Solanum is fiction, solanum is not real, solanum does not cause zombies.
Many readers [Holden, mikac, Michael] have mentioned Solanum or written that they have researched zombies, finding Solanum to be the cause. FAIL. Solanum is a large, variable genus of annual plants and perennial plants. They often have attractive fruit and flowers. They are poisonous to humans (though not necessarily to other animals), but many bear edible fruits, leaves, or tubers. In case you don’t get the joke, one form of Solanum fruit is the tomato, Solanum lycopersicum. Potatoes, Tomatoes and Eggplants. Not zombies.
I’m not trying to deny or belittle those with concerns about zombies, it’s just that the zombie creating Solanum virus is fake, and the record needs to be set straight. Focus your research efforts elsewhere. The Undead Report has focused at length about other possible zombie causes, including aggressive rabies strains, toxoplasma gondii, organ and cellular reanimative efforts and Helacyton gartleri. These are legitimate concerns, Solanum is not.
Max Brooks fails to fact-check a section of his own book. About page 130, he states “…hunters have come up against walking dead who only hours before were members of their own party!”, when it is declared throughout the book that death and reanimation take approximately a day “Hour 23: Reanimation” (page 7). This is a pretty glaring mistake and should make clear that the ZSG is a work of excellent (and often humourous) fiction.
More information on the fallacy of zombie Solanum can be read at Above Top Secret, or Wikipedia which states “‘Solanum’, [is] the fictional virus that creates a zombie”. If you have any information similar to actual viruses, bacteria or symbiotes which cause a zombie-like in mammals, please let me know.
5 thousand infected
1 Connor Sep 17, 2008 at 5:48 pm
What about mutated solanum smuggled out of the Chernobyl site?
2 pyro1986 Sep 18, 2008 at 12:52 pm
all it would do is kill you and no more
3 Sam Sep 18, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Pyro: You’re probably right. I’d stay away from eating radioactive, mutated mushrooms, plants, fruits and veggies from the zone.
Connor: My research indicates a plant-born pathogen would be highly unlikely. But you do raise an interesting topic. The Chernobyl Zone is massive, and nature has taken it back. Mutations do exist in the flora and fauna there, but most of these are mild. No one has observed virii or bacteria in the zone however, and that’s the scary thing. An overly aggressive, perhaps mutated parasite could take over the motor funcitons of an animal, changing its behavior entirely. Radioactive dead flesh may prohibit decomposition by killing the bacteria, leaving tons of dead, undecaying bodies laying around. But I can talk about that in an upcoming article.
4 Mason Sep 19, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Lol thanks for helping set that straight seems like many got confused and believe everything they read ;).
5 mike Oct 20, 2008 at 5:13 pm
go check out quarentine, its main mode of infection is a new strain of rabies ,very cool movie, just ignore the overly scared main charecter
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