Wingman wrote:Of course, the problem here is the different types of undeath. Zombies are clearly different from vampires, even though they're both undead. The vast majority of vampires would be True Undead, I'm thinking, while zombies would still be classified as Undead due to there being no real need to create an individual classification for them. Or the other way around, depending if if you're simply ranking them according to how many signs of life they lack.
How vampires and zombies relate to each other actually depends on what you're using as a reference. In the movie
Blade, Quinn describes Karen's former colleague as being a zombie because, despite having been bitten by a vampire, he is mentally deficient and thirst-cursed to the point of being cannibalistic.
Also, the movie
Reign in Darkness (which sucked, so I don't recommend looking for it) described how vampires succumb to the thirst as a gradual mental deterioration by which they become more and more savage as it progresses.
It's a definition I borrowed off of for my own writing: in the post-apocalyptic setting, the "zombies" are actually vampires that were starved of untainted blood, resulting in permanent brain damage.
Of course, at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, there are the voodoo zombies, which were never dead to begin with and can, in fact, be "cured" and reintroduced into society. The basic formula for the voodoo zombie story involves the shaman/witchdoctor poisoning their victims with a mixture (puffer fish, among other ingredients) that leaves them paralyzed to the point of appearing dead. Then after the victims have been buried, he digs them back up and (I'm assuming) routinely administers to them a second mixture which acts sort of like a truth serum (IE, intoxicates them and limits their capacity for independent thought) so they can be put to work as slave labor. In the case of voodoo zombies, the zombies overcome their "undead" state as soon as the witchdoctor stops drugging them, after which they eventually "wake up" and may find their way back home.
So a zombie's predominant trait would be an apparent complete lack of coherency as opposed to a state of undeath, much less how they relate to vampires. No offense Wingman; just a little devil's advocacy is all.