Zombiesaregoingtgetuswe’redoomedorsomethinglikethatanyway

According to the BBC If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

A paper in a book - Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress states that only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate them

On a serious note a zombie "plague" resembles a lethal, rapidly spreading infection. The researchers say the exercise could help scientists model the spread of unfamiliar diseases through human populations. In their study, the posed a question:

If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?

Professor Robert Smith? (sic. the question mark is part of his surname) wrote: "We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions."

To give the living a fighting chance, the researchers chose "classic" slow-moving zombies as our opponents rather than the nimble, intelligent creatures portrayed in some recent films.

Even so, their analysis revealed that a strategy of capturing or curing the zombies would only put off the inevitable. In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often. They added: "It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble."

Professor Neil Ferguson, who is one of the UK government's chief advisers on controlling the spread of swine flu, said the study did have parallels with some infectious diseases.

"None of them actually cause large-scale death or disease, but certainly there are some fungal infections which are difficult to eradicate," said Professor Ferguson, from Imperial College London. There are some viral infections - simple diseases like chicken pox have survived in very small communities. If you get it when you are very young, the virus stays with you and can re-occur as shingles, triggering a new chicken pox epidemic."

Professor Smith? told BBC News: "When you try to model an unfamiliar disease, you try to find out what's happening, try to approximate it. You then refine it, go back and try again.We refined the model again and again to say... here's how you would tackle an unfamiliar disease."

Bugger I was expecting a lot of good information on how to massacre zombies and the article turns into a science thingy. Damn!