Question: The following puzzles me: 1. Why don't the survivors try leaving on a boat and finding an island? 2. Why wouldn't the zombies just eat each other? 3. Why do they seem surprised when the zombies show up when they can smell their decaying smell? 4. Why do the zombies need to eat since they still walk around anyway? 5. Why can't the zombies climb ladders? 6. How can they feel hunger with their brains and nerve system gone?
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Answer: Some of these questions address general zombie lore (or at least, post-Romero zombie lore) and are thus usually accepted that they just "are" a certain way. 1. That's easier said than done if you don't know how to operate a boat, which the average person does not. They're also in the middle of America, nowhere near the sea. 2. There is not a single example of zombie fiction in which the zombies consume one another; they always feed on living humans. No reason other than it wouldn't be scary if they just ate one another. 3. Can you tell the exact source/direction/distance of every smell, even a powerful one? 4. In all media, zombies are driven by primordial hunger for living flesh, which almost never serves any physiological purpose. 5. Lack of physical coordination. It's also why they can't run, swim, dance, etc. 6. Again, it's just how they "are" in the fictional world they inhabit.
I want to add that "finding an island" is not guaranteed anyway. They could end up getting lost at sea and dying of starvation or dehydration. And if they do find an island, they don't know what they will be dealing with: natives who became zombies, natives who don't want them there, unfamiliar plants that might be poisonous, etc. It makes more sense to "start over" where they are.