EXO Zombie Physiology, and the nature of Manticore

[Electric Jesus]

As of now, Element 115 does not exist in the Exo Zombies universe. So what causes the zombies to be zombified? The most likely answer is the more modern "disease" zombie rather than one that is truly killed then reanimated. Obviously if this is the case, it would be a result of the Atlas corporation's development of the biological weapon Manticore. This is specifically a type of virus that has a similar effect to Nova 6 on human bodies. However, there are many signs around the map that have words like "mutation" on them. This most likely refers to an unstable strain of Manticore, which presents itself with distinctly different symptoms rather than near instant death.

Think of it this way. A virus invades a cell, turns it on itself, turns it into an infected cell, then that goes on to infect other cells. Once it conquers the organism, it does the same thing, but on a larger scale. It conquers the organism, turns it into an infected, (otherwise known as zombie,) then uses it to infect other humans. This the virus is able to spread, as is in their nature.

Anyway let's get on to the actual physical capabilities of the Exo Zombies.

Zombies in this mode are not capable of surviving without their heads, which saves me a lot of work honestly. There is no higher power involved in their actions. No angsty little girl playing with toys.

Anyway there's no need to go over all the specific senses. However I'd like to talk about two of them.

One trait that these Zombies possess is their reaction to being shot. That is, they actually react to being shot sometimes, staggering backward. It is not clear whether this is due to them being able to feel sensation (which is most likely given that they are still technically alive) but it could just be a new layer of realism on Sledgehammer's part. (Hmm I wonder if anyone on this site has ever made a thread about stopping power in zombies...) Most likely they are able to feel but simply don't react to it, and their apparent flinching is just from the force of your bullets.

Secondly I'd like to bring up their sense of smell. I believe this is the main sense by which they locate humans. Camouflage is this game's equivalent of Zombie Blood, which is thought to work by masking your scent. We can deduce then that they are able to locate non-infected humans based on their scent. Or rather, in the nature of viruses, the zombies are probably designed to target all humans, EXCEPT for those that bear the scent of the infection, rather than specifically being attracted to the scent of an uninfected human.

One thing to note is that, like in Treyarch zombies, they don't try to bite you, or eat you, or infect you. They just try to kill you. The exception to this is the special "Infected" zombies. My theory is that the zombies are simply designed to attack, thereby spreading the virus. However the disease is only contagious for a certain amount of time. So most of the zombies have been zombified for quite some time, and still possess the tendency to attack, without actually being able to infect. Alternately the contagious zombies are just newly infected.

Remember that all Atlas employees are immune to Manticore. However this is a mutated strain, from which nobody is safe. We can assume that the decontamination process is the same as what had already been developed for the original strain of manticore. However as we know, Manticore was specifically designed to only affect people lacking the pre-determined genotypes. This is how they were able to protect Atlas employees without actually immunizing them. However the mutated strain lacks this genotype recognition. Basically what this means is just that (like the original strain) manual decontamination is possible, although it was never necessary pre-mutation.

The zombies that utilize Exo suits simply do so in exactly the same way that normal humans do. It is synchronized to their bodies' motions, so whatever movements they make to reach you (all of which are to reach you actually) are just magnified by the exos. They don't consciously use them; it's just an extension of their animalistic attempts to kill you. Notice how they don't exactly have mad jukes yolo swag 420. They just mostly try to reach you in a more efficient manner.

I will update with special zombies and dogs soon.

[Lenne]

You are on PS4. How can you already tell us these informations? 

 

Dem Tags... again.

[Electric Jesus]

Yes thanks sorry, all fixed. Might actually update this soon having played a bit more. #PS4Problems