The Ethics of "Killing" a Zombie

This article discusses the ethics of killing zombies.

Zombies are a strange source of ethical inspiration, but as I mentioned to io9′s Lauren Davis, if academic ethicists get to spend all day talking about trolleys, I see no reason we can’t banter about the ethics of the undead.

Lauren posed the following query: When is it ok to kill a zombie? Should zombies be killed on sight, or quarantined as sick humans? As an answer, she has an excellent post up that has a some other cool responses to the questions and is worth a full read.



I responded as follows:

To answer your question, I think there are some things we simply can’t know in a realistic situation, so we have to make a couple assumptions for the sake of argument.

Assumption 1: We live in a materialistic universe. Zombies, therefore, are not the result of necromancy, demons, possession, or souls escaping from hell.

Assumption 2: We are discussing “classic” zombies – seek flesh, stimulus-response function, and the condition is communicable through bodily fluids (i.e. saliva to blood).

Both assumptions allow us to discuss most zombies, including those from The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, and World War Z.

Unfortunately, the author never reaches an answer, stating that it just depends:

So, to answer your initial question: I would need to know the state of the infection and the possibility of recovering full consciousness based on the criteria of preserving a person’s dignity.

Actually, I think it is pretty simple. In a zombie apocalypse, zombies will (a) be trying to kill and eat you (or eat you, anyway, with death being an unfortunate side effect) and/or (b) are dead. If (b) is true, then you can't really "kill" them, so the point is moot. In event, (a) is going to be true no matter what type of zombie, so the right to self-defense and moral duty to help perpetuate the human race would justify killing them.