[ZombieBruce]

i always hear brain beats brawn but is this always the case? in a Zed filled world would being physcially strong :x give you a better advantage than being intteligent?

[ZombieBruce]

i personally think that being strong would help during the first couple of weeks of Zday. But eventually youd run out of resources. being intelligent would be better in the long run for the fact that the ability to see and evaluate a situation is what gives us our own advantage over the zombies. brute stregth alone wont help us win World War Z

[CAVU45]

I think there's a good middle ground between the two, with a nod to the intelligence side. One can always get stronger, but not intelligent. I beleive one should be in decent shape physically, but a persons wits will be the deciding factor in the end. Brawn won't help you find and use properly scarce resources.

[ZombieBruce]

quite, a good balance tipping in the intelligence side. being one of those super geeks will get you killed but being at least to lift most of ur own bodyweight

[bandits1]

I don't know if being able to spell simple words correctly would help during ZPAW - but it can't hurt - so practice now while you have the time.

[kiltedninja]

ZombieBruce said:

quite, a good balance tipping in the intelligence side. being one of those super geeks will get you killed but being at least to lift most of ur own bodyweight

Being able to lift more than your own bodyweight would be better. Someone who is smart and strong will probably survive far longer than anyone else.

[Lian]

Why do they have to be mutually exclusive? Coming right down to Darwin's theory the one's that will survive in the end are the one's that are smart and strong.

Sure being smart will help in some areas, and being strong will help in others. But super geniuses will survive, as will dumb as nails herculean people, that will spawn more of the great Hercules like people with the mind of Plato.

But yea with the current stage of evolution, neither group has a major advantage over the other.

I also find the idea that you can get stronger but not smarter to be an insult at the very least. If you can't get smarter why in the hell do we have schools at all? Why aren't we all born talking, walking, and solving calculus then? Sure there are those out there that can't learn as fast as others but that doesn't mean that they can't learn. You could take the dumbest Jock in the world and with enough time even he could get a PHD. It's all in where you apply your time, some people gravitate towards education, others towards physical prowess but that in no way means you can't do both.

[kiltedninja]

Either way, on a long enough time line, the survival rate of everything is reduced to zero.

[mattifikation]

I think there will be a place for both. That's like asking "What's better for transportation, a truck or a car?"

The answer depends on what, exactly, you plan to do.

[hotlead]

In reality, you just need a few intelligent folks making decisions and taking the lead. Not everyone needs to be a genius to survive.

Lian, intelligence and education are different things. The guy who owns my company has his C-10 and has been engineering fire alarm systems for over 20 years, he dropped out of highschool and hasn't been in a classroom since. Yes, the dumbest jock in the world can earn a Phd, but will he be able to do anything with it.

Stuffing a brain full of facts and retaining them long enough to regurgitate them into an exam, doesn't mean there is an aptitude to put it to practice and solve problems.

[CAVU45]

Lian said:

I also find the idea that you can get stronger but not smarter to be an insult at the very least.

Who said anything about smarter? Intelligence and "smart" are two different things. Seems you're feeling insulted over a lack of reading comprehension.

[kiltedninja]

I, for example, am a very smart person but I'm not very intelligent. My logic and observation skills are my best, as well as imitation to an extent.

[Noc]

Like most other people have said, a good mix of both would be ideal. Personally I'd be more on the physical side, but with little to no knowledge or 'smarts' concerning things that would help me survive a zombie outbreak, I don't think I would last long.

But a physically weak and unfit person, who possessed knowledge that would help them in a 'zombie world' would probably last longer.

By knowledge I mean Mechanical skills, hortocultural skills, carpentry skills, medical skills, etc etc.

[kiltedninja]

I think endurance will be more important than your physical endurance. Someone may be able to squat five hundred and fifty pounds, but that same person might not be able to walk for ten miles with a pack on.

[CAVU45]

Mental stress can be just as debilitating as physical stress. Even for someone who's physically fit, if they aren't mentally tough they stand a greater chance of failure in a PAW. Intelligence plays a big part in that.

[ZombieBruce]

Being physically tough is easy being mentally ready for Zday is much harder. If you can run, jump and fight good for you. But being able to deal with the toll it will take out on your mind will lead most survivors into depression, maybe even suicide. The main thing is when civilazation ends it will be the intelligent people who survive to rebuild the communtity but it will also take the physically strong to stay alive.

[Countbad]

Like mentioned previously, its the smart and strong ones with best chances of survival. However you should also throw a third variable into the mix....Luck. It doesn't matter how smart or strong you are, some situations are just unsurvivable. You could be a navy seal with an IQ of 140 and all the weapons and supplies in the world, and still die within the first days of a Zombie Apocalypse.

[CAVU45]

There's no such thing as luck. Only variables that help to decide an outcome.

[Noc]

CAVU45 said:

Mental stress can be just as debilitating as physical stress. Even for someone who's physically fit, if they aren't mentally tough they stand a greater chance of failure in a PAW. Intelligence plays a big part in that.

So true. In a ZPAW, the amount of people who would commit suicide would be huge. Not to mention people in shock, or people getting really drunk, or high on drugs/medication. I think half of the people to survive the initial outbreak, (1-5 days) would die due to drug, alcohol, or mental conditions that put them in a lower state of awareness, thus making them 'ZED bait'.

[Lian]

hotlead said:

In reality, you just need a few intelligent folks making decisions and taking the lead. Not everyone needs to be a genius to survive.

Lian, intelligence and education are different things. The guy who owns my company has his C-10 and has been engineering fire alarm systems for over 20 years, he dropped out of highschool and hasn't been in a classroom since. Yes, the dumbest jock in the world can earn a Phd, but will he be able to do anything with it.

Stuffing a brain full of facts and retaining them long enough to regurgitate them into an exam, doesn't mean there is an aptitude to put it to practice and solve problems.

Intelligence and education are not the same thing. This is true. However that doesn't make them exist in separate realms where they don't interact with each other. Education is the cultivating and growth of Intelligence. Intelligence by it's Websters definition is something to the effect of the ability to learn and apply information. And in my said example of the Jock getting the PHD, if he wasn't able to apply the information that he learned to get said diploma he wouldn't have gotten it to begin with. Unfortunately getting a PHD isn't as simple as regurgitating facts and figures onto a multiple choice scantron as you seem to imply. Whether he chooses to apply what he knows or not is down to personal preference, and again comes back to how you a lot your time.

More to the basis of survival of a Zombie Apocalypse, who knows if that PHD would have even been worth the time in the end. While education is important so to is the type of education, and unfortunately how the Socratic method of teaching that is currently in use worldwide what you do is spend more and more time learning more and more about less and less. It's safe to say that a PHD in the behavioral sciences of a remote and extinct culture is going to be less useful than a Engineering degree in that scenario. However the act of getting the PHD exercises the mind making it more easily able to adapt, learn and wrap itself around new scenarios if the person is willing. Which comes to another point that most people who actually take the time to pursue a PHD don't really need to have that much education they do it to be snooty arrogant and superior to the Jones family. And gives credence to the belief that more education makes people smarter. Which wasn't the point I was really ever getting at I was getting at education being the exercise of the mind to develop intelligence. It becomes clear to me that I didn't illustrate that point in the beginning but back then I didn't care enough to make sure my point was clear.

CAVU45 said:

Who said anything about smarter? Intelligence and "smart" are two different things. Seems you're feeling insulted over a lack of reading comprehension.

Truth be told I'm not really sure where your going here. If you want to talk about Reading Comprehension "Smart" is a slang term used to denote the word intelligence in circles a word with as many syllables as Intelligence is seen as an unwelcome gesture because it requires the exercise of a few neurons to get it past your lips. In other words they mean the same thing.

Best case scenario I think your talking about the difference between street smarts and book smarts. And aside from where the lessons came from the result are usually still the same, granted the book smarts comes to you harder, especially in terms of a crises where personal experience is a more welcome movement as apposed to theory crafting you've only read about in a book. So what that really translates out too is that in a emergency situation your mind automatically checks the street smarts side of the road first because the experience was personal and therefore more memorable. It's also easier to act from this state of mind because the body will remember the last action taken and emulate it. Perhaps one of the last vestiges of human instinct. Then of course the other side of the road is book smarts, this information is usually harder to reproduce in a life or death scenario however if the street smart side of the road fails the mind comes here. Usually when you see this you'll see the people "Frozen by Panic." because they don't have past experience to base their actions off of but are uncomfortable with using the knowledge they've only read about thinking that it is less meaningful.

However what this really comes down to is providing you don't get caught in a mental loop and end up waiting around to die because of the bridge between theory crafting and Personal Experience and die there. Once you get a chance for things to slow down you can once again make use of the book smart side of the street at your leisure which in a lot of ways is actually better for long term survival than your personal experience says I run away from bad things street smarts ever will be.

kiltedninja said:

I, for example, am a very smart person but I'm not very intelligent. My logic and observation skills are my best, as well as imitation to an extent.

This I'm more sure is a comment on book smarts as apposed to street smarts. And again aside from differences in the way the mind perceives the information, and the way those two parts of the mind interact with their environment they really aren't that different. There is also some of the misconception that Intelligence = Knowledge here I think though here it's more of an undertone. You just didn't really make a long enough statement for me to be sure on that.

This post has been edited by Lian: 04 September 2009 - 10:48 AM