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[ToonyMan]

And if you need to keep yourself busy you could play some Game of Life!

Hah!

[Phantom]

Silence dead man, oh wait, TOONY MANS A ZOMBIE!

[ToonyMan]

I was spy all along.

[Phantom]

Be careful, Im part of the Burchell Arms Regulars, pro survivor group and guardians of beer.

[ein]

Be careful, Im part of the Burchell Arms Regulars, pro survivor group and guardians of beer.

Where do I sign up?

[Phantom]

Eh, its part of a zed apocalypse MMORPG that is a text adventure, urban dead, it turns out even one dude can make a great game better than the big shot companies.

[ein]

Ah. I have trouble getting into multiplayer games. Unless they're really fast paced. Like a FPS.

[Phantom]

Combat Arms would be good for you then.

[ein]

I'd like to see a fantasy mmo that isn't a grindfest with stripperiffic armour and wtf drops. I seriously doubt that'll ever happen.

[Phantom]

I would make one, but im more of an Urban Conflict man than a Fantasy man.

[ein]

Yeah, and I have a tendency to plug in technology where it doesn't appear to belong.

I modded guns and power armour into DF without removing anything. And chainswords. Can't forget the chainswords.

It just really bothers me that wolves somehow end up with gp and female characters wear chainmail bikinis that actually PREVENT DAMAGE.

[umiman]

You know how shields are painted to look like targets? Yeah, same principle with the metal boobies.

[Sappho]

So yesterday afternoon I taught an upper-intermediate EFL class on the topic of zombies.  I had three students who are all very cool and fun, but none of them really understood the zombie mythology.  They kept trying to treat them like vampires.  There were a lot of exchanges like this:

Student: We will kill them with piece of wood in the chest.
Me: What monster do you kill that way?
Student: [hesitation] Vampyr?  Vampires?
Me: Right!  Are zombies the same as vampires?
Student: No, they are not the same thing.
Me: So can you kill them with a stake?
Student: Well, we will just try it.  Who knows, maybe it work.

Then, when I gave them a scenario where the zombies were coming and they had ten minutes to fortify the room and get supplies, they threw me to the zombies and said they'd go across the street and barricade themselves in the pub and enjoy a beer!

My students are so mean.  Hilarious, but mean...

[umiman]

How can people not know what zombies are?

[Starver]

Then again, there are bactaria that breath Iron and eat uranium.

Yes/No (delete as inapplicable).

But, anyway, I think the (novelisation) I Am Legend version of the zombie (identified as Vampire, but sufficienty zombie-esque insofar as reanimation stakes, so it applies to the 'practical' zombies we're discussing) the truly dead are completely powered by the microbial infection.  Echoed in several other intelligent zombie explanations (and at least one 'grey-goo' novel, where it's microbes evolved to have emergent-intelligence, and which go on to consume most of the biosphere, rather than the 'traditional' nano-mechanical grey goo), these might self-organise into the powerhouse, nervous and even structural components of the body, according to need.

If the dead-zombie body still has a working cardio-pulminary system, and isn't underwater or in some other situation where it is useless, then there's no need to substitute the function.  If there's a problem (e.g. lungs effectively removed, thanks to a shotgun blast to the torso) then the piggy-backing turns to life-support functionality.  Of course, this indicates a massively redundant functionality within the infective microbe, both to contain the functionality (from a form of calcification to overcome broken bones to the absorbtion anmd distribution of various alternate life-supporting elements/transportation products to analogise the original respiration function) and to actually respond well to the situation (proper body-plan mapping to tell when the host is damaged, and not mistake the normally deoxiginated blood in the circulatory system immediately before the lungs as an indicator of respiratory problems requiring drastic measures).  The fact that the brainstem might be a vital requirement for the infection to get and keep a basic hold upon the host du jour could be the reason behind decapitation (or any form of 'headsplosion') being the take-down method for such composite creatures.

Difficult to design into such an infective organism, possible (but lengthily trial-and-error) to evolve in a natural and/or forced manner.  Probably the realms of alternate reality, but theoretically possible.