Predicting the zombie apocalypse
illustration by Alex Martin
U of O mathematician reveals his strategies for survival when zombies, diseases, and other epidemics strike
IN 2009, UNIVERSITY of Ottawa professor Robert Smith? conducted a study based on a fictitious zombie apocalypse in Ottawa. Using mathematical tools, logic, and analysis to predict the outcome of the outbreak, Smith? published his essay in an academic journal, and received widespread media attention for his conclusion that the world remains inadequately prepared for any form of undead epidemic.
The Fulcrum: Your work on zombies is based on a fictitious outbreak that occurred in Ottawa in 2009. Is it safe to assume that you use zombies as a metaphor for other possible diseases that could spread quickly and kill large populations of people?
Robert Smith: Zombies have all the hallmarks of a disease, without actually looking like an existing one. This allows us to apply the process of disease investigation to a phenomenon that also has a twist—in this case, the dead coming back to life. Zombies allow us to explore two very primal fears: Being eaten by a predator and being wiped out by a disease. There’s an additional aspect to zombies that make them so attractive. Could you kill grandma? Maybe, but if you paused to think about it, grandma just ate your brains.
Your research reveals three possible ways of ending a zombie epidemic. The first two, quarantine and a theoretical cure, are dismissed because of lack of effectiveness. However, the third option, strategic attacks that become increasingly more violent, appears to be the most promising. Why?
Because zombies can recruit the dead, their infection rate is very high. This means that anything less than total control leaves you vulnerable, because your own casualties become fodder for the zombies. This is the power of zombies: Death isn’t the final end; it’s just a stage in the process. Thus, the only way is to hit the zombies so hard and so quickly that they don’t get a chance to recover before you hit them again—even harder.
How would this strategy work on any other non-zombie related epidemics?
Most diseases have an initial window where they’re most susceptible. Very likely, if we’d acted quickly in its early days, we could have averted the HIV epidemic. The strategy “hit hard, hit often” is one that also works on the cellular level: If you have an infection, often the best option is to hit it with drugs aggressively until it’s under control. Just like the zombies.
You’ve chosen to base your zombies on the slow-moving, stereotypical zombies we’ve seen in movies like Resident Evil and Night of the Living Dead. Why did you stray from the more modern, fast-paced and active depiction of zombies we’ve seen in movies like 28 Days Later?
A fast-moving zombie is absolutely terrifying—if you’re in its way. A slow-moving zombie seems less scary, but it can actually do more damage. Diseases are much the same: fast-moving diseases like Ebola are utterly terrifying if you’re in their way, but they aren’t nearly as efficient as slow-moving diseases like HIV. This is largely because the slower outbreaks don’t burn themselves out as quickly. Slow-moving zombies can lead to a large outbreak before anyone’s noticed, making them far more dangerous.
Not long after your work on zombie epidemics was introduced, the swine flu scare made waves across North America. The media attention this flu received was massive and panic ensued. Is this the type of epidemic outcomes your work predicts?
When a new disease comes along, you can’t always rely on existing models to accurately represent the virus. Zombies are an excellent illustration of something that has no existing analogue, so you need to develop the model from scratch. That’s exactly what subsequently happened with swine flu, just a few months later: we had a brand new disease, so we needed to develop models using our understanding of biology.
Do you think mankind is headed for an apocalypse?
We’re already living through an apocalypse. HIV is currently the fourth-worst disease of all time and our attempts to contain it have been very limited indeed. In part, this is because HIV affects those who are unloved by society. Issues of race, sexuality, and poverty make this a disease that the dominant members of society don’t want to think about, so it gets swept under the rug. We’ve proven that, as a society, we’re woefully unprepared for any kind of apocalypse that challenges our dominant moral outlooks. Next to HIV, zombies look positively benign.
Zombies have a good side to it and that would be killing them with anything you want from guns to scissors. The only bad thing would be if you had to kill a loved one or a friend. The movie zombieland might help like double tap and when in doupt know your way out or if your tough make up your own rules.