[helbent4]

Lee,

I didn't think that (outside of D&D) rats act aggressive towards adult humans, even en masse and while hungry. Actually, if there was no food for 2 years or so since the city was largely abandoned, the rat population would significantly decrease.

Reading about the "Dements" in AotN, it seems like they mined every freakin' cheesy post-apocalypse cliche about cannibalism and mental illness. Might as well throw a lampshade on the trope and have the cannibals dress in spiked leathers with mohawks, and dance around like they were at some kind of Satanic rave. (Come to think of it, much like Doomsday.)

I could see cannibalism as an isolated case someone who's a serial killer and cannibal (that is, cannibalism forms part of their pathology), perhaps even selling human meat. Not as a bestial animal-like "ape" but is someone who appears otherwise normal except they are really a sociopath. These individual would be capable of normal (or almost-normal) human interaction, tool-use and planning and can eat normal food like everyone else, but they hunt humans due to a compulsion. But otherwise they would be camouflaged as just another survivor.

Tony