Who wins the Zombie Apocalypse?

That’s the question asked by the BBC. Taking into consideration several mitigating factors, one certainty exists – humans must act quickly and decisively.

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.

They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures….

To give the living a fighting chance, the researchers chose “classic” slow-moving zombies as our opponents rather than the nimble, intelligent creatures portrayed in some recent films….

[T]heir analysis revealed that a strategy of capturing or curing the zombies would only put off the inevitable.

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity’s only hope is to “hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often”.

They added: “It’s imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else… we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

Some states would stand up better to zombie hordes than others, eventually the battle – if not brought to a quick end – would delve into zombie states versus human states. Would traditional realist and liberal world view apply?

The good news is that these same realists would argue that there is no inherent difference between human states and zombie states.  Regardless of individual traits or domestic instiutions, human and zombie actors alike are subject to the same powerful constraint of anarchy. Therefore, the fundamental character of world politics would not be changed. Indeed, it might even be tactically wise to fashion temporary alliances with certain zonbie states as a way to balance against human states that try to exploit the situation with some kind of idealistic power grab made under the guise of “anti-zombieism.” So, according to realism, the introduction of zombies would not fundamentally alter the character of world politics.

A liberal institutionalist would argue that zombies represent a classic externality problem of… dying and then existing in an undead state and trying to cause others to do the same. Clearly, the zombie issue would cross borders and affect all states — so the benefits from policy coordination would be pretty massive.

This would give states a great opportunity to cooperate on the issue by quickly fashioning a World Zombie Organization (WZO) that would codify and promnulgate rules on how to deal with zombies. Alas, the effectiveness of the WZO would be uncertain. If the zombies had standing and appealed any WZO decision to wipe them out, we could be talking about an 18-month window when zombies could run amok without any effective regulation whatsoever.

What if the zombies were radicals? Blaming the capitalist bourgeois for enslaving the zombie-periphery in a vast effort of producers to maximize profits in the funeral and grave-digging industries?

But we’re in a uni-polar world, meaning American hegemony will come into play.

Fortunately, the United States would likely respond by creating the North American F*** Zombies Agreement — or NAFZA — to handle the problem regionally. Similarly, one would expect the European Union to issue one mother of a EU Directive to cope with the issue, and handle questions of zombie comitology. Indeed, given that zombies would likely be covered under genetically modified organisms, the EU would trumpet the Catragena Protocol on Biosafety in an “I told you so” kind of way. Inevitably, Andrew Moravcsik would author an essay about the inherent superiority of the EU approach to zombie regulation, and why so many countries in Africa prefer the EU approach over the American approach of “die, motherf***ers, die!!”  Oh, and British beef would once again be banned as a matter of principle.

Just imagine the implications of an increasingly zombie-fied population on the health care industry.

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