In The Walking Dead, what happens to zombies that don't eat?

Question

In The Walking Dead, the idea of "walkers" (roaming zombies) and "lurkers" (stationary zombies) exist in the comics. It could theoretically relate to a zombies energy level, so I'm curious - what happens to a zombie that doesn't eat? Are they weakened? Do they die (again)?

Answer 1

As far as I know, as someone who hasn't extensively watched the series, we don't know in the TV show.

In the comics, they come across an old zombie that hasn't eaten in quite some time. It is incapable of motion, but still animate. One of the characters

Who turns out NOT to be a researcher on the zombie virus

expresses an interest in studying it, saying something like "I wish we could get it into a lab".

Edit:

You may also be interested in the responses to this related question, though I feel your question is different enough to not be an exact duplicate.

Answer 2

In the game, there's a part in Episode 4 where they find the zombie of a kid who died of starvation. The zombie doesn't have strength even to crawl and that became kinda depressing for the main characters to watch, so one of them decides to end this little zombie's eternal suffering with a hit/shot to the head and then bury him. It's a depressing scene.

Answer 3

In the show they come across a zombie that has been hanging, unable to eat, presumably for a long time, and it is as animate as ever as it attempts to grab at them.

Additionally in one of the latest (might have been the last) episode, a couple characters discuss how the "world has no future", which granted may not have anything to do with whether zombies need to eat, but you would think that they would hold out hope if they knew that zombies could die of starvation.

Answer 4

Since they don't "really" need to eat in order to not die (after all, they're already dead), there is no danger to them from that side. However, moving, walking, and other actions will clearly use energy, which would presumably indicate the need for some kind of nourishment.

Now, since we've seen that they can survive even with their lower organs missing, they can probably survive for a long time before eventually "dying" again. Its also unclear whether their organs are even working after they die. Muscles clearly work, as does part of the brain, but we don't know if anything else gets shut down (like the digestive system). It could also be that by not moving for a while, they could store their strength for a longer time. But in the end, they would need to get some kind of sustenance to continue moving.

Answer 5

I'm not sure, but at the end of season 1 they find out that the walkers die and then come back to life, but with only part of their brain working. Nothing is said about their bodies changing.

Answer 6

I'm going to put my two cents in. My guess is that they don't really need to eat, they just use the energy from their own bodies to survive, breaking down things like cells and skin and organs they don't need as they go on. Then they get to a certain point and just kind of stop doing stuff. I think this because; 1. Energy doesn't come from no where. 2. As the apocalypse goes on(especially in the game) you can see that zombies become more and more rotted, and there are fewer fat ones left around active on the streets.

Answer 7

The 'The Walking Dead' universe is really really close to the 'The Zombie Survival Guide' universe (which are both based on Romero). At least as far as the attributes of the undead go*. Thus, we can look at what the Guide says about the matter.

The Ghoul's physical characteristics in TZSG state that basically everything except their lower brain functions and muscles are non-functional. Sensory organs work, but quite different than in living human beings. More to the point their organs are not used by Solanum (the "Zombie" Virus). Consequently, they feed out of instinct, without their stomach actually processing anything they swallow. According to TZSG, Zombies have been found that "ate" so much, that their bellies burst and everything they ate afterwards fell right out of them. This is consistent with the observation, that loosing entire parts of their body doesn't affect a Zombie the slightest (except that its movement will be limited).

This leads to the conclusion that the Brooks-Zombie (more precisely their "mind") will cease to exist independently from the amount of "food" it gets. The only thing I'm not certain about is how long it takes for them to become non-functional (i.e. "really dead"). Unless frozen or otherwise artificially prolonged, I believe they last a couple of years, but it wasn't stated clearly in the Books, IIRC.

---

* It differs in the sense that the Guide-people know (or some have heard rumors) what Zombies are and react slightly different than the TWD people, also there is a slight discrepancy of the Undead's senses: The deception they pull off in the "Guts" episode is pretty much ruled out in the Guide-Universe.