Dawn of the Data or How UK Scientists Calculated a Zombie Apocalypse

The study, lead by researchers from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester, is part of a series of tests to see how science can be applied to real-world or hypothetical scenarios.

So in just a little over three months, the human race could be wiped out, if zombies were to take over the planet.

​Assuming that a zombie comes into contact with one person each day, with a 90 percent chance of infecting victims with its zombie virus, the students suggest that after one hundred days there would be just 273 human survivors, outnumbered by a million to one zombies.

​As the scientific abstract stipulates, the scientists investigated the spread of a zombie virus "through the global population with one person infected at day 0… we find that by day 100 the surviving population is roughly 100-200 people." 

The population model was then split into three different categories; those susceptible to the infection, those that are infected, and those that have either died or recovered.

The student scientists then look at the rate the infection spread and how quickly people die off as they come into contact with each other. This, the scientists say, is the "model to investigate the spread of a zombie epidemic."

Okay, so it's a student-based study but 'A Zombie Epidemic' is an opportunity for physics scholars to show off their creative side.

​"Every year we ask students to write short papers for the Journal of Physics Special Topics. It lets the students show of their creative side and apply some physics they know to the weird, the wonderful, or the everyday," Dr. Mervyn Roy, lecturer at the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy said.