Using Sense of Smell Against the Undead to Save the Living

Recently I have been flipping through my copy of “The Walking Dead” and came across an interesting point which would be appropriate for debate and discussion here.  It gets at the very heart of the undead and their motivations. Can zombies be fooled by using their sense of smell against them?

In “The Walking Dead”, two survivors are able to effectively move through an area occupied with zombies by masking their scent with that of another zombie.  They cut the hand off a zombie and smear it on their clothing, etc.  They are able to walk freely around zombies who cannot detect their presence (at least until it rains).  Granted, this is a comic, however, it does bring about a valid point regarding what causes the undead to sense and attack the living.

Naturally, most will grab the Zombie Survival Guide for the answer, however, Mr. Brooks has left us without a solid answer on this one.

According to the Zombie Survival Guide (Page 7; C. Smell):

Unlike with sound, the undead have a more acute sense of smell.

The section goes on to speak of testing where people attempted to navigate undetected by applying cologne and perfumes to disguise the scent of the “living”.  What the book does not cover is the exact motivation of the zombie, which surely is still a debated topic without final conclusion.  One of the most popular beliefs is that the undead feed on the living and are able to somehow differentiate the two. Knowing that the sense of smell is more acute and that most, if not all other functions and senses are more muted, it would be reasonable to suggest that you could “disguise” yourself by disguising your smell.

So rather than apply cologne to disguise the scent of a living person, why not go a step further and blend in with the other zombies?

There are some drawbacks to this theory, however, in that the first problem comes with safety.  You would need to kill one of the undead and have a quick method to grab some “zombie goo” to rub all over you.  Zombie goo does not sound too appealing, yet, what would you be willing to do to survive?  While there are no reports of this act spreading the disease to the living, that is not to say it couldn’t happen that way, which presents another risk in itself.  Also, it is uncertain just how much of the undead scent must be applied in order to effectively mask your living odor.  So you could easily under-apply and walk into a death trap.

While the jury is still out on this method of defense, it could provide a temporary solution for you to navigate through a small field of the undead in order to move from one location to another, or even abandon a location before it becomes totally overrun.