Why Are the Dead Still Walking?

I watched an episode of The Walking Dead with BF last night. I did my best not to be an askhole and follow along but there was one thing that always bugged me. Why are the zombies a continuing problem?

If they follow the basic rules of decomposition, the decaying flesh would eventually lose functionality to the point of rendering the zombie immobile. Soft tissue would be the first thing to go like the eyes and brain. Eyes are self-cleaning organs so with cells regenerating or doing anything helpful, most zombies would be blind in a matter of days.

Even if Walker #3 has glasses, he lacks the instinct to swat away the flies who want to lay maggots in that nice soft tissue. Territorial stray dogs might attack them and even some birds might figure out the blind ones are easy pickings.

There’s also the vast amounts of bacteria living in our bodies. The idea of vampires rising like started from the swell and release of fluids by unembalmed dead. If you’re in a hot and humid enough location, zombies are going to pop like rancid balloons from hell. If you’re guts have blown, the zombie will be knocked to the ground and possibly immobile since a lot of what keeps our joints moving and together is soft tissue.

Other environments are just as bad for walking necrotic flesh. Deserts would dry out and slowly mummify the tissue. It also poses the possibility of cooking what’s left of the brain. Freezing temperatures would freeze whatever water remained in the tissue making them rigid and slow.

Even if I focus on the poppable zombies of TWD, Georgia has animals. They’re not exactly stomping around Atlanta for most of the show so why aren’t bears, cougars, and aggressive stray dogs picking these bastards off? Where are the bugs going after the soft tissue?

Even if they are wandering around Atlanta, it’s still freaking Georgia. The streets make for nice corrals to light ‘em up, either with guns or Molotov cocktails. The fire should destroy the tissue at least rendering them immobile and cooking up what’s left of the brain at best. We’ve established they’re not smart enough to stop, drop, and roll.

Also, how did this even become a thing? Most developed nations are pretty on their shit about rare diseases. Even if the zombie virus started in rural Africa, it’s not going to spread to the entire world. How many Americans who never left the continent got Ebola? 0.

All zombie viruses in the mythos start as blood borne. Even if it turns airborne, it doesn’t turn people until after their dead. Even if it’s an air born virus that turns people upon infection, most countries haven’t forgotten what quarantine is. If someone is visibly sick coming in to a foreign country, they don’t get to stroll around the airport. Customs is going to have some questions.

Even if the zombie virus started in the U.S. (and Fear the Walking Dead makes me think otherwise), there are cops, multiple branches of the military, a freaking government agency dedicated to disease, and how many universities and hospitals available to work on this shit? At least some of those people have to be competent when a national emergency is declared. Can we please write a script where someone, anyone, has seen a zombie movie and has common sense? Sure it might only be 90 minutes but it’d be an interesting, realistic 90 minutes.