Zombie physiology also seems a stretch—-how do organisms with so many open and often bleeding dirt-covered wounds maintain hemodynamic stability in the face of inevitable septic shock and/or blood loss? A movie where a virus just makes infected people seem normal and very friendly but want to furtively bite other people to spread disease and then have delayed onset terminal sickness, like a subtle version of rabies, would be terrifying and more plausible.
In "World War Z" (the book), the scientific "questions" regarding how the zombies work are brought up but not answered. For instance, in the book, the zombies freeze solid in winter and when spring comes thaw and just start going again. The fact that ice crystals normally rupture cell membranes is brought up as a question of how this is possible; but no attempt is made to answer the question, because that's not the point of the book.
Wood frogs can survive freezing solid. Their liver produces glucose to flood all cells, prevent cell freezing, and protect against dehydration. Ice forms around cells and organs but not inside them, preventing lethal damage.
In other words, the problem is "lampshaded": The author indicates to the audience that they are well-aware something doesn't make sense, in a way that encourages the reader to ignore it going forward.
In Demon, the third in John Varley's Gaia trilogy of sci fi books, the (alien-manufactured) "zombies" were animated by colonies of worms that fed on the soft tissues of the corpse, and simply replaced the actions of the lifeless muscles. They thus had very human outlines, and if anything, far more horrifying looks than half-rotted corpses.
They also didn't last very long; they were meant as disposable remote-controlled troops.
The "original" (in the non-Vodoo sense) zombies shown in George Romero's "living dead" movies made no claims that the undead were scientifically explainable -- it was later movies like 28 Days Later that tried to rationalize them as infected, living people, to their detriment, I think.
In 28 Days Later the infected starve to death, I can't remember them being overly supernatural.
It is The Walking Dead in which the zombies are basically immortal but useless. Unless the plot requires otherwise. After Season 1 it is a terribly written show. Don't get me started.
28 Days Later is scarier because the infected, living humans can chase you down, climb and open doors, and the infection spreads much faster. I always wondered what The Walking Dead would have been like if the survivors couldn't clear out a prison full of zombies with hand to hand weapons. 28 Years Later is coming out this year, and they going to show what happens to humanity stuck in the UK that's been overrun by the Rage virus and presumably quarantined all this time by the rest of the world.
The first section about "The Incredible Shrinking Man" reminded me of "Life At Low Reynolds Number", with the concept of "scaling".
>It helps to imagine under what conditions a man would be swimming at, say, the same Reynolds number as his own sperm. Well, you put him in a swimming pool that is full of molasses, and then you forbid him to move any part of his body faster than 1 cm/min. Now imagine yourself in that condition: you're under the swimming pool in molasses, and now you can only move like the hands of a clock. If under these ground rules you are able to move a few meters in a couple of weeks, you may qualify as a low Reynolds number swimmer.[0]
Always (usually) fun to read an expert talk about their field as it crops up in unusual places, at least when it's done without an ego.
I've avoided the YouTube clickbait "real bank robber reviews movies" videos, but maybe I shouldn't.
You can see similar issues in the recent American Godzilla movies. In the first one, Godzilla seems huge and heavy. In the later ones, they keep making it faster and more agile and the result is that it seems light and small (and extremely fake) no matter how many buildings fall over or ships get sunk.
I often think this when there's meant to be a big heavy thing moving around. I think it's one of my problems with Pacific Rim 2 vs the first film. In the first film, the robots were slow and heavy, in the second they were nimble and didn't have any of the weight behind them
The new director started somewhere how he did not like how big and bulky the original robots were. Which was the entire point of the movie! They are beefy tanks. It felt as real as you could imagine building sized robots to be.
The camera does shake when he lands to give the impression of a hard landing.
He probably should have also had a crater or something show up on the road when landing. Maybe that was a limitation of the CGI of the time though. If so maybe the camera shaking was a way to deal with that CGI limitation in order to make the Hulk seem like he had weight.
I worked as a stress analyst in aerospace for a while. Lots of good insights here about buckling of thin walled structures, with respect to arthropods and how to attack giant arthropods.
Another scientific bit that's almost always ignored in the growing/shrinking trope is that the pitch of one's voice would change. The incredible shrinking man would presumably have an inaudibly high pitched voice. His own cilia are shrinking too so it'd be interesting to work out if he could hear himself.
Variants like the Hulk also seem to violate the conservation of mass but it's amusing to imagine using that property to make an infinite power source. Put Bruce Banner/Hulk on one side of a teeter toter and a mass between that of Banner and the Hulk on the other, then get Banner/Hulk to alternate forms. Profit!
I highly recommend the books by Mark Glassy, The Biology of Science Fiction Cinema and Biology Run Amok!: The Life Science Lessons of Science Fiction Cinema.
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For a slightly longer form take from Mike on B-movie monsters see:
LaBarbera, M. 2013. It’s Alive! The Science of B-Movie Monsters. Univ of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo178413...
For more about Mike and his impact on the biological sciences at the Univ of Chicago see: https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-medicine/life-aquatic
https://www.nps.gov/gaar/learn/nature/wood-frog-page-2.htm
They also didn't last very long; they were meant as disposable remote-controlled troops.
It is The Walking Dead in which the zombies are basically immortal but useless. Unless the plot requires otherwise. After Season 1 it is a terribly written show. Don't get me started.
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Dead Comment
>It helps to imagine under what conditions a man would be swimming at, say, the same Reynolds number as his own sperm. Well, you put him in a swimming pool that is full of molasses, and then you forbid him to move any part of his body faster than 1 cm/min. Now imagine yourself in that condition: you're under the swimming pool in molasses, and now you can only move like the hands of a clock. If under these ground rules you are able to move a few meters in a couple of weeks, you may qualify as a low Reynolds number swimmer.[0]
[0]https://cooperlab.wustl.edu/PracticalAdvice/Purcell%201977.p...
Meta: Unfortunately, even the earliest snapshot of this page on the Wayback Machine doesn't contain working images: https://web.archive.org/web/20040624122432/https://fathom.li...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qSiEKntQA
Alex Honnold Breaks Down Iconic Rock Climbing Scenes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzceykTiwjs
He probably should have also had a crater or something show up on the road when landing. Maybe that was a limitation of the CGI of the time though. If so maybe the camera shaking was a way to deal with that CGI limitation in order to make the Hulk seem like he had weight.
Variants like the Hulk also seem to violate the conservation of mass but it's amusing to imagine using that property to make an infinite power source. Put Bruce Banner/Hulk on one side of a teeter toter and a mass between that of Banner and the Hulk on the other, then get Banner/Hulk to alternate forms. Profit!