which sucks cuz Walkers is so perfect LOL

Actually, in my book I decided to go with straight-up zombies. I always thought it was kind of corny when people would rise from the grave and people would call them these weird names--like no one's ever heard of a zombie before.

I don't know. My story has more comedic elements, so it doesn't have the drama associated with "walkers" or such.

Do what you want. Just depends on what your writing.

My MC is basically the type of person that all of her favorite movies are the zombies, so she finds it strange and still overly frightening that her reality has almost become a movie.

the geekier members of my story call them zombies but the less dorky characters aren't sure what to call them.

The year is 2301...sooo uh...things are a little different there. My mmc knows of zombies, old zombie films fascinate him. Things my zombies have been called:

- the resurrected
- the infected
- the reanimated
- zombies (only once)

In the words on my mmc...


“Zombies, the reanimated, the walking dead. Call them whatever the hell you want, but they're f*#@*ing dead. There's no humanity left in their corpses. Dead as a doornail and still moving.”

Right now, I'm just using "zombies." I want some of my characters to call them different things, due to mental barriers and things. But I figure I'll either figure out a good name for them at that moment or can brainstorm more names when I edit. The time setting is pretty familiar with zombie stories, so it's not unreasonable. I just think that it would make sense for groups of people to come up with different names for the zombies as new definitions are brought in.

My characters have the sense to call them zombies, trying to call them anything else would just feel sorta' weird for me.

Since nobody has turned to my MC's knowledge, they're calling them maniacs, crazies and freaks. One old man calls them "wretched" ie wretched freaks or wretched crazies. Only the eight year old boy has said anything about zombies and that was just in response to a nutcase on the internet.

Of course, he will be the first to understand...

Being in a modern setting I assume my MCs would know about zombies. Due to the compelete nuttiness of the situation though, I'm sticking with them not actually calling them "zombies" yet. I think few people would actually think "oh hey, it's the zombie apocolypse" if it really happened, at least to begin with.

Yes, zombies in fiction exist in my story-world. My FMC yells at someone for doing something that all the books warn against at one point. :D

Yes, my survivors know of zombies. I have my main character call her mom asking about zombies and how to kill them since her mom loves zombie movies. And my story is set in modern times so to me it would be weird for them not to know about zombies.

I have the impression from the reading I've done that in most zombie fiction the word is unknown and there's no history of zombies associated with the mainstream media. If it is known it's usually in the sense of the Hatian zombies created through voodoo or voodun. (There are other stories where zombies are known however)

When your characters live in a world where the lore of zombies exist you have the problem that the bulk of the population knows, because of mainstream media, exactly how to dispatch them - through some form of severe trauma to the brain. I would speculate that if you went outside and asked a hundred people how to dispatch a zombie, I would expect that about 90% of people could tell you. That would have been different pre-George Romero though.

If you're going to work with that idea them you'll need to come up with some device that works as an equalizer. This could include a reason why blunt force trauma or destruction of the brain doesn't work or a reason why people can't do it.

There's the moral question - is a zombie actually alive? Is it some new form of life in a manner we don't understand? Does a zombie still have a soul? Is it murder to kill a zombie?

The word zombie carries with it a lot of weight. We believe we know what a zombie is, but do we? What if a zombie behaves or functions differently than we expect them to?

In the Warhammer 40,000 universe for instance, zombies exist but they are infected by a virus that causes them to decay, to be infectious, and to sustain huge amounts of damage and not die, but they are fully functioning, capable of thought, handling weapons and using tools in service to Nurgle, the Chaos God of Disease and Corruption.

What if the zombie is controlled not by the brain but is a collective of cognizant cells, such that if the brain is destroyed the zombie continues to function as though it had one?

What if the zombie can evolve?

What if the zombie meets the normall criteria associated with a zombie, but is only drawn to eat only specific things, such as only cancerous tissue?

What if the zombie is a living breathing human but is driven to behave like a stereotypical zombie because of a parasite but this was only discovered after thousands of zombies were killed? Therein lies a lot of conflict - emotional, spiritual, moral, physical - that would need to be worked through!

All food for thought!

Max

Mine are just like, "Okay, let's agree to call them zombies, since we think they're technically undead, and we know they want to eat us."

Mine exist in the real world, and while my zombies certainly are NOT walking dead, they call them zombies because of zombie movies.

It's impossible in today's society to not have some vague notion of what a zombie is. This book is the extension of a video I started to make, and everyone on my cast and crew, one of whom is not a movie fan at ALL, knew what zombies were.

I've decided to mention it early on and for lack of a better word they have been called Zombies up until now. I may edit that later on, but as of now my MCs are going to start calling them "Rotties" as a sort of nick name.

Mine do know of zombies, and they even mention zombie movies at times. They do call them zombies, too, for the most part, but they also call them "the infected." Some of them have also taken to calling them "Subs," short for sub-humans.

Mine takes place in 2007. They call them overall "zeds" and "Shamblers" for slow zombies and "Runners" for fast zombies.

The zombies in last year's NaNo were a little different from traditional zombies--they had a hive mind with the "queen" being intelligent, and could move fast for a few seconds at a time--but the characters just called them zombies. I didn't pretend there wasn't such a thing as a zombie movie or anything; my characters took one look at the walking dead and called it the zombie apocalypse.