Well that is right, unless you can kill all the Zombies before they eat everybody.
That is explored where they talk about impulse like action effects, near the bottom of the paper.
I agree that the scenario they paint is not very encouraging. I think it might be useful because does point out that some expectations, like the effectiveness of isolation or quarantine, might be false.
I forget what they gave as examples of possible real life Zombies, but the modeling can be applied to quite a few problems.
Their point was that they were able to apply the model in a more general way than is usual. Most models only have one activity going on, they have two. Not only are they modeling infection rates, they are modeling resistance and healing too.
The way they have done it allows you to put as many mass actions like that into your model as you need.
I am not a mathematician, but this seems quite interesting.
Edited by scafool (08/17/09 03:26 PM)
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May set off to explore without any sense of direction or how to return.