The analogy to zombies is not precise. One zombie grabs at a helpless victim, tears into her flesh and begins consuming, but this does not lead to several zombies bursting out. For the analogy to work, we would need on zombie invading a “cell” containing several humans, and the result is several zombies bursting out of the mall or the safehouse or whatever.
(This, by the way, is why I always scoff when people post picture on the internet of their “zombie strongholds.” Hard to get in means hard to get out, and all it takes is one zombie to make that stronghold a gut-gobbler factory).
What’s more, it’s not that a virus goes into a cell and then uses the material inside to make copies—the virus uses the cell’s actual mechanisms to facilitate the reproduction process. The zombie-in-your-safehouse analogy then would suggest that its not just that the zombie turns people into zombies, but that the social dynamics of the group lend themselves to zombie making. Bickering distracts folks from maintaining the stronghold, falling in love makes it hard to put a shotgun to the head of a newly turned zombie, etc.
So the analogy is not a bad one, it just needs adjustment to work. And the consequence of a working analogy is, how does it inform a solution to a zombie problem? Well, your body will elevate its own temperature to kill of a virus. In other words, it makes the host inhospitable. How would we do that in the real world?
I have no idea. In World War Z, people with fatal diseases were unappetizing to zombies. But that breaks out analogy- we need the host, the cell, the mall, to be in hospitable.
I’ve got it—tires. Like those tires you step into and out of quickly an obstacle course. Line the roads with tires! The living have agility—the dead don’t. They’ll fall all over themselves. It would take weeks for them to move a few city blocks.
This is brilliant. I’m applying for the MacArthur Genius Grant. I may have eradicated the need for zombie fiction forever.
Oh no.
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