College Students in UK Study ‘Zombie Apocalypse’
“by day 100, the surviving population is roughly 100-200 people.”
This sounds silly, given the subject matter, but the study is based on something very interesting in terms of the spread of disease.
Newsmax reports:
College Students Study Zombie Apocalypse
Physics students at a prestigious British school were given a homework assignment straight out of “Night of the Living Dead” — devise a formula to determine how much time it would take for a zombie virus to infect every single person on Earth.
And sadly, the mathematical calculations of the Leicester University pupils don’t look good for humans as they concluded that a zombie apocalypse could wipe out all of humanity in less than six months.
The students who studied “the spread of a zombie virus through the global population with one person infected at day 0” said they found “by day 100, the surviving population is roughly 100-200 people.”
And a few months later, even those survivors are toast thanks to the insatiable hunger of the flesh-eating monsters, which are corpses that come back to life.
Of course, several variables could skewer those dismal results, the dogged student researchers admitted.
“Natural birth and death rates have been neglected since the epidemic takes place over 100 days, so the natural births and deaths are negligible compared to the impact of the zombie virus over the short time frame,” they wrote.
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Comments
As silly as this seems, we use very similar (and in some cases exactly the same) algorithms to analyze the spread of diseases and epidemics in order to better predict the spread of disease and mortality rates concerning pandemics (think Spanish Flu and Ebola for examples).
CDC also put out a booklet on what to do during a zombie apocalypse, a while back. Personally, I don’t go for the hype, and I think it tends to “Hollywoodize” and overlook the real dangers and risks when something really does happen. However, I recognize the argument that some people will not remember things unless it is presented to them in a sensational manner. Science is probably right, society has lost at least 10 IQ points since the Victorian Era.
Along this line, a very interesting outbreak model was discovered within a World of Warcraft “epidemic” a some years back. How it played out was of interest to those of us in mass casualty & disaster response planning due to the fact that “human nature” was truly involved, and not just simulated using percentages and “givens”. Actual human behavior played a critically important factor in the way the “corruption” spread throughout the game, proving it to be in many cases completely unpredictable and downright scary. I believe you can find out more about this if you do a search for the Warcraft Corrupted Blood incident, if memory serves me right. I’m too busy to look it up right now. Maybe I’ll post a comment and provide a link later.
The “zombie” angle just makes it more “interesting” to work with for some. Nice job, Aleister. Good to see something related to my field from time to time. . .
“Science is probably right, society has lost at least 10 IQ points since the Victorian Era.”
I think liberalism would put this on more of a sliding scale from 10 to 50.
Science is probably right, society has lost at least 10 IQ points since the Victorian Era.
Um, actually science says the exact opposite.
Ohh, Wikipedia, isn’t that precious. Actually, no your linked “article” only compares IQ scored since about 1930 until now. That is not what he said. He said between Victorian era until now. Which is supported by this article’s.
http://phys.org/news/2013-05-victorian-era-people-intelligent-modern-day-counterparts.html
https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/were-the-victorians-smarter-than-us.pdf
There are even recent studies that question the accuracy of the Flynn Effect.
Just from my quick research he is right that since the victorian era it appears that IQ has dropped.
However, you are correct as well, at least as it pertains to the Flynn effect. (One study questioning Flynn is not enough to move me.)
But as for your comment as a whole you are basically wrong because you didn’t address the same time period. I should also note that even if Flynn is correct that we still would not have regained the losses from the victorian era until now.
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/our-iqs-are-shrinking-lot-study-finds
This actually sounds pretty interesting to me as a medical professional and a fan of the Zombie apocalypse genre.
Gremlin, you’re right. It is at first. But after a while it gets old and it tends to trivialize the issues we are trying to deal with and learn at the time. Especially when you are doing a Disaster Response Command Center drill. There’s too much laughing and joking going on as the data and results come in.
This type of thing plays out better to students and those who want to learn the basic principles for such pandemics and not so much for the actual training and response planning. Pretty much like they are doing here. But when CDC went there, it was a dud.
Oh, I agree it shouldn’t be used for actual certification training, but for a college course, I think it is ok, since its probably only being looked at on an academic level. But no not for real world application.
Oh, and it’s nice to meet someone here in a somewhat related field (medical, that is).
20 years a Nurse. 🙂
SJWs have definitely shown that white zombies still cling to their racism and sense of entitlement after the apocalypse. sarc
flesh-eating monsters, which are corpses that come back to life.
Which, given that whole “living dead” thing, should add them back into the “living” tally.
Problem solved.