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Want brains? Try the Ivy League...
You Can Run, You Can Hide:
The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies* (see below)
news article: http://www.theage.com.au/world/in-case-o...Washington: Americans living in the Rocky Mountain states such as Colorado and Utah stand a better chance of dodging a zombie apocalypse than their urban counterparts. Cities would fall quickly, suggests the "large-scale exact stochastic dynamical simulation of a zombie outbreak" from Cornell University in New York state.
But it would take weeks for a zombie plague to penetrate rural areas, and months to reach the Rocky Mountains, according to the highly mathematical study. In pop culture, "if there is a zombie outbreak, it is usually assumed to affect all areas at the same time," said Alex Alemi, one of four graduate students in theoretical physics who undertook the research. "But in our attempt to model zombies somewhat realistically, it doesn't seem like this is how it would actually go down," he said in a statement.
Based on the team's simulation, the densely populated and highly urbanised east and west coasts would be the first to succumb to a zombie plague. Much of America would have fallen after four weeks, but it would take "a very long time" for zombies to reach the most remote corners of the nation. "Even four months in, remote areas of Montana and Nevada (would) remain zombie free," the study says.
The study - which mimics the way scientists forecast the spread of a real epidemic - assumes an element of randomness in the way the zombie apocalypse would unfold within the Lower 48 states.
*We use a popular fictional disease, zombies, in order to introduce techniques used in modern epidemiology modelling, and ideas and techniques used in the numerical study of critical phenomenon. We consider variants of zombie models, from fully connected continuous time dynamics to a full scale exact stochastic dynamic simulation of a zombie outbreak on the continental United States. Along the way, we offer a closed form analytical expression for the fully connected differential equation, and demonstrate that the single person per site two dimensional square lattice version of zombies lies in the percolation universality class. We end with a quantitative study of the full scale US outbreak, including the average susceptibility of different geographical regions.
The actual paper (PDF): http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.01104v1.pdf
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Our tax dollars at work.......... :banghead:
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Makes sense - zombies don't drive vehicles/boats/planes.
Gonna take 'em awhile to walk to the least populated areas of the U.S.
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testcase wrote:
Our tax dollars at work.......... :banghead:
Are you opposed to basic research, or epidemiology in general? This kind of modeling is really useful for understanding how disease spreads and can be controlled.
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Studying "Zombies"?????
I think there would be more productive uses for research dollars.
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testcase wrote:
Studying "Zombies"?????
I think there would be more productive uses for research dollars.
Did you read the (peer reviewed) journal article, or even the news report? They didn't 'study zombies,' which are fictional.
Researchers wrote:
Zombies offer a fun framework for introducing many modern concepts from epidemiology and critical phenomenon. We have described and analyzed various zombie models, from one describing deterministic dynamics in a well-mixed system to a full scale US epidemic. We have given a closed form analytical solution to the well-mixed dynamic differential equation model. We compared the stochastic dynamics to a comparable density-dependent SIR model. We investigated the critical phenomenon of the single person per site two-dimensional square lattice zombie model and demonstrated it is in the percolation universality class. We ran full scale simulations of a zombie epidemic, incorporating each human in the continental United States, and discussed the geographical implications for survival.
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In this case, I think it happens to be a GREAT use of a hypothetical "disease" to use for modeling potential "real world" issues, without picking a more highly politicized disease (ebola, various flues, etc) disease that will get nit-picked to death and the actual research lost in the noise.
If it were a study on "the efficacy of lightsabers in modern mid-east warfare in urban combat", while I would read the study, I would object to tax dollars being used for that....
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Paul F. wrote:
In this case, I think it happens to be a GREAT use of a hypothetical "disease" to use for modeling potential "real world" issues, without picking a more highly politicized disease (ebola, various flues, etc) disease that will get nit-picked to death and the actual research lost in the noise.
Plus, how many math papers can you buy a tee-shirt for?
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Steve G. wrote:
[quote=Paul F.]
In this case, I think it happens to be a GREAT use of a hypothetical "disease" to use for modeling potential "real world" issues, without picking a more highly politicized disease (ebola, various flues, etc) disease that will get nit-picked to death and the actual research lost in the noise.
Plus, how many math papers can you buy a tee-shirt for?
Also true 
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