User blog:CoolCCMystery/Zombie Homeland: About Zombies

The zombies featured in the season of Zombie Homeland serves as the main theme of the television series iZombie, where the main protagonist of the series uses her newfound zombie status for good, while trying to solve the truth behind the origin of how the zombie virus appeared.

What are the Zombies?
The zombies featured in the season are humans infected with an unknown virus that turns them into an undead being with a rapid change in their appearances (deathly pale skin, white blond hair, redder eyes) and an uncanny desire to eat human brains to survive.

How Zombies Can Be Made
The original creation of the zombie virus was accidentally concocted with a combination of designer drugs and an energy drink at a boat party, which turned into a massacre. Although, despite this, any human can be infected and turned into a zombie through tasting zombie blood, having sexual intercourse with a zombie or being scratched by a zombie (through the fingernails).

Looks, Behaviour and Diet
When turned, zombies can be a typical human in almost all ways, physically and psychologically, and it is hard enough to find out who's a zombie in the human masses. Zombies save all their traits and capabilities they have as humans, and moreover, they can continue to train themselves, go to the gym, do hard work, live with an extreme sports in their life, etc. The main difference between the two lies in three prominent traits that make it clear that the suspected is a zombie: appearance, behavior and diet.

The signs of transformation surface in several hours after the virus gets into the human's body, first starting with at least a wisp of hair turning white almost instantly, while the rest turns white or pale blonde with time. The wish to eat human brains seems to be something natural for all zombies, as many zombie characters have said they want to eat brains but do not know why, after they were somewhat aware of their new status. More than that, due to their taste loss, they need to eat their food, be it brains or the usual food that normal people eat, with spices. This trait is also considered strange because the zombie's food must be immensely spicy, and they utilize any spices in all of their food, even drinks like alcohol and coffee. They need to feed on brains at least once per month, in order to stay "alive" and save their sanity. If not, they will turn into a "canon" version of popularized zombies with the only desire to stop their hunger.

The degradation process can vary from several weeks to months without brain feeding, but even more, the zombie cannot be reverted, if they reach a "critical point" in their degradation.

The changes in their physical appearance do not stops only on hair, as it quickly becomes pale blonde, but also their skin becomes pale, and their eyes become redder. Although, many zombies hide their identity despite the most prominent traits that are all typical for zombies who try to hide their real identity. Examples of the traits include buying very hot spices, dying their hair and using tans, in order to make their skin less pale and their overall appearance human-like.

In physical means, zombies are vastly different from humans, but at the same time still humans. Examples of this includes heart resting rates being an average of 10 beats per minute and that when they are injured they do not have a significant blood loss, to the point that even a gunshot will not make them grievously bleed. The only weakness of the zombie is to the brain, whether it be a gunshot or a stab.

Zombies also can have physical strength and power in what Livia has called "full-on zombie mode". Witnessing the strong emotions, a danger to their life or simply having a boiling adrenaline in their blood results in the zombie suffering from a trance-like state, when they truly become zombies. In terms of appearance, their skin turns pale white, overcoming their tanning, and their eyes become completely blood-red. While in this trance state they cannot speak or act according to their thoughts, they either can attack their victim on two occasions – a settled thought about it before or their living brains.

Brains and Their Effects
Additionally, zombies, when they consume a brain (fresh, and not mushed into a brain tube as given to all zombies in the city to feed them by the local zombie military corporation) can go through visions of the deceased's life triggered by an action, a face or thing, and/or words spoken by someone. In this case, it helps the police to investigate crimes, but the brain also affects the zombie by giving them various personality traits and skills from the deceased. An example would be that if a zombie ate a perfectionist chef's brain, they would become a perfectionist themselves.

Closing Words
And that's all I have to say about the zombies and everything else you might need to know for when you read Zombie Homeland. I hope you all enjoy reading the season, as it's a start from scratch for my solo season writing. Hehe, got you there with the pun.

-CoolCCMystery signing off.