[Jasonft]

There is/was a webcomic out there called 'Last Blood' where the author and an number of readers (myself sadly included) kept arguing back and forth to a ridiculous extent over whether or not the Zekes in that comic could have, in fact, effectively destroyed civilization in less than a week. The author kept telling us he had reasons for everything and to just trust him...

SPOILERS!
(If you want to read a pretty darn good zombie survival tale without knowing the gimmicks, go read it now)



Trick #1: Pretty much *any* contact with zombie teeth led to infection. Death from infection alone took a day or two and was at or very near 100% fatal.

Trick #2: As soon as you died, even from a minor dose of virus, you rose up as a zombie. Time delay was a minute or two (maybe).

Trick #3: Zombies did not smell like food to other zombies and tasted worse. Even the ones that resurrected a minute after you started eating them.

Trick #4: Dying from any other cause while infected (again, even a small dose) led to rising as a zombie. Drowning as an example.

Trick #5: 'Fresh' and unwounded (except for the bite mark, which might be under clothes) zombies looked relatively normal unless you looked really close. Many of them in the initial day or two could and did get on a plane for the far side of the world without raising suspicion... until they started convulsing and biting people (but not killing!) at the other end.

Trick #6: Zombies could run, flat out at top human speed, for *days*.

Trick #7: (The big kicker) The entire swarm was under the direction of a single individual with military training and a sense of smell that could spot a submarine two miles down... and then tell the swarm crewing the destroyer where to drop the depth charges.

The only reason the town the story is set in survived is that the boss-guy wanted it to. Read the story for how and why, it is pretty good. Oh yeah, and there are vampires too. It all makes sense eventually.