Everyone knows that zombies aren’t real…probably. However, dead bodies are very real, so it’s possible to look at fictional zombies — like, say, the ones on AMC’s The Walking Dead — and judge whether or not they’re “realistic.” We know dead bodies can’t get up and walk around — not outside my nightmares, anyway — but if they did, would they look like that?
To find out, Live Science talked to Melissa Unfred, a Texas-based mortician who specializes in natural burials. First of all, let’s go over the things Unfred thinks AMC does right, like the way a dead body’s eyes and mouth will dry out and pull back. “Right after a body dies, if you’re not embalming, it’s almost impossible to close the eyes or the mouth,” she said. The Walking Dead shows also do a pretty good job of showing what skin looks like after it loses its moisture and starts sloughing off the bone. “It kind of starts weeping,” Unfred said. How poetic and gross.
Beyond that, the walkers on The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead don’t really look or behave like dead bodies do. For one thing, they don’t undergo the kind of discoloration that happens when the heart stops pumping and blood starts pooling in the part of the body that’s closest to the ground. After about a day, the lower right quadrant of the body will turn bluish-green as the bacteria in the pancreas starts digesting stomach tissue. According to Unfred, the skin takes on “a really interesting marbled pattern, which is actually really pretty, but to each their own.”
So there you go. The walkers’ skin should be way prettier.
Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier; Walker – The Walking Dead _ Season 6, Episode 16 – Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC
But Unfred’s main quibble with the zombies on these shows is the lack of bloat. You see (and if you’re eating right now, you might wanna stop), after death, bacteria that live in the body with digest internal tissue and releases releases gases that get caught in the gut, causing the body to inflate. It can get so bad that the entire body can swell up and burst. “I definitely think they should incorporate more bloated bodies,” Unfred said. “That would be a little more horrifying.”
Also, Unfred notes that the loss of tissue would make it hard for walkers to…walk. “f they were to start running, I think their legs would fly off,” she said, surely giving some AMC execs ideas.
The tenth season of The Walking Dead will continue next year. Now who’s hungry?
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h/t ComicBook.com