The Walking Dead fans work out grim truth behind the zombies

The Walking Dead television show may have finally ended back in 2022 but with multiple spin-offs airing since, it seems fans are still eager for more of that zombie action.

Running from 2010 to 2022, The Walking Dead was a hit horror drama set in the wake of a zombie apocalypse.

Check out the trailer for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live below!

Based on the comic series with the same name written by Robert Kirkman, the television adaptation was met with critical success and ran for eleven seasons.

Since then, multiple spin-off shows have aired including Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon to name but a few.

With fans going nutty over this zombie-filled series, it is no wonder that many of them have a few questions and one of them has a pretty gruesome answer.

Posted to r/thewalkingdead, one fan asked, “Why don’t the walkers die or decompose on their own?

Walkers are reanimated corpses, and they clearly decompose based on how many walkers we’ve seen that look like they’re about to fall apart.

So why doesn’t that process of decomposition continue until the walker is just a skeleton? Especially with all that exposure to sunlight, heat, and rain. What is preserving these corpses for years?”

Although we do have to suspend our belief just a bit considering zombies don’t even exist, some fellow fans were happy to offer an answer, including one that Kirkman himself shared a few years back.

In The Walking Dead universe, walkers do not decompose or rot. All of their biological processes cease and although they breathe, there is no blood or gas exchange.

They are however subject to wear and erosion from the elements.

As a result, walkers that are found in places hidden from the elements are preserved a lot more than those found outside for example.

“Kirkman has posit the average "lifespan" at 10-12 years of activity before wear and erosion makes them fall apart- damage and the elements can accelerate this significantly,” one fan quotes.

So there you have it. A pretty simple explanation if you think about it!