Zombies Could Wipe Out Mankind in 100 Days, Research Shows

by Amna El Tawil
 
New discoveries never stop flowing and scientists usually focus on health and lifestyle factor. From time to time, a new, weird research comes along and it takes the internet by storm. One such study comes from the University of Leicester in England.
 
The research was carried out by students at the Department of Physics and Astronomy and its main objective was to find out how long humans would be able to survive if the zombie apocalypse ever occurred. So, if you’ve ever wondered how long you’d be alive if the Walking Dead scenario extends to real life, they found out the answer.
 
Students used a mathematical model that predicts the spread of disease. In this model, zombies serve a deadly serious function which is to simulate how quickly a virus could wipe out the planet.
 
The Huffington Post reports: “The model divides the population into three categories: those susceptible to the infection, those infected, and those who have either died or recovered. The model then considers the rates at which infections spread as individuals in the population come into contact with each other.”
 
The official press release writes: “As part of the formula, the students looked at S (the susceptible population), Z (the zombie population) and D (the dead population), suggesting that the average life-cycle of a zombie would be S to Z to D.
 
They also examined the time frame over which individuals in the population encounter one another.
 
The initial study did not factor in natural birth and death rates, since the hypothetical epidemic took place over 100 days, resulting in natural births and deaths being negligible compared to the impact of the zombie virus over a short time frame.”
 
What was the result? Assuming that a zombie can find one person each day, with a 90% chance of infecting victims with the zombie infection by day 100 there would be just 273 remaining human survivors, outnumbered a million to one by zombies. Why? It’s because humans wouldn’t be able to fight back.
 
Findings were published in the Journal of Physics Special Topics.
 
But, there’s a more optimistic finding as well. The fast “extinction” of humans would happen because they’re easy to find. Logically, the fewer the humans, the more difficult they’re to locate. This means that mankind would learn to avoid zombies or defend themselves. Another paper deduced used the mathematical model and found that the human population still fell to a few hundred. But the zombies all died off after 1,000 days, and humanity began to recover after 10,000 days (a little over 27 years).
 
Of course, this is unlikely to happen, but it’s always interesting to read these weird news that make us wonder “what if…”
 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMmh_a28_Ho

We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!
Views:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.