ENTER NEW CHALLENGER: ZOMBIE



I’d like to make it clear that when I say ‘zombie’, I mean ‘zombie’. The shambling Undead, somewhat mouldy, wants to eat your brain and can chase you down at the speed of shuffle. The new mutation of zombies that has propagated in Hollywood in recent years should find their own damn name. Humans infected by whatever biological agent to make them all angry angry angry rarrr run run run club you to death tear out your meaty bits rarrr angry angry angry are not zombies. They’re, I don’t know, rageroids or something. Hehe. Rageroid.

General aloofness towards pain is a significant tactical advantage of your traditional zombie, no matter what their opponent. We all know that shooting a zombie is a perfect exercise of futility (shotguns excepted). Dismembering a zombie can certainly hamper their progress, but your average zombie is not above dragging itself along the ground in order to feast on your delicious juicy brains. They’re tenacious, to say the least.

This renders a large spectrum of the ninja’s skills useless; the swift and silent kill won’t do much on something already dead, and the swift and silent incapacitation won’t do much on something already brain dead. Disabling the zombie, however, piece of cake. For all their tenacity, zombies don’t move fast. What do ninjas do? Move fast! A ninja could effectively hamstring a zombie before hitting the snooze alarm in the morning.

Pirates, lacking the speed and accuracy of a ninja, stand no better chance of surviving the zombie apocalypse than anyone else. In fact, their chances are probably in worse shape than normal, given your average pirate possesses some degree of confidence in their combat skills, and thus is more likely to engage a zombie than do the sensible thing and run away. Enough hacking and a single pirate could disable a single zombie, but not without being wounded at some point, and thus zombified, ‘cause seriously, pirates can’t fight for shit. Look at all those eye patches, hook hands and peg legs. I rest my case.

However, zombies do not travel alone. They’re pack hunters, and given their disregard for pain and injury, are not above wading in and piling on. Pirates are pack hunters too, but all that really means is the whole ship will get infected, turn into zombies, and then Disney will make a ride out of them.

Ninjas, while working together in vast, nation-spanning networks, do not tend to move together in large groups. Darts could potentially disabled a zombie’s locomotion, but to make sure the job is done properly a ninja must get within arm’s reach, and thus within mobbing reach. Numbers are not the ninja’s natural strength.

Thankfully, mobility is. Not only is the ninja faster than the zombie, the ninja can also do things like, you know, climb. Jump up 10 feet backwards into very hard to reach places. It’s a ninja’s trade to be where ninja is not expected. Zombies aren’t renowned for their tree-climbing abilities. Thus all a ninja need do is pack a lunch, climb a tree, and wait for the zombies to get distracted in order to pick them off one by one. The lazy ninja could even just wait for them to go away. To feast on cowboys, or something.

Pirates are also apt climbers, but any tree they attempt to climb will already be full of ninjas, who will kick the pirates out of the tree and then sing King of the Castle at them. Neena neena neena.

11 comments on “ENTER NEW CHALLENGER: ZOMBIE

  1. Finally we can dispense with the silliness and have an adult discussion about important issues. First and foremost there’s the issue of terrain, a forgone conclusion it seems to Sir Tessa. Why only yesterday we were discussing deserts and cowboys and yet here we are, safe and sound in the arboreal haven of Ferngully, with only a hammy Sean Connery and some scurvy sea-dogs competing for canopy space. Considering the degree of insight into piracy previously evidenced here it hardly surprises me that an avowed ninja apologist would think pirates frequent forests instead of, you know, the oceans and waterways of the world.

    Trees are a perfectly fine short-term solution to armies of the unquiet dead, and maybe for the myopic ninja that’s as deep as it gets. Hang out, eat some fruit (because you KNOW they’re fruit trees), wait for the zombies to…oh, that’s right, they’re zombies. Once they finish off the cowboys and any pirates too drunk to suss the sitch, hack down a few trees (maybe taking out a ninja nest in the process), slap together a galleon and dip, where do the zombies go? Right back to the treed ninjas, that where. They’re zombies, hanging out waiting for meat to fall out of trees is what they do best.

    Meanwhile, the pirates have returned to the sopping bosom of their creepily anthropomorphised lover: the Sea. Assuming, of course, they left the Sea and her environs in the first place, a dubious scenario to anyone with more than a rudimentary understanding of pirates. This isn’t the Goonies, Sir Tessa, this is Life, and in Life pirates prefer the maelstrom to the grocer.

    Ninjas can do water, I heard you think that! True. But only with cobbled together affairs, liittle skiffs and submersibles. It is cool that a ninja can make a submarine out of a dozen coconuts, some bamboo, and the organs of an unfortunate victim, I will give you that. It is yours. It is a gift.

    You know what isn’t so cool, especially if you’re a ninja paddling along in a ninja canoe or ninja submarine? Zombie sharks. Fact: as shown in the 1979 Fulci documentary “Zombie,” there are infected sharks trolling the briny deep, all hungry for brains–BIG brains. What if one of them bit a giant squid? Or a whale? Holy crap! That would be like the biggest zombie ever! Big enough to take down a galleon? Not without a fight. Big enough to swallow a cadre of palm-tree crafted catamarans and their ninja crewmen? Oh Hells yes.

    And that’s just my first and foremost!

  2. I must protest at your characterizing pirates as poor combatants simply because of their various disabilities.

    First of all, it shows how inclusive pirates can be for the differently abled — try finding a ninja with a handicap.

    Secondly, and most importantly, disabled pirates are that way not because they are poor fighters, but because of how well they fight their awesome adversaries. They excel against ninjas, cowboys, zombies, *and* other pirates — lost limbs be damned. Case closed.

  3. So many good points all around! Rather than add my two cents to what is obviously a panel of experts, I’m going to take advantage of this makeshift forum to ask a few questions of my own. Questions which have nagged at me for a long time.

    1. Can a zombie get drunk on rum by eating a pirate’s brain?

    2. If a whale became a zombie, and then swallowed a belly-full of plankton, would any plankton who suffered abrasions on the way down turn into zombies, and thus set in motion a scenario of normal plankton vs. zombie plankton in the whale’s stomach?

    3. You need to transport a zombie, a pirate, and a ninja cross a lake, but your boat will only hold one at a time. In which order would you carry them across the lake so as to not leave the other two alone to kill one another?

    Thank you in advance for your answers.

  4. For answers to the whale question, I would suggest seeking out Brian Keene’s RISING series of zombie novels, as well as David Wellington’s Monster Island.

  5. Celsius: leave it to a Ninja to make gross generalizations about their betters.

    Bill: 1: No, but a vampire can get tipsy from drinking a drunk. Hope that helps.

    2: Assuming cross-species contamination is possible–as the whale scenario implies–than life on Earth is doomed. Doomed! Plankton included.

    3: One should take the ninja first, as you can’t leave a ninja alone with a pirate and if you take anyone else first the crybaby ninja will start blubbering about their honor (aka, “feelings”) being hurt. The shambling zombie will keep the pirate occupied and vice versa while you row there and back, and then lure the zombie into biting an oar rather than risk sharing the boat with them. Tow their floating undead corpse over to the ninja, thereby keeping the ninja occupied while you retrieve the pirate. If you’re considering taking the pirate first because you don’t care if the ninja cries (aka, “you’re a big ol meanie”), be aware that any pirate who is really a pirate and not a ninja in disguise will promptly steal your boat, so there’s that, too.

    Corey: Thanks for the tip, “Monster Island” looks choice indeed! That Keene fellow sounds familiar as well…do you know if he wrote something about giant earth worms? OK, I decided if he didn’t I would come off like a jerk and so I just googled “Brian Keene Worms,” and sure enough he did. I like the way this dude thinks.

  6. RE: Brian Keene – I gotta dig an author who’s titles include ‘The Conqueror Worm’ and ‘The Rutting Season.’

  7. Sir Tessa says:

    Jesse, for the purposes of this slapdash battle of the genre clichés, I had to take into consideration that zombies, being true undead, have a “thing” with running water. Pirates have no such inhibitions, and spend a lot of time traipsing about jungles and forests looking for places to bury/where they’ve buried their treasure. Very obliging of the pirates, very obliging indeed.

    Your point about the zombies coming back to the trees is a little flawed. No ninja is going to stay in a location where they are known to be. Zombies are very distractable, especially if there are cowboys around, being prey that is not, you know, up a tree, and while zombies will absolutely take over the earth eventually, it’ll take them a while to do so, giving ninja plenty of time to build a submarine of cocoa nuts, infiltrate and eventually take over a pirate ship. Oh, the humanity!

    If there are shark zombies, then even the ninja pirates are doomed.

    Celsius, the fact that ninja face the same adversaries without loss of limb indicates they’re still a better class of fighter. Case closed.

    And oshi- I need to run to work. Will continue later. Had three hours sleep last night and am feeling very sympathetic towards the zombies right now.

  8. “Celsius, the fact that ninja face the same adversaries without loss of limb indicates they’re still a better class of fighter. Case closed.”

    Or, they’re far more likely to die from minor wounds like the loss of a leg.

    When are we going to get to Mad Scientists? Sure, their minions are useless, but there’s the ever-present danger of a Doomsday weapon.

  9. Sir Tessa says:

    1. Can a zombie get drunk on rum by eating a pirate’s brain?
    Can a zombie even get drunk? They already display someone drunken behaviour; inability to take ‘no’ for an answer, inability to keep their hands to themselves, ungainly gait…

    2. If a whale became a zombie, and then swallowed a belly-full of plankton, would any plankton who suffered abrasions on the way down turn into zombies, and thus set in motion a scenario of normal plankton vs. zombie plankton in the whale’s stomach?
    Ditto Jesse. Doom. Doom. And, also? Doom.

    3. You need to transport a zombie, a pirate, and a ninja cross a lake, but your boat will only hold one at a time. In which order would you carry them across the lake so as to not leave the other two alone to kill one another?
    First, I’d get a dinosaur. A big one. I would call it Donotcrossthislineasaurus, and then it wouldn’t matter which order I took them across, as there’d be a big ass dinosaur between whoever was left behind. Nobody wins against a dinosaur.

    Thanks for the book recs, Corey. I have to admit the thought of a zombie whale is pretty disturbing. I’m not sure I want to know what the existence of one would involve. Raises interesting questions about whale fall habitats (creatures that specifically feed on the sunken bodies of dead whales). If you eat the bone, not the flesh, of a zombie, do you get zombified? If the whales are dead swimming around, would whale-fall feeders come to them?

    Celsius, the point is ninjas just don’t get those injuries. They’re like MC Hammer, CAN’T TOUCH THIS. Hee.

  10. 1. Sir Tessa, you’re right about zombies and drunken behavior. Moot point.
    2. Jesse and Tessa, Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water . . . DOOM!
    3. Sir Tessa, I can’t believe you played the dinosaur card.

    All in all, good answers!

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