Kinder, Gentler Zombie World

In this world the solar system moved in 1992 into a curious cloud of greenish radiation unknown to science, only barely visible through reflection from the dark side of the Moon. It took a decade for the solar system to pass through the relatively small region suffused with the strange energy. Scientific study of the green glow (which seemed to have properties somewhere between those of particles and waves) would eventually revolutionize quantum mechanics and the understanding of the Multiverse, but at the time the effects of the green radiation were much more on people's minds. Principally, it's tendency to raise the dead.

Affecting everything with a nervous system above a certain level of development, the radiation caused reanimation as long as the brain was not entirely decayed and was not shielded by over fifty feet of solid rock. Reanimated were most birds, mammals…and more troublingly, human beings.
It might have been less complicated if the zombies were all shambling, drooling mindless monsters ravenously hungry for flesh, but the fresher ones reanimated with full memories and personalities (if also with a ravenous appetite for living flesh), while more badly spoiled ones ranged all the way from amnesiac but still fully sapient to stereotypical mindless shamblers, with barely enough consciousness to try doorknobs and an annoying tendency to find their way to their original homes. And as people continued to die, as they usually do, the number of fresh, sentient zombies steadily increased.

Fortunately, zombiesm is not catching.

Given the rate of decay of flesh in tropical lands and the fondness for cremation in many countries, the initial rising was outnumbered by the living at least forty to one, and in many cases the dead were unable to break out of solidly made vaults and caskets. Still, there was quite a bit of panic, horror, etc. and zombies did indeed take a lot of killing; brain shots worked, but only if really massive damage was inflicted (nailguns, small axes, etc. generally did not work, and even some low-caliber guns didn't always do the trick: zombie brains soon take on a firm, rubbery consistency not much hurt by hydraulic shock). And of course many of the human ones were sapient and not at all pleased with people trying to kill them: many of them were soon shooting back.

Zombie animals were not quite so much of a problem, given that generally small animals killed in the wild are eaten rather quickly, and the radiation took several hours to work its strange magic on a dead body: however, dead deer, moose, etc. soon became a serious problem, given their all-encompassing carnivorous attitudes. Many cats, inflicting horrible injuries on small animals and then not bothering with finishing them off, had nasty experiences upon returning to the scene of the crime, with fledglings, small mice, etc sinking their beaks or teeth into their flesh and not letting go even after the rest of their bodies were torn off. Rats, killed with gas or poison and then returning to life, were a _really_ big problem. Some very nasty scenes took place in slaughterhouses.

After a great deal of violence, negotiations set in.

The emergence of the Earth from the radiation zone was a great relief for the living, who worried that as they continued dying the zombies would eventually become a majority. It has left the sentient zombies, of which there are now over three hundred millions, at a bit of a loss: will there ever be any more of their kind?

It has also disappointed a great many of the living, who had hoped to avoid the Big Sleep through zombie resurrection. (Few wanted other people to arise again as zombies, but many, perhaps even most, weren't going to deny themselves the choice by having themselves immediately skullcrushed or cremated after death). Now that becoming a zombie is no longer an option, many religions are pushing hard the notion that zombies are mere soulless replicas of the original person, which of course leads to much anger from the Zombie Antidiscrimination Society. And of course there is the accusation of being sleeper agents for Satan…

(Most Hindus and many Buddhists are generally more accepting, seeing the whole thing as some sort of temporary glitch in the cycle of rebirth).

Religious wackiness is up all over, with the zombie epidemic widely being seen as a sign of the approaching end times.

Zombies generally have full legal equality in only a few countries: in some challenges to their relatives holding onto their inheritance have failed, in others they are not allowed to join the armed forces, efforts to repeal the "until death do us part" bit of marriage from the other end have generally failed, and many countries refuse to let them vote, pointing out that it was illegal for dead people to vote even before the zombies arrived. The US generally has a fairly good record, although the Defense of Living Families act makes human-zombie marriage illegal and prohibits zombies to adopt anyone except other zombies.

Some countries have no zombies: several dictatorships (most notoriously North Korea), once they realized what was going on, made it a capital offense to fail to destroy the brain immediately upon death (and in far too many cases, before it). Others have seen their zombie populations move away, due to unsuitable climate.

Animal zombies are increasingly rare: having no intelligence, they cannot restrain themselves from attacking dangerous targets, and they know nothing about how to protect themselves from decay. All the zombie whales, constantly soaking in salt water, have fallen apart by now, although their attacks sadly brought about the extinction of several species of marine mammals. The ecological damage Worldwide, has been considerable, and brought about a new rebirth of conservationism. Many national forests have been declared safe for human visitors again, the danger of being eaten by a zombie bear or moose having declined to almost nothing.

A great many Manly Hunters perished looking for that big-animal-zombie trophy.

If large animal zombies are rare now, small animals have only survived under most unusual circumstances, wear tear decay and larger animals making fairly quick work of them. People going outside generally no longer wear the heavy boots and protective quilted clothes and basket helmets used as protection against zombie mice, rats and sparrows. (The last tended to have a very short half-life, what with the feathers falling out). The exterminator's job has lost some of its heroic glamour.

The internet is rather more global and universal than OTL, with many people preferring to avoid going outside during the years of the green radiation, although a new outdoorsy movement has sprung up in reaction of late.
Politics are a bit different. The zombie problem clearly could not be dealt with purely through private enterprise, so people have come to expect a more interventionist government. The security state of OTL set up after 2001 to deal with terrorists was set up under Clinton to deal with zombies human and otherwise: Bin Laden was killed in the wilds of Afghanistan by a zombie mountain goat. Terror bombing went out of style during the 90s as it became clear that the results were usually to create a bunch of vengeful zombies, and that the bomber would face justice as long as their head remained in one piece. (The Israelis deny that they have the heads of several terrorists locked in a vault somewhere, forever alive, forever starving. But they don't deny it too hard).

Zombies or no zombies, history has kept on going. The Iranian-Taliban war (which produced a lot of zombies) and the breakup of Afghanistan into three smaller states. The growth of the Death-God cult in Germany from a few whackos to a global church of three million and a blood feud with the Scientologists, who claim it's all Xenu's work. There's an even worse mess in Africa than OTL, with large areas essentially depopulated by people too poor to afford adequate protection fleeing plagues of zombie animals. The State of Emergency continues in Russia. The assassination of Saddam Hussein by zombie Special Forces.

The global economy didn't grow too much during the 90s, due to a lack of (zombie-terrorized) consumer confidence, heavy diversion of economic activity into the building of weapons, traps, zombie small animal-proof houses, an increased death rate, and civil wars, triggered either by human-zombie conflict, massive increases in the amount of weapons in private hands in some nations, and in other cases the lack of weapons in the hands of the public and their consequent annoyance at governments that would not allow them to defend themselves. Things have picked up nicely in the last five years, though.

Meat-eating among humans went down rather sharply during the 90s, partly due to increased costs (more thorough killing procedures, the difficulty of protecting free-range cattle from zombie animal attacks) and party due to psychological issues (the fear that the meat might somehow still be alive or taken from a zombie animal, and the association of meat-eating with zombies themselves). It has bounced back a bit since 2002, but more people than OTL remain vegetarians.

Keeping zombie animals is illegal in most countries, but that doesn't prevent a lot of people from doing so. Accidents are frequent.

It is not easy being a zombie.
There are some good points. You'll never feel pain again, you'll never get tired, you don't feel too hot or too cold, you're very hard to kill, you're usually (unless badly damaged before revival) stronger than a normal human, you don't need to breathe, you don't get sick, and you can live a long time – if you can keep yourself in good shape. Which is, admittedly, difficult.
For one thing, there's the decomposition. Whatever curious force animates zombies has the side effect of slowing down decay and repelling insects to some extent, but although it will take a while, sooner or later, if you are a zombie, you have to deal with maggots, and sooner or later you'll start turning a funny color. Most zombies smell rather strongly of alcohol, formaldehyde, DDT: they bathe in them, drink them, inject them into their bodies (a bit difficult: the slimy black goo that serves zombies as blood moves only sluggishly). It's not nice (even the zombies themselves don't like the odor), but it beats being slowly eaten or puffing up and turning purple.

Related to that is the wear and tear. Zombies, like severe leprosy sufferers some of them resemble, have no sense of pain, and as such suffer many small scrapes and cuts without noticing, and one can get rather ragged-looking after not too many months that way. Zombie cuts will in fact grow back together if stitched or glued together, but it's a slow process. Heavy, protective clothing is a must. Humidity is also a problem: too little, and you start drying out and getting increasingly leathery: too much, and one begins to suffer from what can be called "full-body trench foot." (Zombies do dry out rather more slowly than human beings: they do not lose moisture in aspiration since they don't breathe, and don't lose it through body cooling, since they don't sweat).

A zombie can hydrate, either by drinking a lot of water (slowly absorbed through inner body surfaces) or soaking in it, but must be careful not to overdo it. Drying out is generally more feared: once you get "shriveled eyeball", it'll be a long time before your eyesight recovers. Many zombies wear masks or Invisible Man style bandages over exposed skin.

Heat, as long as the humidity is not too high or too low, is not a problem: cold is. Zombies do not feel hot or cold, but their exotic biology generates very little heat, and once the temperature drops more than a few degrees below freezing, a zombie will eventually freeze solid, no matter how much they bundle up. And although a zombie can survive freezing and thawing out, the "freezer burn of the brain" has permanent effects: it doesn't take many freeze/thaw cycles to make you a mindless shambler. Zombies in cold climates are very big on heat packs. (Short distances in the cold aren't a problem, since a human body well wrapped up has a fair amount of thermal inertia: long periods outside is a no-no. There are zombies in cold areas, and rural zombies, but there are no cold-climate rural zombies).

The worst part is the appetite.

Zombies are hungry for the flesh of the living. Why, nobody is sure: they don't seem to get much nutritional value out of it – flesh going through zombie digestive tracts (which takes a week or more) tends to come out rotten and slimy-green but largely undigested. However, zombies have a strong appetite, which requires sizeable amounts of raw, warm, bloody meat to satisfy (global beef and pork production have gone up substantially, almost compensating for the losses in the 90s). The trouble is that appetite generally exceeds the capacities of the zombies' slow, largely gravity-driven "digestion."

Most zombies are all too familiar with the stomach pump.

Almost as bad is sex, or rather the lack of it. Zombies are capable of affection and even love, but they are unable to get aroused. There are some human fetishists who will pay good money to have sex with female zombies, but it doesn't do anything for the zombies.

Zombies of course need jobs to pay for large amounts of meat, and zombie employment is a major political football. On the one hand, keeping hungry zombies from going on a department-store-raiding rampage (with some cat and dog eating among the more desperate) is a big issue, since a zombie mob is not easily dispersed, but on the other nobody wants to be seen as picking the taxpayer's pocket to subsidize zombies' disgusting eating habits. And very few people are happy with zombie co-workers. On the Gripping Hand, zombies usually will work cheap, and can work tirelessly, don't sleep, and are unaffected by, say, a working environment rich in asbestos or other toxins.

So a lot of zombies end up in construction or shitty industrial jobs or in the new US national infrastructure program: they are of course denounced for taking jobs away from the poor and needy. In some countries, zombies are essentially slaves of the state: zombie labor is increasingly important in Chinese sweatshops.

If a zombie manages to hold a job, they are a definite economic plus, zombie supporters and zombies point out: they work hard, pay taxes, and are much less of a social cost than normal humans (for one thing, very little in healthcare costs).

Other zombies serve in the armed forces of various nations, although usually in separate "zombie battalions" to spare other soldiers the sight and smell. Zombie soldiers often complain of being assigned to the crappiest and most dangerous positions, to which comes the logical reply that there's no point in having zombies in the armed forces if they aren't in positions where their relative unkillability would be of some use.

Anti-zombie prejudice remains a serious problem world-wide. Many nations have concentrated zombies in special "undead residence zones" (AKA ghettos) or even tried to put them in barracks behind wire (for their own safety, of course): such efforts have usually ended messily. Even in more democratic countries, things are often unpleasant. Hospitals nowadays build special annexes for dealing with zombies who need a finger stitched back on or a breadknife pulled out of their back, on the excuse that zombies might bring disease into the regular hospital: the people in such annexes, zombies complain, are often not doctors or even nurses, just people good with string, pliers and a staple gun. Zombie workers on the new US southwest fast rail line rioted over their overseer's habit of feeding them by throwing chunks of raw meat at them out of the back of a moving truck.

There is often a good deal of human-on-zombie violence, since people know zombies who kill or bite humans will face severe penalties, while a human who makes a dent in a zombie's skull with a length of piping, as long as the zombie cannot prove permanent impairment (and there usually isn't) will be let off lightly. And of course, it's not like the zombie actually feels anything, right? Of course, such fun and games usually involve a crowd of humans vs. one zombie: one on one, or even two or three on one, it gets a bit too scary.

Zombies have a good sense of taste and smell, and can (moderately) enjoy eating other things than raw meat, although it does nothing to reduce their appetite, and of course just speeds the time until the pipes need to be flushed out. (Lots of very hot water also will speed things along, but can lead to bloating).

TV also provides some jobs for zombies: some Extreme Sports shows now feature zombie action which would cripple any normal human (and sometimes leads to a zombie spending some months immobilized while a limb slowly grows back together. But hey, it's not like it hurts or does permanent damage, no?). Self-mocking zombie comedians remain popular. Then there's the zombie nature photographer who coats himself with Water Seal, wears some heavy weights, and then simply walks along the sea bottom in search of good shots…

The notion of using zombies as a non-air using, radiation-resistant spaceship crew has taken a bit of a setback after some wiseass calculated just how much raw meat would be needed to send one zombie to Mars and back without going mad with hunger.

If zombies struggle to find employment, they provide employment for many humans. Segregated zombie housing. Zombie "just killed large animals" eating places. Self-heated clothing for zombies living in cold climates. A rich variety of new, toxic chemical products for zombies working to stave off rot and carrion-eaters. Even zombie beauticians: some zombies still try to put on an effort of looking human, with massive amounts of makeup, skin repair, surgical fixes, hair implants, etc. (Of course, there are those which go the other way, deliberately wearing their hair stringy and coated with mysterious goo, sharpened teeth, openings sliced in their blackened faces, and some of the most alarming piercings you will ever see.)

Mexico has seen a burst of pro-zombie sentiment, since some illegal immigrants lost in the desert were carried to safety by Mexican zombies (who, like the living, were headed for the US in search of jobs).

Graveyards worldwide have been extensively dug up, as zombies looked for those of their kind trapped in overly solid coffins and vaults. This has often led to nasty clashes with humans outraged at the desecration of their honored (decomposed beyond possibility of revival) dead.

The ultimate zombie taboo is the eating of a human. It does happen: zombies as much as humans have their crazies and sickos, and sometimes a zombie will go so long without being able to eat as to go a bit psycho (imagine your standard Warner Bros cartoon where starving people begin to see each other as food items). The zombies try hard to police their own community, and there are many rumored cases of "private justice" being carried out among the zombies. But it does happen, and most often with a huge burst of publicity. Zombies hate it, since it reduces them to the status of dangerous animals, and always brings a burst of new demands to police zombies, to isolate zombies, to lock zombies away. In vain zombies point out that humans are far likelier to be murdered by other humans than by zombies: human-eating always acts as blood to the sharks of the media.

Such things help strengthen not just human desires to have zombies far away from them, but also those zombies who have similar feelings. The Zombie Nation movement, calling for a zombie homeland, has been increasingly visible on the news lately. Of course, where such a place could be established is difficult to say: there has been some talk of buying desert land from Australia or some of the Saharan nations, but the costs of establishing an infrastructure would be formidable.

Zombies are not inherently slow. Their ability to exert muscular contraction greater than that of living humans means that theoretically they should be able to move their legs faster than untrained normal humans. And this is true, more or less: however, over any distance, a healthy normal human will almost always outdistance the Zombie, especially over uneven ground. Why? The Zombie is falling down a lot of the time. Zombies are not well coordinated, in most cases. Clumsiness and imperfect motor control appear to be a result of initial nerve decay in the time period immediately following death: Zombies who die under conditions of intense cold tend to be somewhat more agile than the regular variety. Nevertheless, most Zombies will not move faster than a quick walk, and indeed usually either shuffle or adopt an exaggerated high-stepping march, very carefully placing their feet. That is because falling down is not something a Zombie wants to do: feeling no pain, they could easily break something important without knowing it.

Zombies are usually recognizable from a distance by a number of clues: their characteristic walk, their tendency to wear heavy, baggy clothing even in warm weather, and their tendency to wear masks or bandages to protect their faces from the elements. (This is of course not taking into account "punk" and "deathcore" Zombies, whose characteristic deliberate disfigurements are noticeable from quite a distance). Zombies are frequently stooped forward, watching their feet. Sunglasses in dim light are also a giveaway: Zombies rarely blink, and they frequently hide their glassy, staring eyes (usually with somewhat yellowed whites). In the cases where there is no mask, there is the pallor (the ashy color of Zombie Africans is particularly distinctive) the often puffy or shrunken facial features, and the stink of preservatives. (Still, Zombie spotting is not necessarily 100% accurate: some Zombies manage to "pass" with loads of makeup and surgery, and some elderly cold-climate alcoholics are occasionally mistaken for Zombies).

Zombies are major users of wigs. They have an advantage over humans in that they can have their wigs superglued to their scalps, or even nailed to the underlying bone, making for fewer embarrassing accidents. (Of course, putting on a new one can be a problem). Some Zombie punks decorate their skulls with nails or broken glass. (The Pinhead look never caught on: it was hell on the skin).

False teeth are also common: the strength of Zombie jaw muscles generally exceeds the structural strength of their teeth, and loss of teeth through overly energetic tearing at tough meat is frequent. Zombies who were dentists in life are often still in business serving their own kind, human dentists often being very nervous about putting their fingers in a Zombie's mouth.

Zombies who died at an advanced age have to take particular care of their bodies. Their stringy muscles can contract with typical Zombie strength, but their thin, brittle old-person bones break easily, and a "reanimated codger" can easily inflict serious structural damage on themselves lifting things they could not have lifted while alive. Those old-person Zombies who can afford it often have their skeletons strengthened with metal implants: a delicate time-consuming process, since cutting muscle tissue is to be avoided if at all possible, given the very long time Zombie flesh takes to knit back together.

Zombie love is a complicated issue. Some humans love Zombies, some Zombies love humans, and some Zombies love eachother. Sex is not a part of it, given the Zombie's incapability in that department, but Zombies can care as deeply as normal people: and many Zombies retain close ties to those people who knew them when alive. It's a bit hard to deal with the fact that Grandpa now smells of formaldehyde and doesn't breathe, but a lot of people do manage to deal: families now include both living and dead members, although in many countries they are not allowed to actually live together.

And, of course, where there is love and caring there is also disappointment and misery. Many people simply cannot accept that the pallid ghoul is in fact their husband or wife or child or parent, and they are supported in these sentiments by many religious leaders and various governments. Some try to believe but fail, others believe but in the end simply cannot overcome their sense of horror at something which stimulates the ancient human fears of death and decay and corpses (not to mention the fear that they will be eaten, however irrational) and either cut their Zombie relatives off entirely or insist on a long-distance relationship.

Zombies cannot cry. But they can moan.

Reunion of couples separated by death rarely work out in the long run unless both return as Zombies (and even then there are often difficulties: things often work out better with elderly couples, which weren't getting any before death either.) In some cases the living partner has killed himself or herself to join their love in Zombie status, which is considered a serious sin by most religious authorities.

Dogs, being smell-dependent creatures, rarely recognize their former masters, but there are plenty of Zombies who keep cats, dogs, etc. who are as loyal to the person who feeds them and walks them as they are to normal people. In spite of many TV and movie gags, Zombies do not keep Zombie cats and dogs, it being illegal almost everywhere, although some countries allow permits for Zombie goldfish, swimming in fishbowls filled with formaldehyde or alcohol.

Zombies do not grow or age, which leads to the disturbing phenomenon of Zombie pre-teen children which have been children for some three decades now. Their brains have not developed as human brains do, so they are not adults mentally, either: on the other hand, their length of learning and experience means they do not view the world the way normal children do, either. A new species in terms of mentality, a race of overly well-informed obnoxious and tricky brats, the "old child" is an annoyance to Zombies and humans both, and Zombie parents which have taken in Zombie children find them a bit of a pain in the ass after two decades. Zombie child labor is a subject of controversy in many countries.

Crime and punishment have not remained unchanged. Although Zombies are generally less hormonal than young male humans, and under strong pressure from members of the Zombie community to avoid conflict with humans, Zombie-on-Zombie crime and Zombie-on-human crime persists, if at lower levels than human-on-human. Inner city crime underwent some odd mutations, with the arrival of the Zombie gang member (accompanied by initial stiff resistance by police unions to the arrival of Zombie police officers). One hard-bitten Chicago cop and a gang member managed to rack up three kills solely involving the two of them. Zombies were briefly popular as drug mules, given that you can stuff a lot more drugs inside a Zombie's body without harm.

Murder rates are up again. They dropped sharply during 1992-2002, since unless you wrecked the brain, you would have a vengeful Zombie after you (or at least testifying against you) shortly. Prison riots have been brought on by prisoners unwilling to share space with Zombie criminals, and the building of prisons specifically for Zombies has led to outrages in even the most Zombie-liberal countries. Brain-damaged "drooler" Zombies remain popular with crime kings and warlords as instruments of terror: having a pit of them to throw enemies into is considered pretty awesome. Speaking of warlords, few third-world warlords tried going with Zombie soldiers rather than child soldiers, noting advantages in endurance, carrying capacity, durability under fire and scariness, but found them a lot harder to discipline, and in some cases ended up eaten by their own troops.

A number of celebrities died during the 90s, and although some took steps to prevent their "rebirth", many are still around as Zombies. Carl Sagan is no longer making TV specials, but is busy at a second scientific career trying to determine the nature of Zombiesm. George Burns is still cracking dry jokes, and grumbles that nicotine no longer does anything for him. Vincent Price is scarier than ever. The Royal Family does their best to keep Princess Di out of the public eye. Mother Teresa wanted her body immediately cremated after death to prevent it from rising, but her followers weren't quite ready to let her go, to her current annoyance: she insists she's only a soulless copy of the original, and has resigned from Church service, but she did still travel to the US to punch Christopher Hitchens in the face.

And then there's Thurgood Marshall, whose dismissal from the Supreme Court caused a national controversy. However, in the end, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that having the same person stay on the court for perhaps a century or more was not a good idea, and currently positions on the Supreme Court are only allowed for Zombies which have not served while living (not that their chances of getting nominated would have a chance in hell of getting through human-dominated congress: there are as yet no Zombie Senators, and a bare handful of Congressmen: and their existence has ignited a new debate about Term Limits).

Human and zombie scientists (they are some) struggle to find a way to cure zombie hunger, or at least find out why eating large amounts of meat temporarily cures it: such efforts are rarely backed by governments, who see the need for flesh as being one of the few things that forces zombies to subordinate themselves to human rule in their search for employment to fund their meat-hunger. If zombies did not hunger, how much would they need human society at all?