Zombies possess an innate supernatural ability to remain active, even when as much as forty to fifty percent of their body is lost or damaged. Thus, they are immune to small to extensive burns, lacerations, and gunshot wounds. They can withstand great falls and volumes of force; although they lack the ability to regenerate missing or injured tissue or mend broken bones, these injuries provide little detriment to rendering them incapacitated. Zombies can not regenerate missing limbs, although severed limbs pressed against the area it came from would probably reattach itself. A zombie's flesh, however, can be incinerated to the extent that it cannot recover. Zombies do not have any need to eat or sleep, the supernatural aspects of their existence sustaining them to the point they never tire out. However, not being truly alive, zombies are immune to certain other mortal vulnerabilities, including suffocation, extremes of temperature and pressure, high voltage electricity, and poisonous gas. They can be destroyed if a massive amount of force is used against them to render them incapable of animation.

Zombies possess negligible brain activity and thus retain no reasoning, memory, or sensory capacities. They cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or feel and are are impervious to pain. Instead of mortal senses, the supernatural energies animating a zombie grant it certain primitive mystical senses. Most developed of these is a zombie's ability to perceive the call of its master, motivating it to move in that direction. This ability is usually tied in a specific totem or amulet connecting it to its master, usually the person who cast the spell animated it. Since zombies are incapable of independent thought, they cannot speak of their own accord. They can, however, respond in a designated manner if their master so directs them.

True zombies are vulnerable to the religion of Voodoo and Santeria which provides them their power of animation. The proper incantation and treatment of a Voodoo doll can cause supernatural, debilitating pain to a zombie. A zombie can also be put to rest through the appropriate voodoo ceremony which forces the Loa from his body. This power is not preclusive to Voodoo; some witches and practitioners of dark magic utilize totems to animate the dead and control the spirits of the dead as well.

There are three separate types of undead that exist and each of them have separate origins and attributes that separate them from the others. True zombies were first created in the 16th Century as a product of the Voodoo religion merging tenets of Roman Catholicism with the rites of the African gods and the natural anathema and attributes of exotic plants and animals. Zombies created by Voodoo are human beings animated by the mystical energies of the Loa, the main gods of Voodoo, specifically Damballah, the god of the dead. The ritual is usually performed over the recently dead to revive them as compliant slaves without any malice to their masters and controlled by means of an amulet or talisman that identifies the zombie to his master. These beings do not retain the memories of the people they were in life, and their compliance allows them to be forced into slave labor performing skills such as farming or harvesting. This state of compliance forces them to accept and tolerate extreme physical cruelty from their masters; their mystical states keeping them animated even after being whipped, shot or subjected to fire and injury. Salt, however, is a counter substance to the spell, forcing these beings to realize they are dead and driving them back to their burial places.

Another type of living dead being akin to zombies is the revenant, an undead being that is reanimated by a powerful compulsion that exists long after that person has died. In this aspect, it is possible that the corpse is being animated by the soul or "life force" of the person who died, although lacking in the traditional aspects of life, such as eating or sleeping. Such zombies are relentless in their compulsion, such as guarding a location or object or exacting vengeance on the person who slighted them in life. A few Egyptian mummies have turned out to be revenants while others have turned out to be normal individuals granted longevity through Egyptian magic. These beings are usually stirred into activity by their proximity being violated, upon which they will pursue their quarry a certain distance or kill them. In order to lull them back into non-activity, these undead creatures can be foiled by destroying the source of their compulsion, thus robbing them of any purpose to stay animated. Some murder victims have permanently returned to the grave after exacting revenge on their murderers, but some undead guardians remain active for hundreds of years to guard the remnants of their lost civilizations.

A third form of the living dead is a theoretical and hypothetical being called a ghoul because of its driven insatiable urge to consume the flesh of the living. Perpetuated through the horror movie genre, it is animated by a contagion, sometimes an advanced viral agent or radioactive substance that affects the brain of the dead, giving it a non-corporeal existence driving it to spread the contagion through the saliva in its bite or its blood. The contagion in its body can spread rapidly, and upon entering the human body, it shuts down all metabolic and mental faculties to the point of death, such as stopping the heart, brain and cardiovascular system at which point the person loses all of their memories and are driven by the contagion to attack and ingest the flesh of the living in order to slow down the rate of decomposition. In this aspect, the ghoul resembles the vampire, but while the vampire can retain their human personality, the ghoul reverts to a state controlled only by instinct where they must feed from the living in order to alleviate their state of decomposition. Ghouls tend to operate with a mob mentality and cannot think or rationalize. They do not attack each other; instead reacting to the warmth of living things and sometimes the sound of a heart beat in their immediate response. However, once a person dies and their body temperature drops as much as ten degrees, ghouls will stop eating and look for a fresh food source. Abandoned corpses retaining at least seventy-five percent of their body will animate through the contagion introduced in to their system. Ghouls must consume at least three times their body weight a day in order to remain animated before decomposition completely destroys them and rigor mortis tightens their joints and robs them of their mobility. A ghoul that has not consumed enough human flesh will eventually dry up to a point it can no longer be animated and will typically rot and fall apart.

This form of zombie can be killed by destroying or damaging the brain; thereby hindering or eliminating the contagion's ability to animate the body. They can be driven off by fire, but they must be completely incinerated to destroy them. They can also be neutralized by a powerful enough concussive force used to damage or separate as much of their body as possible, such as the impact by a car or a blast of dynamite. Electricity in large doses can also fry their nervous systems enough to render them incapable of being animated.

There are several other types of living dead that do not easily fit into these categories; not technically zombies but beings who have been rendered dead and afterward were restored to a pseudo-corporeal form of life. One such example is the animated serial killer Jason Voorhees, who since his animation by means unknown has managed to sustain his undead existence by absorbing the souls or "life energies" of people at death. These energies grant Jason extraordinary but not superhuman level of strength, a regenerative factor against injury and an aversion to decomposition keeping him from entirely rotting away like a true corpse. Jason can be forced back into an inactive state if a large enough amount of his body is damaged, requiring him to shut down until the damage is repaired, or if he is driven back into hibernation, such as a a body of water against his will, due to the aversion he has to drowning, causing his mind to shut down and induce a state of inactivity. However, if his body was disturbed or partially warmed in this state, he would return to "life." He was also rendered temporarily inactive for a time when he was buried, only to be reactivated by a bolt of lightning, much as how scientist Dr. Victor Von Frankenstein brought life to a dead cadaver in the Late Eighteenth Century. However, Jason has since been rendered completely destroyed with the apparent nullification of the spells that reanimated him.