KEEGAN ELLIOTT
Opinions Writer
With the release of all the zombie material in the past few months — Zombieland at the beginning of October and the much-anticipated release of the video game Left 4 Dead 2 on Nov. 17 — the much debated topic has risen once again: fast zombies or slow zombies?
For those not in the know, slow zombies are George A. Romero’s shambling, stumbling kind that moan a bit, while fast zombies are the shrieking, sprinting cannibals mostly seen in the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead and in popular video games like Left 4 Dead.
The debate: should fast zombies be erased from the zombie universe, or should slow zombies be ignored?
Now, slow zombies, while less scary than their 100-metre-dash-champion cousins, are numerous, and if you are surrounded by hundreds of them they can kill you with the efficiency of a school of piranha. Fast zombies are just as deadly, except they will run and surround you even faster than slow zombies.
Slow zombies give you about 30 seconds to casually destroy their brain — as long as you’re up against just one. If you are surrounded you have probably less time than the zombie you’re trying to kill. While fast zombies put the pressure on; they see you, scream, run at you and you have maybe 10 seconds to kill them before they kill you.
The one thing fast zombies have going for them is that they are some of the scariest things ever seen. Imagine a man covered in blood, with half of his scalp torn off, running towards you screaming. Imagine the same scene only the man is limping slowly towards you. Obviously the fast, screaming one is going to be scarier, which is why they are so popular in today’s entertainment.
But there is a small problem: they are dead. Dead people (especially zombies) don’t run. They’re still decomposing; their muscles and tendons would wear out and snap, eventually degrading them to slow zombies, then to zombies that can’t walk. Obviously the biological aspect has to be looked at when dealing with the undead; fast zombies might not be dead but rather live bodies infected with a virus.
Regardless of what side you are on, the problem still remains: the undead war should not be divided into fast zombies, slow zombies and ourselves, but rather two sides: us and the undead. Only when we unite can the zombies fall; only when we stand as one will humanity come out on top.