While a zombie attack is one of the least likely ways the world could end, four Canadian mathematicians/graduate students did a mathematical analysis of a hypothetical zombie outbreak to determine the likelihood of human eradication, should such an attack ever occur. According to their model, “a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.” (HT: Marginal Revolution) [%comments]
Zombie Mathematics
TAGS: apocalypse, zombies
and 
. You can also watch it on 
good argument for cremation
I believe this will be addressed in the new legislation i.e. the Obama Zombie Panels.
You can actually see this in action if you visit this game;
http://www.quarantine2019.com/stats
They graph the population levels of the humans and zombies as the game progresses, it’s pretty fascinating to see what happens when ‘care packages’ of cure serum are dropped.
I’ve looked at the paper and think they may be on to something. By adjusting a few variables and definitions we may be able to prove that the zombie’s dominating infection has already swallowed up a sizeable portion of the population. If the infectious saliva is modeled as the traditional thinking of big name management consulting shops and the susceptible non-zombies are the gullible managers that hire the consultants, then we have a rigorous explanation for all of the undead, zombie companies that hang on in perpetuity slowly destroying shareholder wealth.
I think I’ve found some evidence in my own portfolio. AAAAARGH! Run!
The equation on page 136 where S = live humans, Z = zombies, R = dead non-zombie humans, for non-zero birth rate:
S+Z+R -> Inf as t->Inf
they then conclude that as S does not go to infinity, this represents a doomsday scenario. This is incorrect: doomsday is S->0. The equation solutions include the ‘real life’ scenario: S (life population) remains approximately constant, R (dead people) increases with time, Z is zero for all time. Because of this error, they make no further examination of non-zero birth rate models, so miss any possibility of stable human-zombie coexistence solutions.
With zero birth rate, it is obvious that the ‘everyone survives’ equilibrium must be unstable, because once you cease to be a live human, there is no way to every return to being a live human. With no births, the live population has no way to go but down.
Also, they do not explicitly model the (very likely and well supported by the zombie movie sources) possibility that infected humans will be killed by uninfected humans or will suicide – knowing that zombiehood is inevitable*. To some extent this can be included within the ‘quarantine’ model where we instead interpret the quarantine state as ‘killed by mercy killing’ instead. We need to set the ‘escape from quarantine’ parameters to zero for this.
* A question for the Pope: is suicide still a mortal sin if you’ve been infected by zombieism?
Um, does anyone think it might NOT be a good idea to list everything right here for all the zombies (or zombi) to see? What if they can evolve like AI, read all this, and then create new ways to destroy us all???!!!
-Concerned
I look forward to the ZETH (Zombies for the Ethical Treatment of Humans) to lead the movement toward vegetarian zombies. These enlightened living dead will shuffle about, groaning “grains… grains… grains”.
The book “World War Z” (by the same author of the ‘Zombie Survival Guide’, one of the references in the paper) shows that the war really is not winnable, and the only outcome is cohabitation.
Humans are able to setup survival camps in areas of natural boundries and are able to stay vigilant to protect those areas (as Alex says, above), but islands ARE reachable by walking….. eventually (zombies don’t need to breathe, and will walk on the ocean floor).
I think the ‘strike hard and fast’ won’t work because not all humans will react to a pandemic the same way at the same speed. Look at H1N1 – some quarantine, some just give health advice – and imagine if H1N1 made everyone into zombies.