Undead Astronauts

over at the aptly named overthinking it, there’s an article analyzing the economic fallout from a zombie apocalypse. it assumes that post-apocalypse survivors would figure out how to tame the insatiable hunger for brains and use zombies for work.

In fact, rather than labor, one can view zombies as inexpensive factory tools, which require no maintenance or upgrades. If a government were to permit the use of zombies in the private sector, businesses would see marked improvements in their annual production levels, GDP would gradually rise, and the economy might stabilize more quickly.

…

Consequently, if ever there was a labor shortage, the United States could recruit individuals to voluntarily turn into zombies prior to their deaths and live out their remaining eternities as undead corpses helping to boost the economy.  Why would anybody voluntarily choose to endure this “life”-style?   Easy—the United States government would provide them with incentives to do so during their lives.

Suppose the US government offered benefits to youth—perhaps as subsidies towards tuition, job benefits, or even simple monetary payments—if they contracted their eternal “lives” to the government.  I predict a large take-up rate, particularly among the nation’s younger individuals or those in particular need of such benefits.  The older-age populations would likely be more difficult to convince, as they would, on average, have a shorter time to collect on government benefit programs.

this analysis is pretty interesting but i think if we’re going to take the analysis this far, it’d be useful to think a bit about the biology and physics behind it too. there is no free lunch. the zombies in tradional movies, comics and games are truly undead, i.e. a person must first die in order to become a zombie. once zombified, metabolism would cease, and w/ no metabolism, a zombie would not be able to do anything b/c it would have no energy source. it could not maintain standard upkeep of body waste removal or fight off the standard decomposition process and would basically rot away. but it’s no fun ending the analysis there so lets assume metabolism of some sort still occurs.

a example of a metabolising zombie would be one from the 28 days/weeks movies. these zombies are still alive and need sustenance or they will die (as they did in the original). if live zombies were used, and the huge attendent legal challenges were surmounted, we could indeed have zombie tools.

but the fact that the tools must consume energy before work is extracted changes the economic equation drastically. we would still need to feed them, even if the food didn’t need to taste good. they’d still produce waste which requires sanitation. and most importantly, they’d still breakdown if not properly taken care of like any complex machine. this last detail basically invalidates the economic analysis above b/c then the most useful zombies would be young ppl in their prime who have the most to lose by turning themselves into zombies. at that point, the only ppl that might be zombified in any orderly manner would be condemned criminals or something. hell, it might even serve as a crime deterrent.

still, it was an interesting idea and one that would lead to all sorts of strange outcomes.

necrophilia would be decriminalized, the realdoll enterprise would go out of business and one of the first zombie professions to emerge would be zombostitution. zimps (zombie pimps) would have a stable of zombostitutes that wouldn’t need to take days off or run away b/c they were beaten. cases of statutory rape and child molestation would go down w/ the availability of teen and kid zombies. condom manufacturers would need to improve their failure rates a bit tho prolly.

illegal immigration would evaporate as low skilled jobs were simply turned over to zombies.

citizens only smart enuf to work low iq jobs might become zuddites and go smash up businesses that used zombies.

some technological innovations might not get invented or put to full use, as the romans similarly disregarded their invention of the steam engine b/c of the abundance of slaves.

if live zombies are assumed, zids (zombie kids) would be born. an enterprising businessman might have a zarem and churn out zombie tools that way.

that’s all i can think of atm.

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