Would preserved bodies (such as ones encased in ice) reanimate when thawed out?

Question

Do people that have been dead but preserved, like an ice man, reanimate if they were thawed out of the ice in the TV show The Walking Dead?

I have seen many episodes and read many FAQ's but have not found any information so far.

possible duplicate of Would survival in a zombie apocalypse be easier in a colder climate? — phantom42, Feb 17 '14 at 13:42
also related: Since every zombie appears to be rotting, does their functional afterlife vary with their exposure to the elements? — phantom42, Feb 17 '14 at 13:43

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 17 '14 at 05:42

6

The Walking Dead television show hints very strongly that a scientific explanation exists for the zombie phenomenon, even if this explanation is something no character on the show discovers.

A cadaver frozen solid in a block of ice would undergo massive cellular damage... you've seen the little pointy spikes in ice and frost yourself when it forms. Well, cells have quite a bit of water in them, and when they freeze those same crystals form inside of them. This ruptures the cell and kills it once thawed.

If this were to happen to a potential zombie, it seems unlikely that any pathogen or parasite could hope to animate it afterward.

However, many other events occur that would also kill the zombie or prevent it's post-death animation, but seem not to affect it in the show. Without blood, human tissue quickly becomes oxygen/nutrient depleted... muscles would fail to contract. Yet we see many zombies that are completely exsanguinated.

Therefor, I suggest that despite the hints that there is a scientific explanation, they are playing fast and loose with the sciences of biology and chemistry and even physics. Whether or not freezing a zombie solid would prevent zombification (or end it) depends on the whims of the shows' writers.

answered Feb 17 '14 at 05:42

John O

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On the blood point: Even assuming the disease/pathogen slows the necrosis of its host, They've been fighting these things for a couple of years now (at the very least 2, I know they skipped an entire winter). In the humid/temperate environment the show is set, the bodies should've rotten away long ago. – Robotnik Feb 17 '14 at 06:01
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Not to mention that the Dead's main source of reproduction is also it's main source of food AND it's major predator - I don't think the writers care much for biology at all – Robotnik Feb 17 '14 at 06:02
@Robotnik: At that level it makes sense if you think of it in terms of parasitism, with the added twist that the parasite conveys a big survival advantage-- the infested host (i.e. walker) no longer needs food or shelter to survive. – Beta Feb 17 '14 at 07:19
@Beta - Even if they don't need food they still seek it out. It'd be more believable if they simply bit someone, detected they were infected and moved on, but instead we see people bit, and the walker continues to try and eat them. If the walker succeeds in eating the person, then that person doesn't become a walker. If that person escapes, they do. Like I said it doesn't make sense to try and eat the thing which is carrying your offspring - the infection wouldn't have spread far from Patient Zero if that was the case. – Robotnik Feb 17 '14 at 07:26
@Robotnik: I see your point (although we're using the word "food" to mean different things), but consider: 1) walkers don't eat found corpses (e.g on the highway). 2) A walker will leave an animal it was chewing on to pursue a living person. So walkers may lose interest shortly after the prey stops moving. In that case a victim is "eaten" only if attacked by many walkers. 3) When a walker or two are outnumbered, the living can usually get away, albeit with some bites. So in the early outbreak, the "eating" behavior might not matter. (There's also Jenner's whisper, but I never liked that.) – Beta Feb 17 '14 at 08:28
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@Robotnik: In the real world, species don't care about "making sense". A disease can mutate into a form so virulent that it rapidly kills off all the hosts in a given area. At that point the disease organism itself dies out. (Unless of course it can become dormant until new hosts arrive, or live on another host species without killing them.) That's natural selection for you. – Royal Canadian Bandit Feb 17 '14 at 10:13
@RoyalCanadianBandit - I didn't say the virus took preventative measures or anything - my point was that in real life, if this disease acted the way it does in the show, it never would've made it past the lab door, let alone wiping out 80% of humanity. – Robotnik Feb 17 '14 at 10:28
@Robotnik: Science does not support your conclusion. :-) The famous zombie paper shows that, under assumptions fairly similar to the Walking Dead scenario, the outbreak can easily spread to the entire human race: http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf‎ – Royal Canadian Bandit Feb 17 '14 at 12:00
@RoyalCanadianBandit - That's not science, that's statistics, and the thought experiment they are using assumes an even spread of infected across the population, AND assumes that each encounter with zombies is an isolated event, I.e. no repeat encounters . Even assuming that we transported the entire worlds population to one country, AND assuming that the 'seed' zombies were evenly distributed among that population, the people around them would get the picture pretty quickly and deal with them. – Robotnik Feb 17 '14 at 13:36
The ones that DO get bit have a 24-48hr gestation time (walking dead) and they show symptoms pretty quickly. They'd be quarantined by the people around them. Sure, some would get free, but having seen their friends turn, any new bites would be treated with grave concern, and again, neutral or zero spread – Robotnik Feb 17 '14 at 13:37
@Robotnik: I would say epidemiology qualifies as a science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology). The paper demonstrates there are two possible outcomes. One is the scenario you describe, in which humans act quickly and decisively to eradicate the zombie menace. In the other, the plague grows exponentially and destroys the human race. Which one occurred would depend on political and psychological factors. But we humans are often irrational even when faced with ordinary diseases -- for a real-world example, consider reactions to the spread of AIDS. – Royal Canadian Bandit Feb 17 '14 at 13:58
Remember SARS? It was an airborne disease. The minute it caught wind in North America all flights were grounded, CDC were called, and only 43 people died. Now imagine if it could only spread by a lumbering, frothing at the mouth zombie bite. There is no logical apocalypse scenario where society collapses from that. As I've said earlier, the zombie virus' main source of reproduction is also its main predator. – Robotnik Feb 17 '14 at 14:09
let us continue this discussion in chat – Royal Canadian Bandit Feb 17 '14 at 14:32

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 17 '14 at 10:12

As far as I know there are no canon references -- the entire series is set in Georgia, which doesn't experience temperatures below freezing for any length of time, so the issue has never come up.

Looking for a scientific prediction is not much use. We see walkers which have no heart, lungs, or other vital organs but are still animate; even disembodied walker heads seem to remain active indefinitely. In the real world this would be totally impossible. Basically the walkers violate the laws of physics and biology whenever it is dramatically convenient.

That said, the writers have included pretend-scientific handwaving about the walker condition, in order to add atmosphere. Some animals can survive being frozen for weeks at a time, for example the Alaskan wood frog. The frog can do it because of an antifreeze-like chemical in its blood. So the writers could claim that walker blood has similar properties, allowing walkers to revive after being frozen.

[On a related note, but totally outside the Walking Dead canon, the zombies in Max Brooks' excellent book World War Z do revive after being frozen. So in colder latitudes, the winter is a time to rest and recover before spring arrives and the zombies reanimate.]

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 28 '15 at 02:31

I assume that, by "iceman", you mean someone who was frozen in ice a long time ago, perhaps even thousands of years ago. If this is what you had in mind, then no, thawing the iceman out would not lead to him reanimating as a zombie.

This iceman would have been dead for many, many years, since long before the outbreak began. There are no known cases, in the TWD universe, of dead people who died prior to the outbreak, reanimating; this seems to be a deliberate decision by the franchise's creators and the show's producers. If you died before the outbreak began, you stay dead. If you died after the outbreak began, you reanimate.

If the iceman had been infected before he died, then yes, he would thaw out and become a zombie. Assuming that this is not the case, there is no reason why he would turn into a zombie.

However, if he had somehow been frozen after the outbreak began, he would probably be a zombie when he thawed.

The rules of The Walking Dead are pretty clear:

Everyone is infected, although we don't know when they became infected; however, it certainly happened some time after the outbreak began.
If you die with your brain intact, you become a zombie.
If you are bitten by a zombie, you die (with the obvious exception of being bitten on a limb and having that limb amputated in time to stop the infection from spreading throughout your body).
This hasn't been stated explicitly, but it also appears to be a rule that, if you were already dead before the outbreak began, you stay dead. Corpses which were never infected before death do not reanimate.

So, again, no, the iceman would not become a zombie unless it was infected prior to being frozen.

On the other hand, if a zombie freezes, then thaws out, it regains its mobility and is none the worse for wear.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 19 '14 at 14:01

I read the question as being about someone that died and was frozen long before the outbreak reanimating when they thaw out. the use of preserved implies that we're talking about something more advanced than just basic freezing so we can take things like cell damage out of the equation and assume that after the 'thawing' process we have a perfectly preserved body. would it turn?

as long as the person died and was frozen long before the outbreak and therefore hadn't contracted the dormant virus(i.e the one that everyone carries that activates upon death) before they were frozen i would say, no they wouldn't re-animate. they would stay dead.

there's no evidence of already or long time dead re-animating. someone would need to be living to contract the virus in the first place.

Would preserved bodies (such as ones encased in ice) reanimate when thawed out?

4 Answers4