Making the undead

Naturally, Plague Inc has introduced zombie and vampire outbreaks to its list of scenarios, the existing models providing a chance to explore how they might actually work. “I wanted a scientifically plausible zombie outbreak,” Vaughan says. “I started out enjoying TheWalkingDead but they had no interest in exploring what happened. I lost a huge amount of enjoyment at that point – I wanted to know the hows and whys and what would need to happen for it to work. I sat down and thought about the symptoms, how the world would react to it.” Plague Inc’s depiction is unabashedly fictional, but attempts to make its zombies and vampires as credible as possible. The zombie outbreak explores how they can stay ambulatory without breathing, so the disease’s symptoms promote anaerobic respiration, which leads to lactic acid buildup in the brain, which ends up killing the victim. “It’s a thought experiment, to see where things go.”