[flamb]

**lots of text warning**

i'm just going down the main post of queries, then adding any thoughts i have at the end (i've been watching/playing SO MUCH zombie stuff lately so ive been pondering it quite a bit)

zombies as a raised dead just doesn't make sense to me; it has to be a viral type of thing. imo no zombies are actually dead yet. they are just infected people. kind of an extreme rabies-esque scenario.
zombies are only as efficient as they were in 'life.' they could APPEAR to move quicker or be stronger than they were as humans, but that's more so a factor of any pain/fatigue receptors just getting blocked off in favour of the virus needing to spread.
on the same point, that's why a lot of zombies are portrayed as slower and clumsier. if they get damaged in, say, the legs, they cant walk as fast simply from the physical limitations received (even though they will ignore it and just press on as hard as they can regardless). if someone is a big tough guy as human, he'll likely be a big tough zombie.
as far as packs or loners, it could go either way. zombies don't tend to eat other zombies, and as earl and i talked about earlier, this could be either the survival mechanism of not eating spoiled foods, or, again, going back to the need of the virus to spread as much as possible, so they wont be compelled to bite other zombies. why would zombies attack each other? i think some self-preservation would stay intact if one was attacked by another, but from what i've said already, this wouldn't happen too often, unless someone was a very "fresh" zombie, enough to convince others that there was still some uninfected flesh going on at least. i would think the zombie virus' point is just to spread, and that doesnt work too well with already infected zombies.

the odd thing is pretty much every zombie will die in a while anyways, be it from ignoring any injuries they took, or the virus destroying their systems to a point beyond function. even if they wound up being a fully healthy zombie, they wouldn't take care of themselves past a few days.
another thing that irks me about zombies is you never see a helpless zombie; by which i mean a zombie that has taken so much injury that they are more or less crippled to the point of being unable to move. i would think this would be the majority of zombies. like, a zombie wont just bite someone once and then leave them alone. they'll keep eating flesh until they simply can't.

extra question: if you were a normal human, and you ate zombie flesh, would you turn zombie?

holy shit i was thinking and typing for so long and i hope i made some sense