Why does everybody else seem to get all the good jobs?  Researchers in Canada have written an academic paper called When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical  Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection.   It is all in this story at the BBC.Actually I can see how there can be some benefit to taking a hypothetical ‘disease’ with particular attributes and then modelling how it can spread, but I’m not sure they are doing themselves any favours in being taken seriously when one of the authors is called Robert Smith?

Apparently the ? is part of his name so that he doesn’t get confused with Robert Smith of the Cure…  I would have thought that being “Robert A Smith” or similar would have done the trick.

I had a glance through the paper.  It is full of graphs and increasingly complicated equations, but they all seem to boil down to “cut their heads off”.

The conclusion is:

In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.

Wise words mate, but not a surprise to anybody familiar with the works of George A Romero.

By the way, is there a bit of subtle humour going on at the BBC?  The caption to the photo in their story says “There has been a revival of the zombie film in recent years”.  Hmmm… like the genre just keeps coming back fronm the dead…