Zombie Questions

Well, we talked about vampires last week, so how about some zombies this time. Like vampires, zombies appear in a lot of mythologies taking many different forms. They can be living men without souls, the dead raised again, people inflicted with a particularly bad infection, and many other forms still.

The modern versions of zombies we see today are generally the victims of a disease or virus. This has several problems. First, are zombies the only carriers? Or could fleas, mosquitoes, rats, and house pets also be carries? If so, are they only carriers, or would we have zombie bugs and animals to worry about? If you did have a zombie bug, and a spider ate it, would the spider become a zombie, and would that effect its behavior at all? Further would the zombie animals and insects be interested in humans, or would they be after their own kind?

If only zombies are carriers, how effective are zombies at hunting? If they are effective hunters, then the plague can't spread that fast, as a victim would need to be bitten and get away. So if there is a large portion of the population being bitten and getting away, how dangerous are the zombies really? Is it possible all the victims of the zombies are just he dumbest people that couldn't avoid a rather ineffective zombie attack? It is hard to have it both ways, zombies are either a very small number of highly effective killing machines, or they are punch drunk senior citizens.

Why do you only see regular people zombies? Why do you never see disabled zombies? You know, like a wheelchair zombie, or maybe one with a prosthetic limb? What a about a pregnant woman becoming a zombie? Would that by default make her child a zombie? Would the zombie fetus try to chew its way out? If the zombie fetus did chew its way out, would keep growing once it did? What about a person with some form of retardation becoming a zombie? Would they still be "retard strong" as a zombie?