Comments on: Zombie Solanum is fiction.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:19:03 +0000

There is one plant in this family who actually can produce so-called zombies. Datura Inoxia, or Datura Stramonium, populary called the devils trumpet, contains several alkaloids who produce delirium and vivid halluciniations, so strong that it often black out the consumer for days. It is said that it was the toxins of this plant that some voodoo priest used to make zombies (it doesn’t exactly kill you and reanimate you, but it causes the user to act extremly weird and often very voilent)

By: G-Prime

G-Prime — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:24:50 +0000

The term zombie or the “living dead” , is most likely as old as the world its self. Just because it doesn’t exist at this point in time in our life/world, doesn’t mean that its has not at one point. I am not talking about the voodoo type of zombie, but actual zombies.

As for viruses hmmm, well maybe some cross strain of many things like rabies, the aids viruses, or any other type of viruses you can think of. Fungal infection might cause adverse affects to a person.

It just might be man made to we don’t know. All we can do is keep on doing what we are doing my conversing, bloging, and talking about them.

Wheater they are real or not, maybe one day we will find out.

By: Former_biogeek

Former_biogeek — Thu, 19 May 2011 21:11:51 +0000

Actually there *are* fungal infections that cause bizzare behavior in various organisms, one of the more famous ones is Ophiocordyceps unilateralis infection in tropical carpenter ants. The fungus takes over sections of the ant’s central nervous system, ants stagger around in ‘zombie walking’, then fall or go to the ground, climb a plant to a specific height and clamp on to the plant until they die. 2-3 days later, the fungus fruiting body cracks through the top of the ant’s head and releases spores into the wind to infect more ants.

Obviously this is not a virus, and not in mammals, but does show interesting behavior changes helping the infectious tranmission. For mamallian viruses, look to rabies and other viral infections directly affecting the brain, but nothing zombie-like out there.

Yet.

Nature is sometimes…scary.

not-too-technical-linkie:
http://earthsky.org/biodiversity/fungus-turns-tropical-carpenter-ants-into-the-walking-dead

By: MOTHERRUSSIA

MOTHERRUSSIA — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:12:38 +0000

@Iron Knight

Nice find! I tip my hat to you…this makes about 11th on my possible-infection-types list out of…say…50.

By: matt

matt — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 06:48:45 +0000

“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.”

yes it apparently takes 23 hours for reanimation but that is once they are infected. they can still be apart of the party for the next 20 so hours before they die. then it only takes a few hours from death until they reanimate. so max brooks did not make a mistake with his above statement. be sure to read and understand better next time ok? k thx bai

By: jake sp

jake sp — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:45:13 +0000

dude 23 hours isnt exact. it all depends on where the infection started. how close or far away fro the brain and how fast it gets there. nothing is exact when it comes to stuff like this.

By: Iron Knight

Iron Knight — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:23:44 +0000

Cordyceps, a type of fungus that attacks insects might be a viable candidate for zombie creation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps

By: 19surf96

19surf96 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:20:05 +0000

solanum isn’t found in nature but yes there are plants and whatnot whos scientific name is solanum but just read the zombie survival guide and other scientific reports just narrow down the search idiot…also google a guy named jacob tailor read everything about him

By: tentacles

tentacles — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:22:48 +0000

I could have sworn that I read something in the book about how Solanum is “not to be confused with the plant genus ” and that they only shared the same name.

By: Henry Chinaski

Henry Chinaski — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:11:16 +0000

if you liked quarentine you should check out Rant by Chuck Palahniuk. Its about the spread of a rabies strain told as a biography of the carrier.

Also, you guys should check out the site http://guerrillajournal.com they got a pretty awesome zombie series up there called How Me, Mikey, Xander and Some Stoners From the Suburbs Saved the World.