Walking Dead -- Zombie "Rules"

[Hand of Evil]

That's a level of unnecessary pseudoscience. Live people have a smell even if they aren't infected. It isn't like we need to have the zombies attracted to infected people, but not attracted to uninfected people - they just come after people. So, they just need to smell or hear or see humans, period.

And the implication is that they don't just come after humans - any mammal, at least, seems to be okay food to them.



Except generally, they don't. They usually attempt to beat down doors, rather than use doorknobs. I think we can chalk it up to writing in early episodes that later just got dropped.

On the smell thing, in the show, zombies have been fooled by zombie goo being coated on people or even zombies around a person, so they are not sensing life.

Rumor has it that this season, we see the "smarter" zombies.

 

[Umbran]

On the smell thing, in the show, zombies have been fooled by zombie goo being coated on people or even zombies around a person, so they are not sensing life.

I don't think there's any sign of anything much superior to normal human senses involved. You don't need "sense life" when you can "see, hear, or smell human". A nice big dose of rotting flesh can overwhelm what scent humans have - I'm good with that.

Heck, what we see can probably be explained without them even being able to smell humans. Assume the zombies really only have human-level senses - if they hear you or see you, they come after you. They can smell fires, or other results of human habitation (like, say, manure piles when you keep livestock). When you coat yourself with zombie goo, it isn't so much that you are blocking the smell of a human. They just know that if you smell that bad, you aren't zombie food.

Rumor has it that this season, we see the "smarter" zombies.

I hope not. One thing the show doesn't need (IMHO) is power inflation.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I don't think there's any sign of anything much superior to normal human senses involved. You don't need "sense life" when you can "see, hear, or smell human". A nice big dose of rotting flesh can overwhelm what scent humans have - I'm good with that.

Heck, what we see can probably be explained without them even being able to smell humans. Assume the zombies really only have human-level senses - if they hear you or see you, they come after you. They can smell fires, or other results of human habitation (like, say, manure piles when you keep livestock). When you coat yourself with zombie goo, it isn't so much that you are blocking the smell of a human. They just know that if you smell that bad, you aren't zombie food.



I hope not. One thing the show doesn't need (IMHO) is power inflation.

agreed - smarter zombies would be a huge mistake, IMHO. I think people on the show might think they're getting smarter, but they'll later find out the zombies were being led to do things by the Governor and/or his minions.