Dark Crusade Ultimate Apocalypse Mod

[Agenor Ramadan]

Iam really surprised that I can't find a question that has already answered this. I am working on a book about essentially what might have happened had a zombie plague broken out in England in about 1060 AD, right before William the Conqueror began to cause waves.

To be specific: These are sort of medium-speed zombies, walking about as fast as a human in decent health walks. They require brain damage to kill- a head by itself would still be alive. Infection is spread by bites/scratches/wounds. The disease infects only humans. After being infected, the infected person shows symptoms (fever, extreme, almost constant vomiting, nausea) after a few hours, and generally turns after 36-48 hours. They don't need to feed to stay alive. They are faster at night, but only slightly. The zombies do not like water- being fully immersed in it would eventually kill them, in a matter of days to weeks.

My thoughts so far are, that the zombies would destroy isolated villages, but towns would be unlikely to fall unless an infected person made it inside, and possible not even then. Guards would be very vigilant.

Religious societies might well set up sort of a "citizen's hospital" to quarantine visitors for a while upon entrance to the city. There is a fairly large precedent for religious generosity even to "untouchables" of society. The entire religious aspect is fascinating, and a large part of why I'm investigating a book about this scenario. The zombies would likely be seen as a curse from God.

Advantages of armour when fighting zombies indicates they would actually do fairly well against zombies. In thinking about it, zombies are probably very easy for an army to slay- hand to hand combat against an unarmed foe whilst wearing armor. The tricky bit is that if one of your comrades got infected, you might well wake up to find the army's camp overrun.

The basic issue is that there are very few people in medieval England. You've got 1.5 million people, mostly rural, so very spread out. Even if everyone in the country gets turned that makes for only 20 zombies per square mile. So realistically you won't get zombie hordes, you'd get the odd individual zombie wandering into places. Which is easily dealt with once people know what to look for.

To spread, the average zombie encounter needs to have the "zombie infecting someone and so increasing the number of zombies" be of a greater likelihood than "the zombie is destroyed without infecting someone (or the infected are killed without turning)". That just doesn't seem likely.

That's ignoring the increased proportion of people who are handy with a farm implement, and a superstitious populace that is therefore more mentally prepared to clobber a 'demonically possessed' neighbour.

The standard huscarl in Harold's army would be clad in mail, protected by a conical "nasal" helmet and a kite shaped great shield, and fighting with a large Danish war axe as a primary weapon. The huscarls were elite troops with high levels of cohesion and motivation, fighting behind "shield walls", so the zombies would have a hard time getting at them. As well, the axes would deal killing blows to unarmoured zombies quite easily.

The local fyrd (levies or militia would be the closest term) would have much less protection and cohesion, and would probably be the source of all your zombie infection problems. A member of the fyrd could be easily scratched or bitten, and go back to the village after the battle to dispatch the zombies. Mayhem results a few days later, and the fyrd of the next village is called up to repel the zombie horde, with similar results.

What would be horrifying to the villagers and even the elite huscarls was the seemingly random nature of zombie infestations. They didn't have a germ theory of disease, so being struck by the zombie plague would seem to be sheer magic or the act of a vengeful God displeased with the local people. There would be some inkling that people with the disease should be kept out, but a carrier not showing any symptoms would probably be let through the blockade, and of course the villages and towns needed access to food and fuel (trees, in this case) so there will be lots of traffic. Of course authority was fairly weak and localized, so a guard could be bribed or subverted to let someone pass, negating the effect of the quarantine blockade.

Unless someone was willing to carry out drastic measures (as in burn down the village where a suspected zombie may be), the disease will spread quickly. Even worse, drastic measures like this will only slow, not stop the disease. A zombie shambling around in the forest could pop out at any random time and start the cycle all over again, and the disease will grow and spread in a geometric progression.

William will never bother to cross the channel to claim the "Accursed Isle", devoid of human population but lethal to any living human who were to go there for the next 100 years (perhaps more if the Zombie virus can stay alive in spore form ready to infect newcomers to the shores of England).

It only takes one person to make it inside a city to spread the disease easily. The success of quarantine will require that they realize how long it takes until the vomiting starts, and take extreme measures, but it is possible.

I think the success of your knights' expeditions would greatly depend on just how many people get turned before everyone realizes the circumstances they are in. Your people still require food and goods, which was coming from those ioslated villages.

If not a lot of people are turned - a standing army could conceivably battle and keep control of land used for food production, and protect anybody moving goods from one place to another. Yes, they would have to take those hard decisions to kill their friend who was only scratched and is now sick.

However, a huge mass of undead - no matter how slow or unarmed, could overwhelm anybody with any weapon or armor. It could potentially be the same as being under siege with an enemy that will never get tired of sieging, and who only grows stronger the longer the siege lasts as slowly the zombies catch those outside of the city walls.

The overall answer to "How likely would a zombie apocalypse be to wipe out civilization in medieval England?": It depends - mostly on how quick they are to react and how many zombies there are when the number stops going up as fast.

Epidemiological studies have shown that to successfully combat the typically-described zombie outbreak, it is necessary to eliminate zombies and the infected humans rapidly, otherwise the end result will be a world where zombies have replaced humanity.

In medieval times, human life was somewhat less valued, and in the initial stages of an outbreak, people would be more likely to avoid someone obviously sick than to try and help - and get bitten, thus reducing the bite rate. The zombie removal rate could be considered to be a little higher too, especially as the outbreak continued, as it could be made a religious duty to kill the zombified and infected.

Additionally, the full plate armour that knights wore would make them far more resistant to being bitten and infected, thus reducing the bite rate against said individuals, who would also be better at zombie removal.

All in all, without actually simulating the outbreak as the authors of the paper I cited did, I can guess that there is a fairly even chance that either the zombies or humans will win, probably depending on the speed with which the authorities act to control the outbreak. In either case, there is quite likely to be a lot of corpses, and if the humans win, the clean-up isn't likely to be pretty.

The epidemiological study shows that cities are dangerous places to be, that it's far safer to remain out in the countryside. That is the case in modern times, and will be just as valid in medieval times.

In Medieval times defensive structures were very common, and while not everyone had a stone castle there were Motte and Baileys that people could go into when someone was attacking. They had a bailey (farm bit) a motte (a hill) and a keep which was the wooden castle on top of a motte.The whole thing had a palisade fence around it and a moat around that so if it wasn't airborne communities of lords and peasants could continue to survive in these fenced-off areas. Unfortunately Motte and Baileys only took off in England after William the Conquerer came to power and had a castle building-spree. So if you hold onto those zombies for another twenty years, society has a better chance of surviving.Besides the Mottes and Baileys, I think people would manage the zombies fine. After the vikings, slow, weaponless people probably wouldn't be that scary. the case that England does collapse CYMRU AM BYTH! Cymru Gruffydd ap Llywelyn!!

The single greatest threat posed by a medieval zombie apocolypse is the threat that they would pose to farmers doing their work and to crops in the fields, as explained at greater length below, something that other answers haven't given much thought to addressing.

Solutions like moats would be popular (and for backstory, Copper Age and Bronze Age Iberia was full of walled enclosures that often, perhaps even usually featured moats, so perhaps zombies were a particular problem in Portugal and Spain for some reason).

And, defeating zombies militarily in planned engagements with armored soldiers and calavry might work, against an ill armed, not terribly fast moving, ill coordinated foe, however deadly they might be if their infection is passed on.

In the Middle Ages, the vast majority of the population (70%-90%ish) was engaged in farming as serfs on feudal estates and herding on unenclosed pastures. And, it is not practical to have a very large share of workers in a field wearing armor or carrying weapons in addition to farming tools while working the fields. Probably only something like 1% to 5% of the population could be spared as anti-zombie soldiers.

Also, only a small minority of people could afford to use horses for transportation, so most serfs and free peasants would have to live pretty close to the fields that they work, greatly limiting the number of people who can live in fortified urban centers. Recall that feudalism was necessary in the first place because kings lacked the logistic capacity to rule their kingdoms directly, rather than through intermediary noblemen who lived cheek by jowl with their subjects. High population densities were simply not economically or technologically viable for the most part.

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