The Walking Dead: Survivalist fiction, or a sign of things to come?

Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard may have gotten things right with The Walking Dead: When the zombie apocalypse comes, it will mean the end of civilization.

Hey, I’m just repeating what researchers in Canada have found. In short, unless the undead are dealt with “quickly and aggressively,” we’ll all be doomed — or else forced to rely on our own Rick Grimes to save our sorry butts.

BBC News reports that a study by researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University posed a simple, and amusingly fanboy-ish, question: If there were to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?

For the answer, scientists used “biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies” — and the classic slow-moving zombie model. But even with the lumbering variety, the answer is pretty grim.

“It’s imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else … we are all in a great deal of trouble,” the scientists conclude.