Topic on Talk:Vegetarian Zombie

I know they have to be out there -- I'm sure I've seen a one-panel cartoon or two on the subject, and I have vague memories of an xkcd strip as well.

I need to work on focusing on specific tasks anyway, so I figure I may as well improve my Workshop presence on the side. I'll take a peek and see - I'm more of a hobbyist tropewise than anything, so it takes me a bit to do any kind of sustained digging.

That said, I'm... more than dubious on the real life example posted, and I'd think at bare minimum it badly needs some clarification.

If the training program actually uses Vegetarian Zombies as part of its scenario, then I'd call that a perfectly valid example. If, however, whoever wrote the example simply pointed out the effects vegetarian zombies could have, and they're not actually part of the program, then no, that's not a real example and it should be deleted.

I'm inclined to think it's the latter - considering the place of the zombie in pop culture, the presence of 'actual' zombies in any capacity would've gotten way more recognition to the point I would've probably heard about it first from somewhere other than a question example on a troping website.

And not a few minutes later, I've found the genesis of that claim, along with some news sources that elaborate on the matter. There was a declassified DoD document that depicts fictional zombie scenarios as a means of training in military planning, and the news articles linked explicitly mention "vegetarian zombies". The actual document itself describes them on page 7, so the example more than checks out, it's just lazily/terribly written.