We consider a new probabilistic graph searching game played on graphs,
inspired by the familiar game of Cops and Robbers. In Zombies and Survivors, a
set of zombies attempts to eat a lone survivor loose on a given graph. The
zombies randomly choose their initial location, and during the course of the
game, move directly toward the survivor. At each round, they move to the
neighbouring vertex that minimizes the distance to the survivor; if there is
more than one such vertex, then they choose one uniformly at random. The
survivor attempts to escape from the zombies by moving to a neighbouring vertex
or staying on his current vertex. The zombies win if eventually one of them
eats the survivor by landing on their vertex; otherwise, the survivor wins. The
zombie number of a graph is the minimum number of zombies needed to play such
that the probability that they win is strictly greater than 1/2. We present
asymptotic results for the zombie numbers of several graph families, such as
cycles, hypercubes, incidence graphs of projective planes, and Cartesian and
toroidal grids
