New School Economic Review

Previous Post: A lot of talk of change… where’s the action?   Next Post: Clean water for everyone? Could it be that simple?

Mathematical modelling is dead… well, undead :)

by Benjamin on August 18, 2009

Ok… Mathematical modeling has now gone to a stage where there is no return to dignity for any of us. In what some might call a brave new frontier, a brand new research area, or prudent planning for a potential black swan of infectious diseases, mathematicians, statisticians and medical faculty members at Carleton University and Ottawa University have built a mathematical model exploring what would happen if a zombie infection should break out.

That is zombie as in night of the living dead, 28 days later, Shawn of the dead, “must eat Brain… Brain…” Zombies. Here’s the abstract:

Yes really... Zombies

Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected, but not infectious, before becoming undead. We then modify the model to include the effects of possible quarantine or a cure. Finally, we examine the impact of regular, impulsive reductions in the number of zombies and derive conditions under which eradication can occur. We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.

Not only is this published as a chapter [download here!] in the new book Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress (2009), but they develop a proper formal mathematical model to explore the equilibrium (!) properties of the system… Solving a couple of Jacobians they find that … “When Z = 0, we have the disease-free equilibrium… These equilibrium points show that, regardless of their stability, human-zombie coexistence is impossible”… what a shame (Munz et al. 2009: 136-7).

It’s worth a look over, maybe someone can come up with a criticism or a review of the New School Economic Review, I mean… This is stuff that people need to know.