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- Researchers investigated how the zombie plague spread through Finland
- Simulations suggest it would take just seven hours to spread across the capital
From The Walking Dead to The Last Of Us, the zombie apocalypse has been a staple of blockbuster sci-fi films for years.
But what would happen if a zombie takeover happened to take over the real world?
In a new study, researchers at Aalto University set out to answer this question, with terrifying results.
Their simulations suggest that if a single zombie appeared in Helsinki, there would be only seven hours to completely isolate the capital — or kill the zombies.
Otherwise, zombies “will inevitably sweep the country,” the team says.
From The Walking Dead to The Last Of Us (pictured), the zombie apocalypse has been a staple of blockbuster sci-fi films for years. But what would happen if a zombie takeover happened to take over the real world?
In the study, the team set out to investigate how a zombie epidemic spread across Finland.
The research expanded on traditional models by adding simulations of people and zombies moving around in Finland – within and between cities.
This allowed the team to simulate things like the quarantine of an infected area, or the difference between a zombie plague starting in a densely populated city or a sparse area.
However, estimating some parameters was particularly challenging, according to Professor Lauri Vittasari, who was responsible for the mathematical model.
“What is the correct probability of a human winning against a zombie?” She said.
“The problem is that we are walking blind here, because real data on such questions is very limited.”
The model revealed that in the event of a plague outbreak, it would likely spread very quickly.
In their basic model, a single outbreak in Helsinki would take only seven hours to spread throughout the entire city.
In the study, the team set out to investigate how a zombie epidemic spread across Finland. Pictured: A still from the movie The Last of Us
Professor Polina Ilmonen, who led the study, said: ‘I wasn’t supposed to find this surprising, but I was surprised at how quickly we reacted to keep our population alive.’
“It made me think about ethical issues like the rights of individuals versus the rights of populations.”
While the project is light-hearted, researchers say the findings could offer serious insights into how to contain future disease outbreaks.
“Zombie plague simulations provide a way to explore the effects of different interventions and consider them in the context of diseases with different characteristics, such as how quickly they spread or how severe they are,” the team wrote in a statement.
“Because it mimics the actions of individuals, it can also be used to test how misinformation affects the spread of the epidemic (for example, through some ‘zombie deniers’ ignoring warnings).”
Beyond Finland, the model could be adapted to simulate outbreaks in other countries, researchers say.
They added that it could also be used to investigate other things that spread like disease, including rumors or misinformation.
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