Never assume anything, 'cause you'll make an ass out of both you and me.

Really though, never pretend that you know anything about something that doesn't exist yet.

we discussed this a long time ago narrowed the worst case down to two possibilities:
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1) brain is hijacked somehow but the body still has to follow laws of physics and biology... so no flying, muscles need ATP to flex, flowing blood... In the end behaving like a human on loads of pcp/painkillers/rabies.
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2) The zombie is a puppet on invisible strings, moving arms and legs due to an external force without needing to flex the muscles. If this is the case a head shot may do nothing, and there's no reason it can't fly. What you're dealing with is not so much a zombie as a golum made out of a human, and could just as easily be made out of wood or rock (more or less impossible based on my grasp of current technology). if you're into video games the gravity gun has been making a lot of appearances, so imagine someone steering around a dead human body with a gravity gun... or rebuilding it with robotic innards.
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the WORST worst case scenario as long as we're going crazy with imagination is going to be something like aliens with ray guns or the earth just fucking explodes for no reason.
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actually truth be told i find the Terminator concept to be far more unnerving and believable than the classic invincible zombie, and i don't want to beat the rabies drum too much because at this point that's been mostly sorted, but even something as simple as a normal human on a combat cocktail or even just with a lot of adrenaline is going to be able to shrug off a few bullets to the chest, at least for a short time. people get blown completely in half and still crawl around and bitch about it for a few minutes.
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in short, it depends on your gun. if you have only one bullet and it's small, make it count. if you've got a lot of stopping power or a semiauto with plenty of ammo i'd put the first one in the chest just for giggles, it's a bigger target and putting an extra one in the chest when it's 30 meters out doesn't hurt and may stop it from getting closer.

I think he has a point. At the very least, itd stagger the zombie long enough to run away, wich this site preaches last time i checked. Its not so much killing zombies, but living long enough to help rebuild. Wont live long if your constanly in the thick of battle

>>71
Well Redux while your preaching Rabies i must preach for that new game that came out Left 4 Dead i believe. The entire story line is about a "what if" scenario with rabies mutating to humans. I was curious and played through the first few levels and after that was like O...M...G... the sheer number of mutations off of the normal zombie is brutal. And if Rabies could really cause that to happen when it mutates to us Id say its going to be a tad worse then a zombie/golem. First off in the normal sized horde you would see* running away works SOO well* there a quite a few ones that are ripped and quite a few others suited to specific tasks. So again if rabies could mutate a zombie and make a class/hierarchy zombie system then it would be a new WORSE WORSE case scenario. And SkyNet can only send back one Schwarzenegger at a time. And they are weak against trash compactors and steel mills.

I disagree good sir. And here's why: Yes a body-mass shot is much more ideal when targeting, the chances of you hitting something the size of your fist is just as unlikely, if not more than hitting something the size of a melon. You take your chances any way you like em, but I'm sticking to the dome.

If you're aiming body, you don't have to hit something the size of a fist. Anywhere within about 4-5 inches of the heart will do the trick, considering that you'd bleed out in about thirty seconds if a major artery in that area were hit.

But havent we all agreed that shooting its heart and waiting for it to bleed out might not work. A headshot is a sure fire way to kill any realistic zombie, albeit tougher and harder to kill.

>>247
there's a difference between a virus causing psychological and physiological changes and a virus that turns you into a super hero. L4D and similar video games are deep into the realm of fantasy, viruses are not capable of inciting instantaneous evolution or such complicated physical changes that it turns the person into an entirely different physical being.
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A virus generally mutates itself to allow greater ability to spread, but it doesn't mutate its hosts to make them capable of carrying 50 gallons of poisonous vomit, or put on 1,000 pounds of muscle mass and stone skin.
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The reason we use zombies as a template is to look at the concept of a natural disaster that doesn't burn itself automatically over time, and to introduce the human element into disaster preparedness in a non-political way... not to fantasize about zombies evolving 100 foot long tongues or the ability to walk straight up the side of a wall and jump 50 feet.

>>257
You sir missed the point utterly. I did not mean the "special" zombie types but the general zombies within that game. If youve played it you know that they could run have a pack mentality, and are from a virus jumping species into humans.

>>259 And i have gotten hopelessly off topic. Moving on

>>259
of course i missed the point entirely, you started off talking about the "sheer number of mutations" but apparently weren't talking about the special zombie types, then moved on to talking about skynet and terminator.
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i don't feel particularly bad for not being able to follow your train of thought, but it would be constructive if you focused more energy on communicating effectively and less on being defensive.

Ive been studying viruses in my Microbiology classes. And viruses just jack your own cells replication machinery (organelles) to replicate themselves, which eventually kills your cells.
So, the only way this would really work, is if it worked like the rabies virus and effected your brain. Subjects express symptoms of hydrophobia and aerophobia (fear of water and air), so mutations could theoretically happen that make you attack people (which is sometimes a symptom of rabies, since patients usually become delusional because theyre brain is being destroyed).
Now, its possible that a virus could cause deterioration in parts of the brain, causing people to act more animal like, attacking people of things, because they brain is slowly dying.
Now, you need your brain to function. So you cant loose too much of it before you stop breathing, or stop moving, or just stop being able to send signals to start or stop something that would be important.
So, a virus, if it could make you into a violent delusional psycho, it wouldnt last for very long, because you would die pretty quick once symptoms started to show.
So, it could spread quickly, and kill lots pf people if its incubation period goes unnoticed, but you would not be shuffling around for eternity, your body would still be your body. And you would die in the same ways as everyone else as a result of trauma. (Mostly, but ill address this in a second.)
Ok, so what about bacteria. Well, bacteria do live amoungst us, and do constantly adapt and change, unlike viruses which are very specific to species and area of infection. Bacteria can pretty much grow anywhere if the conditions are right, so they could grow on your skin, and rot your flesh, they can grow in you, and kill you if your body doesnt amount a good response fast enough.
So lets say, a bacterium were to get into yo brain, and started growing in there, but your body mounted a response and killed it. Mostly in time. But there was still brain damage. Well, it probably would be severe enough to make you start attacking people, or you would still probably die because once bacteria reach numbers high enough to seriously hurt us, its probably going to also kill us. This sort of falls into the LD50 or lethal amount of bacterium to kill 50% of a test group. If levels are below that, i forget the other term, but you will probably just fight off the infection, and antibiotics might treat it. If your over that number, your body isnt going to amount the right response in time, and you will die just as quickly as you would in the virus example.
SO, cancer on the other hand, is an uncontrolled replication of cells, from oncogenes, basically, the genes forget to shut off, and this creates unchecked growth.
We actually still use cancer cells from a patient who died....50 or so years ago, we keep feeding them, and they keep growing and dividing.
So, my hypothesis (and its just that, a guess, im not a professional microbiologist) is that, if a virus, similar to rabies, were to infect a brain that had cancer in the right parts, the virus could destroy enough of our non cancer brain, to bring about psychopathic delusions and violent side effects, but then it somehow, after it makes you crazy, the brain tumor grow in a way that the virus can only feed off of it, and not the non cancer brain (or at least not as easily) then you might be able to prolong the psychotic and violent side effects of the virus in the normal brain.
I dont think this would give you much more time though, either the cancer would kill you, or the virus would replicate faster than the tumor grows, work around the tumor, and you would still die.
In this perfect example of a cirus that does damage, but them stops doing damage because its 'eating' a tumor, i would still say you would only have a few weeks tops. And cancer doesnt spread from person to person like a virus or bacterium can. So, that probably wouldnt happen either.
So, your body would still be trying to carry out there every day activities, even though you would slowly be dying, so, hurting one of those vital processes via trauma, would still kill you the same way as if you werent infected.

>>297

Now, you can read free FBI papers on ballistics, but i can sum it up for you too.
Unless the central nervous system (brain, brain stem, spinal cord) is destroyed of severly damaged, there is no medical reason for you to die instantly.
even if you completely destroyed the heart, you would still have enough oxygen in your blood to keep you alive for about 15-30 seconds.
So why then do police depts, govt agencies, and the military, train to shoot the center of mass?
Because its a bigger target, and just because there is slim chance of a "insta kill" the risks outweigh the benifits for training headshots (unless you are a dedicated marksman for an agency of military unit)
There is still alot of shit that will kill you quickly if its hurt in your body. You have your heart, aorta, other cardiovascular pumps and arteries, lungs, and liver, and spinal cord. Now, if you have a bullet in any of these places, chances of you living for a long time are slim.
Your heart will not be able to pump blood to your brain.
Your liver will not be able to contain all the nasty shit that it uses to filter and help with digestion in your body, which would cause your blood to become diseased and acidic, which would kill you very fast.
Your lungs will collapse if they are punctured because they are not as strong as your ribcage, the pressure causes them to collapse.
So, chances of dying from being shot above the diaphragm are high.
Its also a very deep target, whereas the head is not, so over penetration of the torso is harder than over penetration of the head, and so you might be putting people at risk because life is not a flat shooting range. And your core does not move as much as the things that are attached to it, which makes it easier to target and hit.
Now, bullets are not very big, even "big" bullets like a .50 cal. They dont weight very much.
You however (yes even the small ladies) weight alot in comparison to that tiny peice of copper, lead, or silver (fancy competitive shooters do actually use silver bullets because they wight more and thus maintain better momentum, making them less effected by wind, supposidly).
So its not so much the bullet itself putting a small hole in you, its that bullets expand when they hit things (or fragment), because they are soft metals traveling very fast, while still hot from being propelled. So in other words, they squish.
What this does, is when a bullets hits something, it peels back, gets flat, fragments, and continues to go through the body, destroying things along the way, so the more expansion you have, the better chances of you hitting something important are.
With this destruction, there is a permanent cavity, this is where removal of tissue has happened, this causes bleeding, and those tissues arent there anymore to do whatever there job was, in certain areas, that job could be something that you could die, very fast without, like breathing, or moving blood.
There is also a temporary cavity, caused by the shockwave of energy being transferred as the bullet passes through you, this can cause damage to organs and tissue, which can also kill you, or put you into shock, which really can be fatal.
Now, when people fight, get shot at, etc, they are usually pumping with adrenaline, so they may not even know that theyve been shot. Hollywood has made it part of our mind that we are suppose to fall down when shot, theyre is no medical need to fall when shot, unless you were shot in the brain of spinal cord.
If someone were shot in the intestine, and didnt feel the compelling urge to die, he would medically die about 3 days later from having lead poisoning of from an outside infection as a result of there being a hole in them (untreated of course).
If a bullet were strong enough to knock someone down, it would also posses the power to knock the shooter down too, laws of physics and all.
So, now that we've figured out that viruses cant really do what zombie movies say they can, and how bullets actually kill people, let me wrap it up with a bit of mindset.
The idea of someone trying to kill you is a pretty nerve racking idea. So, when confronted, even police officers and soldiers, people who are trained to have to do that, still have some problems with it. Your bodies alarm responses are there for a reason. Fight or flight is a huge psychological thing in your head, but people dont realize, that all the adrenaline is making your heart beat really fast, and things your body doesnt think it needs, it doesnt put as much effort into.
One of those being fine motor skills, like pulling a tirgger, of manipulating anything with your hands.
So, think about it, you strolling along, you pistol in its it holster, lets just say you open carrying. And you someone tries to attack you.
You probably wont see it coming, people attack other people similarly to predators attacking prey. What good would it do to start 20 feet in front of another person and yell "Im going to take your wallet, get ready!"
Your going to flinch, most likely, its what people do when they are suprised by something, its your minds way of keeping you safe from actually getting hurt from random things in life.
You then have to have the presence of mind to slow down, think through whats happening on a basic level, grab your weapon (properly), draw your weapon (properly), orient your weapon (in the right direction), make sure you are on target, and squeeze the trigger. This is not exactly the easiest process in the world, you are reacting to a reaction, which is slower than an action.
Even other weapons, like blades or bludgeons, you must still get them out and make them work for you cant work anymore, this is not as easy as knifing that guy who came around the corner in your modern warfare video game.
So, now think about trying to do all that, to a double fist sized target, which is alot smaller than a human torso.
Considering everything else. Yeah, ill stick with center of mass.
Thanks for reading, i know it was alot.

I salute you, sir/ma'am. However, while I do not disagree with any of what you said about how bullets kill, I will make these points: While you could stay alive after your heart stops beating, it is highly unlikely. The shock generally kills people instantly. Not always, of course, but usually. Also, you would still be 'alive' for longer than the 15-30 seconds you mentioned. The vast majority of people, when circulation is completely cut off to the brain, are only unconscious within 15-30 seconds. It generally takes 40 seconds to a minute for death. However, an unconscious enemy who will be dead within moments is close enough to a dead enemy. Point 2: firearms absorb part of the recoil from the round being fired. Semiauto more than revolvers/bolt-action/single shot, of course. They have springs and rechamber mechanisms as well as the weight of the weapon. Add this to the fact that the shooter is prepared for the 'kick' and that some weapons will knock you on your butt if you aren't, it is possible that a round would have enough punch to knock someone down. Just saying.