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Infected, Zombies And Triffids
Spoiler Alert: This page is intended for people who have already read For Those In Peril On The Sea, and may contain information that spoils your enjoyment of the story if you have not done so yet. In the world of For Those In Peril On The Sea, the survivors are kept from the land by humans infected with a mutant form of the rabies virus that turns them into violent and cannibalistic killers. While they have much in common with zombies, and while For Those In Peril On The Sea could be considered a 'zombie' book, the infected are quite different.
Infected, by contrast, are still very much alive. While they don't feel pain, they can be killed in the same way as any other human. They also need to eat to sustain their bodies and are at risk of starvation if them don't. Infected are generally also capable of fast, almost super-human speed, and they can be thought of as humans with the brakes taken off. This speed is often their key to success when they attack uninfected humans, although they may also win by over-running them with superior numbers. With the advent of fast zombies in recent years, the difference between infected and zombies has substantially narrowed. This is often attributed to the file 28 Days Later, but the fast 'zombies' in it were actually people infected by the rage virus, so this attribution is incorrect. However, whether fast or slow, there is one thing that zombies and infected have in common. This is that they are not capable of rational thought and instead are driven by internal desires (to eat brains in the case of zombies, and to attack and kill in the case of infected), and this is enough to unite them into a single 'zombie' genre. The distinction between infected and zombies within post-apocalyptic literature and films, is often not clear-cut, and they range from those that are clearly infected (as in For Those In Peril On The Sea or 28 Days Later) to those that are traditional undead zombies (as in World War Z). Other examples that fall somewhere between these extremes. For example, in the TV series The Walking Dead, people are infected with something that means they come back as zombies when they die. Therefore, they could be considered both infected and zombies. However, its worth noting that the infection seems to remain dormant until people die.
This means that while some cite George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead as the first story in the modern zombie genre, The Day Of The Triffids represents an earlier example of this type of story, and so it has a greater claim to being the father of the genre. This discussion, however, is rather academic. When the apocalypse comes and you're running for your life, it makes little difference whether the creatures pursuing you are infected, zombies or triffids. Whatever they are, the chances are they'll get you in the end. |
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