Physics students at U.K. school University of Leicester revealed in a study that a zombie apocalypse may result to the extinction of the human race. Moreover, the pandemic cause everyone to be undead in less than a year.
According to Phys.org, the University of Leicester students presented their discovery in a series of short articles, entitled "Zombie infections: epidemiology, treatment, and prevention," which were published for the "Journal of Physics Special Topics." It is a student-run journal which is intended to give students experience in writing, editing, publishing and reviewing scientific papers.
They used a basic epidemiological model, named the SIR model, which refers to how a disease spreads throughout a population. It divided the population to three categories: the susceptible population (S), the zombie population (Z) and the dead population (D), which can also be used to describe those who recovered from the disease.
With the assumption of a 90 percent chance of infecting victims and that a zombie can find one person per day, it was found that there would just be about 270 human survivors by the hundredth day of the outbreak. This figure would be outnumbered by a million to one by zombies. CNET noted that this would make it roughly twice as infectious as the black death.
The students found that the average life-cycle of a zombie would start from being susceptible to actually becoming one of the undead. Afterwards, it's a matter of time before a zombie dies or is killed or recovers from the disease.
In the first study, the students did not consider the natural birth and death rates as factors. Apparently, this data was rendered negligible because of the short time frame.
The students did a follow-up study, though. They used the same SIR model but introduced new parameters such as the rate of zombie deaths and birth rates of people who manage to have children during the specified time.
The team also considered how survivors would also learn how to fight back against zombies. This way, there is a decrease in the likelihood of infection.
