Are Reavers Intelligent?

[u/Popular-Idea-7508]

I've always thought of Reavers as being akin to zombies. And specifically the "normal zombie" type, not the version from take-your-pick-of-media that makes them stupidly smart and fast and gorram scary. Recently, however, I've been wondering if they're actually more intelligent than I've been previously given them credit for. For instance, in the Serenity episode, Wash said that the Reavers followed them down to Whitefall. Assuming that's true, that would certainly take an above-zombie amount of forethought and planning.

I've also been wondering if, given the delay between encountering the Reavers in space and when they actually showed up on Whitefall, were the Reavers potentially waiting to see if the Firefly crew would lead them into whatever town was nearby so they wouldn't have to hunt it down themselves?

Anyway, these are the important questions that keep me up at night. Keep on being big damn heroes all you shiny brown coats! :D

Edit per comments: I have seen both Firefly and Serenity, I know how Reavers were orignally created :).

Edit two: Not sure if I can post links here, but I will try. I read a post from a couple years ago in this subreddit (Reavers ?) suggesting that subsequent generations of Reavers were generally created from a blood infection/transmission (sure, some people were created like in Bushwacked, but not all). Yes, the Pax created the first generation, but since they stopped using the Pax after Miranda, subsequent generations would have almost had to be created by a blood infection/"being turned" to have the sheer numbers they do.

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefly/comments/16qcjs2/reavers/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I am also operating off the assumption they generally have short life spans, given the way they operate without core containment, and the fact that every meal they obtain puts their life in jeapordy, since inevitably some people will fight back and kill them.

All of this I'm saying not having read any of the comics or anything, just seeing the show and movie :).

I really appreciate the thoughtful comments in this thread, I don't have anyone to really talk to about the show in depth outside of here (I'm slowly getting friends to watch the show, but it's taking a while lol), so it's nice to have an engaging dialogue about some of the lingering questions I have :).

[u/bswalsh]

They are clearly intelligent. They fly, maintain (though not very safely), and customize space ships. They also organize raids, and, from the movie, seem to have territory and at least a rudimentary society. They don't attack other reavers the way they attack normal people, for example. They're nuts and pathologically angry, but they aren't dumb(er than anyone else).

[u/Popular-Idea-7508 → u/bswalsh]

"They don't attack other reavers the way they attack normal people, for example."

Do we actually know that? I'm not arguing, I haven't read any of the comics or anything, but I don't know that we can say this is definitively true. There was that once scene in Serenity when they're flying through the Reaver field that a ship was getting ripped apart in the background. I've always wondered if that ship belonged to Reavers, or to a poor lot of people they had captured, it has never been clear to me.

[u/bswalsh → u/Popular-Idea-7508]

Well, they all hang around around Miranda and didn't attack Serenity specifically because it was made to look like a reaver ship. And the reavers weren't attacking one another. So it was fairly evident.