A Mathematical Model for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

http://io9.com/5337596/a-mathematical-model-for-surviving-the-zombie-apocalypse

by dlnovell • 17 years ago

37 15 17 years ago

jacquesm3• 17 years ago

Talk about wasting money.

Not necessarily. The article makes no mention of assumptions about zombie behavior, so any disease fitting the virility assumed by the researchers is susceptible to the same model. Somehow I doubt any government will go for 'eradication' as an epidemic solution, though.

jacquesm3• 17 years ago

That was the point.

If you research solutions for an epidemic you have to come with realistic solutions that can be implemented, not pretend the whole thing is some kind of computer game.

Even if 'eradication' would be the only viable solution I still doubt that it would be implemented.

dkokelley• 17 years ago

The authors of the paper mention the unlikeliness of a direct application of the models to zombie outbreaks, but go on to elaborate on other uses of the model.

From the actual paper: The key difference between the models presented here and other models of infectious disease is that the dead can come back to life. Clearly, this is an unlikely scenario if taken literally, but possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties, or diseases with a dormant infection. This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the first mathematical analysis of an outbreak of zombie infection. While the scenarios considered are obviously not realistic, it is nevertheless instructive to develop mathematical models for an unusual outbreak. This demonstrates the flexibility of mathematical modelling and shows how modelling can respond to a wide variety of challenges in ‘biology’.

jacquesm3• 17 years ago

So, wouldn't it be more practical to work on a model for something that has real life applications instead ?

And I don't get the "allegiance to political parties" thing, unless this means that we should interpret those with certain political affiliations as zombies.

It's a tempting connection but I don't think it will hold.

troels• 17 years ago

Which money?

jasond• 17 years ago

This isn't any more a waste of money than when scientists study "real" problems, but between lobbyists and the uneducated Fox-News-watching masses, policy does not follow the scientific results. Might as well study zombies, at least it's more fun.

philosophe• 17 years ago

Excellent point. And as the Discussion section of the paper lightly suggests, "possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties." Which brings to mind applying the model to certain negative cultural memes, which are certainly highly infectious and, in their way, produce...zombies!

BRadmin• 17 years ago

Actual paper: http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf

tsuraan• 17 years ago

Fun paper, but I don't think destroyed zombies ever resurrect. The fatal decapitation or brain destruction shouldn't put the zombies into the R set, but should just remove the zombies from the population altogether. I'll have to see if octave can run their matlab code :)

tempura• 17 years ago

In setting up the model, the birth rate is given as a constant (capital pi). Clearly the birth rate should be proportional to the number of survivors S.

This doesn't materially alter the thrust of the argument, which presupposes a short outbreak with pi := 0 anyway, but does negate the conclusion of the first section, that "an outbreak of zombies will lead to the collapse of civilisation, as large numbers of people are either zombified or dead."

In reality, the first ODE just states that the sum of (living+zombies+dead) only increases when new humans are born.

onreact-com• 17 years ago

Next time an infectious disease strikes you might want to flee once you're infected as the army will probably hunt you "to save humanity".

A Mathematical Model for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

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