28 Minutes Later - The Maths of Zombies

A zombie attack can be model as an infection, like an outbreak of flu or measles. This was first done in 2009 using a simple SIR-model by Robert Smith of Carleton University, Canada. This model looks at the numbers of susceptable, infected and removed population. In this the infected were zombies. Read that paper here http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rsmith43/Zombies.pdf

However this model did not consider the spread of the zombie infection spatially. In this video we introduce Thomas Woolley, who has modelled the shambling movement of zombies as a 'random walk', also known as the 'drunkard's walk', starting from the hospitals and the graveyards [to be published, Mathematical Modelling of Zombies, University of Ottawa Press, 2012]. Using this assumption we can calculate that anyone within 100 metres would have at most 28 minutes before they encounter their first zombie. Now, if we were able to slow down the zombies by half then the time to an encounter is doubled. But, is we double the distance between us and them the time is quadrupled!

The number of zombies depend on the rate at which they can infect us compared to the rate at which we can kill them. If we can kill them faster than they can infect us then our survival just comes down to a race of who becomes extinct first. We need a large population more deadly than they are. Either way we are going to suffer heavy losses.

Another way we can slow down the infection is by removing the human population. If they can't infect us then their numbers can't grow. This could mean killing our fellow humans - but we do not recommend it. We don't need to help them speed up our extinction!

So, to survive you need to run. In the long term we need a fortified society, but if the barricades fall we need to reduce the speed of infection, slow them down, and be more deadly than they are.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• maths
• math
• mathematics
• problem
• puzzle
• zombie
• 28
• minutes
• hours
• days
• weeks
• infection
• model
• SIR
• S-I-R
• diffusion
• random
• walk
• drunkard's
• james
• grime
• singingbanana
• Thomas
• Woolley
• halloween
• horror
• dead
• romero

[ifsey]

Brady's dead? But what about sixty symbols!?

[singingbanana]

@ifsey Here's a behind the scenes story: I was trying to wind up my friend Barney. Then Brady phoned me just before we did this, and I said Brady by accident.

[crazymurdav]

Ah, I love all your videos.

To think I started watching, those many years ago, simply because you had Rottentroll videos.

[singingbanana]

@crazymurdav Ah, I miss those videos too.

[Butt4cak3]

We need weapons of math instruction!

[JollyRodgerMagic]

Little did the zombies know, we knew there only weakness....MAAAAAAAATH!!!

[Olucatei]

Just like in my differential equations class. dh/dt=-Azh+Bh(1-h/C) and dz/dt=Dzh-Esz and ds/dt=Fz, h=human z=zombie s=soldiers The human growth coeffient B tends to be so small compared to A as to not matter. And this model doesn't tell us what happens after the situation gets out of the military's control.

[livedandletdie]

The guide to surviving a zombie apocalypse.

1. Have a storage filled with baked beans they never get old, filled with Maltose and filled with H2 and O2.

2. Now you have an large amount of water and a large amount of food and if you had some coal you can make beer.

3. Wait it out will only take 18 months. As Zombies decay at an exponential rate they will die out. And if you had a small group of young healthy individuals you can now procreate to fill up the human population again.

[GetMeThere1]

This is a good video, and a good public service. Still, I feel it's most important to emphasize that zombies MUST be shot in the head to permanently eradicate them. I worry that people may not know that.

[VultureProduction]

In the words of Fin the human, Algebraic!

[54n141n3n]

I agree your equation works on early stages of epidemy, but on later stage, we should use population dynamics. Because zombies cant live forever, food extends their life, if they eat lot of humans and convert them, there will not be many humans left to eat. Which will result in famine and population shrink.

So in the end, usualy those equations are heading towards equlibrium, so if there will be zombie apocalypse, human race wont extinct, we will co-exist with zombies, at least for a while.

[CogitoErgoCogitoSum]

@11Agamemnon235 I think we have enough of those.

[CogitoErgoCogitoSum]

I dont get it. We cannot possibly know any of this math to be true because we havent got any real zombies to test their behavior or abilities.

[11Agamemnon235]

Yeah,my professor for DEs 2 years ago told the class about this article. It's actually pretty cool! And it has serious applications: the creation of more realistic zombie acopocalypse movies.