Do Zombies Feel Pain?
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Call them the walkers, the Walking Dead, or Living Dead; Zombies are reanimated corpses; hence they lack any thinking ability. Once a zombie bites an individual, the bitten person gradually turns into a zombie.
Typically, a zombie is an unintelligible undead creature that is doesn't have any physical feeling. A zombie has lost its cognitive brain leaving only the primitive part of the brain functioning. This means that zombies have no feeling for pain, and neither makes their fear threats. Their primitive brain drives them to feel hungry all the time.
Does Stabbing a Zombie Inflict Pain?
Of course not! Fighting a zombie should be a matter of survival rather than winning. Remember, a zombie is already a corpse, so stabbing it doesn't cause any form of pain or resentment. Their brain is already dead, and they have no sense of the pain, for that matter.
Although some people believe that stabbing a zombie in its heart can stop it, unfortunately, a zombie's survival doesn't depend on its heart for existing. However, chopping off both of its limbs can significantly impair its movement, making it less effective in attacking you.
Although the zombie won't die either, feel the excruciating pain if you chop off its head, but this will give you a better position to defend yourself.
What About Cutting Off A Zombies Limbs?
Cutting off its limbs can further make it ineffective to attach you or continue coming after you, but it would still be active.
One of the most effective techniques of killing a zombie is removing its brain. This is because zombies do not regenerate or heal. Although hurting a zombie won't cause any form of pain, you can kill it and stop it from causing further dangers.
How Can You Kill A Zombie?
You can use knives, swords, or a gun to shoot it on the head. Until a zombie is killed, it can stay in that injured state until its body fully decomposes. Burning a zombie is an effective way of killing it permanently.
Although few literary zombie fictions address this question, do zombies feel pain, or do they fail to react?
Brain Activity/Stimulation
There are several explanations on why a zombie won't feel any pain or respond to any pain-causing stimuli. However, it's very critical to understand how humans are conscious of pain-induced.
When a pain-stimulating object, for instance, fire, touches the skin, the pain passes through the inflicted tissue. This activates the pain receptors nerve endings, thus sending an impulse by the nerve system to the spinal cord.
The impulse goes to the thalamus, which then sends the impulse to the sensory cortex. The sensory cortex interprets the impulse and then finally sends it to the thalamus and the nerves, thus causing a sensation of pain.
According to this explanation, a zombie can't experience pain since the conscious and sensory part of the brain is already dead.
Since nerve endings, the nociceptors responsible for sensing injuries, a zombie won't experience the pain stimulus that is inflicting pain on their body, which can be evidence that zombies do not experience pain.
The genetic mutation resulting from the infection can cause permanent damage to the pain detecting nerve cells in a zombie, thus inhibiting its ability to experience any form of pain, whether fire or stabbing.
Physical mutation of the zombies' body can be characterized by congenital insensitivity to any form of pain. The disease can further result in overstimulation of the thalamus in zombies hence resulting in endless excruciating pain.
This overstimulation of the zombie's thalamus can bring opposite effects, thus explaining why zombies have no feeling for pain.
The production of an excessive amount of adrenaline in a zombie's blood can also explain why no feeling for pain has. Some of the physical effects of too much adrenaline include unending hunger, suppressed feeling for pain, and aggression.
Too much adrenaline in humans is responsible for performing some superhuman deeds. Excessive adrenaline in zombies can explain why they go through excruciating pain without feeling it and their insatiable hunger for human flesh.
Psychologically, a human being can train their minds to ignore pain, especially by thinking something more positive. If humans can achieve this, then a zombie whose obsession is consuming human flesh can too set their mind to ignore pain, thus explaining why zombies do not feel pain.
