28 Light Years Later: Zombies And The Fermi Paradox

“Where is everyone?” is Enrico Fermi’s immortal question, pivotal to the eponymous paradox.

Hypotheses about Earth being isolated range from humans being too violent, bad breath, technologically lacking, and being too religious, among many other self-inflicted condemnations.

Earth should’ve felt the bootprints of intelligent extraterrestrial life at least once in history. The theory goes an alien species, travelling near the speed of light should be able to reach every star in the Milky Way. Despite the best intentions of Giorgio Tsoukalos and Erich von Däniken, evidence suggests our blue-green ball of mud remains forever alone.

What if the loneliness isn’t our problem?

Stephen R. Kane and Franck Zelziz aren’t proposing we are the “First Ones”, nor are we the last sentient species, but the only living species. A Necro-Biological Explanation For The Fermi Paradox, currently awaiting peer-review at The Necronomicon, considers the possibility within an infinite universe, with an infinite number of stars, accompanied by uncountable planets once populated with variegated beings, there’s a non-zero chance they must’ve fallen victim to infinite zombie apocalypses. Dead aliens send no signals.

An interesting proposition!

Building upon the model outlined in Philip Munz and pals’s When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling Of An Outbreak Of Zombie Infection, where the hungry dead would overwhelm any civilization if not swiftly contained.

Outlined in the preprint is a new derivation of the Drake Equation, a methodology for the detection of a planet falling victim to a zombie outbreak by measuring compounds associated with decay via transmission spectroscopy in those atmospheres, and sussing out the timeline of an alien zombie outbreak. An exciting, and accessible, four pages without scary quadratic equations and their derivations.

Would you welcome our new alien zombie overlords? Pay tribute on our Facebook page, at Twitter, or in the comments below.

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