Free Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies by Matt Mogk Page A

reanimated corpse has a portable store of food built right into its framework.
    Humans can go weeks without food. But as they eventually reach the later stages of starvation, the body will literally eat itself. In fact, digestive-related organ failure is what usually kills a starved person. By contrast zombies may have no need for many of their organs. They would then be free to digest the heart, lungs, liver, and intestines without suffering any ill effects, thereby substantially increasing their life span.
    Regardless of whether or not zombies actually swallow the human flesh they bite into, if they are able to digest their own organs, then the undead may be able to fend off harmful bacteria, while continuing to generate needed energy and extending their lives.
DO THEY EAT DEAD PEOPLE?
    Do zombies eat dead people? The answer may seem obvious, as they are generally considered to be after one thing and one thing only: live flesh. Therefore, a zombie would pass right by an available dead body and continue hunting the living.
    But imagine a group of zombies cornering you in a dead-end alley. You do everything you can to fight back, but eventually, their numbers are too great, and you are driven to the ground by clawing hands and gnashing teeth. The zombies chew on your fingers, rip off a leg, and make short work of your intestines. Soon enough, you die from the overwhelming pain and blood loss, which leads to another version of the same question.
    At the moment your heart stops beating, do the zombies get up and wander off, or do they continue feasting on your lifeless corpse?
    If you think they get up, then zombies don’t eat dead people. But if you think they finish the job, sucking out your eyeballs and chewing on your forearm even after you’ve died, then zombies do at least eat the newly deceased. This may seem like a small point, but it could mean the difference between real hope for civilization’s survival and total world collapse.
    If zombies continue feeding on the dead, then they are effectively destroying their own reinforcements. A person with a deadly bite may rise up to become a zombie himself, but a body that has been chewed down to nothing won’t be physically able to stand and search out new victims. Zombies could quite literally eat themselves out of existence.
    My hope is that they have really big appetites and don’t know when to say when.
DO THEY EAT ANIMALS?
    It’s often suggested that zombies bite human beings because they are driven to spread their disease to other viable hosts. Because, with rare exception, prevailing wisdom suggests that the zombie virus is likely only communicable to humans, it could be argued that the undead would therefore be drawn to human beings only and ignore all other living creatures.
    But even if the zombie infection is only a threat to humans, it is also a generally accepted belief that zombies aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, nor are they attacking the living because of some greater strategy. Zombies do what they do because they are driven to it and don’t know how to do anything else. It’s possible that a hunting zombie might not be able to differentiate between different species and therefore would essentially want to bite anything that moves.
    Romero’s own rules on zombie eating habits have changed over time. In the original Night of the Living Dead (1968), the zombies eat anything alive, including bugs. But in Survival of the Dead (2009), a central plot concern is to train the zombies to eat something other than humans, and for the most part, they seem completely unwilling and uninterested.
    But because zombies are thought not to work together and not to use any tools or weapons, it would be difficult for them to catch most animals in the wild even if they so desired.
    An easy test for this is to go outside and attempt to catch a squirrel, mouse, or rat with your bare hands. Even a cat or a stray dog that doesn’t want to be caught is going to be