How I Learned to Stop Zombieing and Love the Vaccine
In class, we discussed the SIR model of disease transmission. Different variants of the SIR model are the standard differential equation model for disease spread. In class, we analyzed the SIR model by calculating the expected number of transmissions per person. We argued that if this number were less than 1, the disease would eventually die out and if it were greater than 1, the disease could potentially spread without bound. This model assumed however, that once people were moved into the Recovered category, they remained healthy and were no longer capable of spreading the disease.
The authors of “When zombies attack!: Mathematical modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection” used the SIR model to model zombie infections. They did this by changing the behavior of people in the Recovered category. Since they were modeling the zombie disease, no people were allowed to recover and all infected remained infectious and increased their expected number of transmissions. The authors spent most of their paper adopting the SIR model to better fit the zombie disease, i.e. by accounting for the effects of quarantine and possible cures.
The authors reached a conclusion that comes of little surprise to avid fans of zombie films: humanities prospects look quite grim. The authors argued that unless drastic quarantine measures were taken and a cure could be developed, it would be very difficult to stop the exponential spread of the zombie disease. The authors conclude with a funny, self-aware comment: “Clearly, this is an unlikely scenario if taken literally, but possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties, or diseases with a dormant infection.”
This paper served as an example of one of the central themes of Networks: how simple modeling principles can accurately model the basic features of a wide variety of phenomenon.
Source: https://loe.org/images/content/091023/Zombie%20Publication.pdf