Zombies, anyone?

[Carlobrand]

Nonsense. A body is an extremely delicate machine and 'dead' is another word for 'broken'. Muscles won't work properly if the blood doesn't flow and the lungs don't draw breath. Can you even induce muscle spasms with electricity in humans the way you can with frogs? In any case such spasms would be a) uncordinated and b) cease in a few seconds or minutes. And if you've been dead for 30 minutes, the brain is already destroyed...

Now where precisely is your storyteller's spirit? Where is your sense of wonder? The TL-15/16 Imperium can build artificial intelligences, meson weapons, disintegrators, fusion plants small enough to fit in a small vehicle, reprogram DNA to create a desert-adapted human subspecies, and exists in a universe where psionics is a proven ability - and you can't conceive of nanobots that could pull this off? This is almost mundane by modern sci-fi standards!

We have arbitrarily created a means of end-running around the light-speed barrier in order to create a far-future setting in which to stage our adventures - but it's inconceivable that nanobots could restore a very recently dead body to sufficient function to support the scenario? Really?? Dude, by that criteria we need to cut everything back to TL 8 and just confine the game to Sol system.

Just a thought: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was likely pretty ridiculous to the medical minds of the time - but it made for one unforgettable story.

 

[Icosahedron]

Something like a rabies disease. It is a whole body infection and effects the cognitave portion of the brain making the infected person incapable of higher reasoning. The person is driven partially mad and wants to bite / eat uninfected persons. As the disease only effects humans....

You can add it causes the body much like hepatitus or jaundice to shut down various organs causing the skin to grey, sores and legions to form as the immune system stops working, etc. Progression of the disease could take hours to days to weeks depending on your choice of how virulent you want it to be.
If you go for weeks then the players have a chance to try and find a cure for those in the party that become infected......

Being bitten or coming in contact with a diseased person in some more than casual manner (getting splashed with their fluids in the mouth, eyes, etc., prolonged exposed contact like say by a doctor examining a dead one, or similar) transmits the disease.

Killing them requires a head shot to finish the neural activity left over. Hitting them anywhere else has limited effect as they don't feel pain or react to serious wounds.

You get zombies.....

That is pretty much how I did it.
A biowarfare agent designed to be targeted at enemy cities, it induced circulatory deterioration resulting in frostbite-like lesions and sensory numbing. Toxins from gangrenous tissue, mixed with deliberate self-replicating hallucinogens, psychotic inducers and chemical lobotomy agents resulted in paranoid psychoses culminating in homicidal mania, with the victim becoming progressively more deranged, violent and animalistic over time. The agent was engineered to be contagious, creating terror and panic in the population.

 

[BytePro]

Those are really cool - and result in Zombie-like symptoms... without being Zombies.

A more fictional science vs pure fantasy approach.

Zombies are animated dead - or 'undead' in the popular horror slang. A concept that works with the ignorance of bygone ages about clinical death - i.e. fantasy.

Remove the 'death' requirement - you have leper afflicted folks with dope symptoms and a hunger for raw meat.

 

[Carlobrand]

Still sounds like an aggressive form of rabies.

Ooh - who remembers the Berserker one where they took captured humans and replaced the brain with robotic ones in order to infiltrate and kill?

 

[Icosahedron]

Those are really cool - and result in Zombie-like symptoms... without being Zombies.

Alas, BP, you never got to meet them.

 

[Whipsnade]

Those are really cool - and result in Zombie-like symptoms... without being Zombies.

Precisely. They're "zombies" without being "ZOMBIES!!!" and that make it more fun. More fun and more creative than just mindlessly 'porting zombies, drow, vampires, orcs, and whatnot into the game.

A more fictional science vs pure fantasy approach.

Again, precisely. Thanks to the current and, ironically, mindless zombie craze, the players are going to bring all sorts of preconceptions to the scenario and any GM worth his Cheetos can use those preconceptions to their advantage.

Case in point: There was a GDW 2300AD scenario which involved people with vampire-like symptoms who weren't "VAMPIRES!!!". They were the victims of a Provolution experiment trying to remain hidden from both the genetic terrorists who "created" them and the authorities who want to "cure" them. At a convention I watched players in this scenario wrap themselves in knots thanks to all the popular culture "knowledge" concerning "VAMPIRES!!!" instead of actually thinking their way through the situation. The GM could barely keep from laughing out loud when the players seriously tried to get hold of Super Soakers and holy water...

Zombies are animated dead - or 'undead' in the popular horror slang. A concept that works with the ignorance of bygone ages about clinical death - i.e. fantasy. Remove the 'death' requirement - you have leper afflicted folks with dope symptoms and a hunger for raw meat.

Bingo. Coming up with a plausible in-game explanation for "zombie-like" afflictions works far better than just dropping the whole concept into the game unchanged.

 

[Enoki]

Now, there is always the cheesy 50's B movie version. You have your classic mad scientist who is experimenting with "recently dead" persons (ie assistant Igor killed them and brought the bodies in). He is placing some sort of high tech chips / electronics in the body to animate them.
Only the stimulation causes them to go bezerk and start roaming around his remote location where he was doing the experiments. There are lots of them....

 

[Carlobrand]

Zombie ants from planet X

Interesting bit came across the news:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/03/11398655-zombie-ants-fight-fungus-with-fungus?lite

A bizarrely specific fungus infects the ants and affects their little ant brains, causing them to climb high before they die so that the sporing bit that erupts after they die can scatter its spores more effectively. And now another bizarrely specific fungus that attacks that fungus, disabling its fruiting mechanism and preventing it from driving the infected ant into zombie mode. Fungus wars!

 

[77topaz]

Interesting bit came across the news:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/03/11398655-zombie-ants-fight-fungus-with-fungus?lite

A bizarrely specific fungus infects the ants and affects their little ant brains, causing them to climb high before they die so that the sporing bit that erupts after they die can scatter its spores more effectively. And now another bizarrely specific fungus that attacks that fungus, disabling its fruiting mechanism and preventing it from driving the infected ant into zombie mode. Fungus wars!

I've read, in the National Geographic I believe, about a parasite that forces ants to climb to the top of grass stalks so they are eaten by sheep and the parasite can continue its life cycle inside them.