Canada. No safe haven for zombies

[LiamKerrington]

Hi there,

I think the key to getting the government to respond to a brewing zombie crisis is to tap into the things that are important to the government. For instance, are zombies still citizens? If so can they vote, and does their transformation effect their party affiliation? What social services do zombies qualify for? Is their a need to establish undead affirmative action and hiring quotas? Do they still have to pay taxes? Can the government confiscate their investments and property in lieu of direct payment of taxes? Could the zombies be some form of Islamic, or worse, Christian fundamentalists?

This is very interesting. And I think these questions require some thoughts on the prepended question, whether the answers to your questions would be different based on the various types of zombies or not. In other words: There are zombies which became zombies after the death of humans, thus the zombie-factor would kick in 'only' in the human body but not the human itself (which in itself is a question of itself - is there a difference between a living and a dead human), while other zombie-types simply 'transform' a living human being into a zombie; also it would be interesting to consider the different sources of zombie-ism, if they lead to different results as well - like if a zombie based on a viral agent would be treated different from a zombie spawned from magic powers (like voodoo-zombies).

Another complex of questions would be this one:
If a zombie is only a dead body reactivated by a zombie-agent, does this question our understanding of life? In other words: Would a zombie like this be considered to be a living being, if the human shell was at least for a short period of time already dead?
And - depending on the answers to your questions - if zombies are considered to be humans (again), do survivors act like criminals if they perform 'homicides'/ 'zombicides' on zombies, and what would be the meaning of "self-defense" then?

It is very interesting to see that these questions are coming up over here. Actually I 'work' on a new article for my blog touching questions like yours, CabbagePatch, as well.

All the best!
Liam