Here’s some science of the new decade for you: how about draining pigs of their blood, making them clinically dead, and then bringing them back to life?

Naturally, this is a military project, and those always end well. The theory goes, if you drain a pig (which has a physiology similar to humans) of blood and replace it with a cocktail of hydrogen sulfide, you will extend the “golden period” where life saving surgery and medical treatment are possible. Basically, you shut down the brain and heart, placing the patient in suspended animation, and bring them back later.

Dr Matthew Miller working on the project states: “Everybody’s talking about the military use of this, and that’s our focus now.” He continues, “but really, this could be much, much bigger than that.”

This will surely save lives on the battlefield if perfected, but at what cost? Where does mental deterioration and unstable psychosis set in? Agreed, this could be a stretch, but this reanimation research continues.

With a 15-person team working exclusively on this project, successful results are expected within 18 months. “Darpa wants this to happen yesterday, because it was needed yesterday,” Dr. Miller said. Once the team comes up with the right elixir, it’ll undergo federally mandated safety testing. After that, the vaccine will be sent to the battlefield for application to live humans.

One may call it suspended animation, life extension or a zombie vaccine, but the science and research into extended life after death continues.

Resources

Pentagon: Zombie Pigs First, Then Hibernating Soldiers (Wired)

Pentagon Plans Zombie Pig Project: Night of the Living Swine? (Gadget review)

Second Illustration: Marmoto

Undead or infected? Horror movie puritanism or scientific reality? Discussion and debate surrounds not which makes a better film, but which is more likely to happen. You can blame science. The zombie outbreak will most likely be the result of some experiment gone wrong, an adaptive virus, or horrible pathogen. Save a giant UFO hiding behind a comet that animates dead bodies instead of trucks and electric knives, many of us will die by actual, angry, infected humans.

Some possible, semi-grounded in science explanaitons, as offered by Cracked.com:

• Brain parasites  - i.e. Toxoplasma gondii, or Naegleria fowleri.
• Neurotoxins – (Tetrodotoxin, though this just induces a coma-like, non threatening state).
• Adaptaive and aggressive rabies strain or other neurotropic virus  (resulting in aggressive and contagious rabies like symptoms).
• Neurogenesis (recreation and reanimation of brain cells).
• Nanobots (though not a traditional infection, imagine a Terminator like apiocalypse, only with hundreds of thousands of self-replicating, human hating machines).
• Immortal cells - i.e. Helacyton gartleri cancer cells which do not die.

There won’t be reanimated corpses. If you survive the infection, you will be murdering alive, and perhaps conscious humans.

Mr. T is half right. There will be no reanimated corpses. Muscle movement depends upon Adenosine Triphosphate, which depends on flowing, oxygenated blood. Yet Mr. T. overlooks one essential fact: ATP is still be produced by very much alive, maddened and sickened humans. These humans may run fast or slow, but they won’t be dead.

For some horror and zombie purists, no “infected” or fast zombie is a true zombie, they insist only the George Romero Night of the Living Dead slow moving reanimated corpses are actual zombies. These purists often claim the fast running new Dawn of the Dead undead are a new invention and should be left to die. The opposing and newer Danny Boyle 28 Days Later school says zombies are fast running, “rage” virus infected, living humans, and differentiates so by calling them “infected” instead of “zombies”. Unfortunately, the Romero zombie (with a possible exception for voodoo) is only a zombie of film. The virus or disease infected zombie is much more probable. However, the undead and fast running, leaping, Boomer, Smoker, Witch, Tank or Hunter zombies must remain in Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil.

Your zombies will be very much alive, and they will be maddened and they will probably not feel or be aware of pain. They could seek you out, potentially in groups, though solitary or unmindful of other infected is also possible. They will not want to eat your brains, they will only want to viciously attack and bite anything that gets near them. Imagine the cross between a rabid wolverine and a violent, knife weilding psychopath. That’s your zombie, and he or she will be contagious. Headhsots will certainly bring them down, as will multiple center of mass shots, but they will take many bullets before they are terminated.

You’ll need to worry about the people who don’t know they are harbingers of the virus, carriers of disease, or bringers of parasties. Who in your party can you trust? Did that bite really break the skin? Taking care of hordes of the undead may sound like fun, but mom won’t be dead. She’s still your mom. And dad didn’t tell you yet, but she’s pregnant with your baby sister. Are you sure you’re up to this?

So the soviet reanimated animal research continues.

What do you get with one part cellular cleaning agent, one dead heart, and a couple of mad scientists? That’s right: reanimated hearts.

Perhaps the efforts of earlier commie scientists are still being perfected. Scientists in Minnesota have been injecting dead rat hearts with a cleaning solution, then using a pacemaker and pump to get the things working. After eight days they began to pump on their own. Creepily slow beating.

The researchers say they were curious to see what would happen in the laboratory if nature was given the appropriate tools. The team already knew that decellularization had been used in making tissue heart valves and blood vessels and decided to try the process out on whole organs such.

Of course, this begs the question: how long is too long for death? Zombie rats? Are human hearts next? While I admit this is wild speculation, it’s interesting nonetheless. This cutting edge science illustrates it is possible to reanimate dead tissue.

How to mend a broken heart – News-Medical.net

I touched a nerve with my earlier post about reanimated dogs heads. This is a followup to that post, as well as an addendum to my article about types of zombies. This would fall under the scientifically reanimated corpse.

In the 40′s, the Soviets were working on experiments involving reanimating mammals, specifically canines. In this film, witness the shock and horror as organs are reanimated though electricty and with mechanical hearts and lungs! Now, it’s noted that this is no outstanding feat, a human heart can operate with nutrient rich blood and plasma alone. What’s fascinating in this film, is the apparently conscious and reactive head of a dog. Is it merely muscle synapses and reflexes? Perhaps, but the dog shows a keen awareness to its surroundings, suggesting activated sight, sound and other senses.

Canines? Yes. Humans? Perhaps. How long can we wait? Hours or days? It stands that a reanimated human head would be responsive to its surroundings, and most likely not feral and try to eat you. This of course, begs the question of human souls and the like, where this news report will not go.

One thing remains certain. DESTROY THE BRAIN. You won’t see that dog head barking and licking its chops if it has no brain.

For the sake of this argument, I will be referring to a zombie as not a member of the undead, but rather human bodies acting seemingly without a will of their own, with an intention to consume, destroy, or otherwise cause general grief to the remaining human populace.

Zombies in popular culture form three distinct classes:

• Walking Dead – undead, walking dead or reanimated corpses
• Viral – viral, parasitic or infected humans
• Scientific – scientifically altered humans, through radiation, poisons or drugs, or psychic conditioning

The Walking Dead

Our current understanding of human physiology, biology and chemistry tell us that a human corpse cannot rise, reactivate or in any other way reanimate. There must exist an external stimulus to bring about reanimation. If such a stimulus succeeds in reanimating a corpse though electricity, nutrient rich serum, or some strange radioactive measure, the corpse will still have difficulty with life support. A reanimated brain can function and provide basic skills such as breathing, blood pumping and simple motor skills, operating on a primitive, feral level. The reanimated head and brain show signs of smell, taste hearing and sight. This is evidenced by previous Soviet and current American experiments. An undead person would have one thought: feed to keep the body moving. The only problem is, the entire body would also be reanimated and would need energy to survive, much like any other human does. Air, water, food. Assuming a physiology like that of the living, a heart shot would be just as effective in destroying the undead. Muscles need air and energy, and this is pumped by the blood.

Undead Physiology

If the physiology of the undead changes, it is a different matter. Muscles can operate through electricity alone, that’s how they work at the most basic level. Apply a current and a muscle will tense; remove it and it will relax. Corpses always contain rot and the organisms involved in breaking down dead tissue. If the process in reanimating the corpse causes its brain to be active and conduct electricty, the body is essentially a walking meat-machine. The organisms and acids responsible for breakdown of the body will still be present. The moving muscles of the body will produce enough heat to slow or halt the decomposition. The remaining bacteria will remain internal, and begin slowly decomposing the body from the inside. An introduction of warm flesh (human or other mammals) to the zombies digestive system will prevent the necrotizing organisms from eating the zombie. Necessary energies for locomotion would be converted from the byproducts of digesting fresh flesh, and absorbed through the decaying flesh.

If radiation is involved, certain properties could dispel decomposition or produce mutations responsible for an adaptive physiology. In either situatuation, the corpse is not conscious. It would operate on an instinctual level that could include self-preservation through an aggressive nature. It would be more efficient to use muscles slowly, but short bursts of strength or speed could be produced.

Undead Transmission

If the cause of a reanimated corpse is through scientific methods such as resuscitation, electrical reanimation or means as yet uncovered, infectious transmission will probably be nil, as the means of reanimation will be artificial.

However, if the zombies saliva, greymatter or blood contains a toxic solution or causes mutation of the host’s physiology, infection could occur. Transmission of disease and horrible toxins can cause a rapid sickness in a bitten victim, causing death. They may not awaken as a zombie, but could certainly be susceptible to the same factors that reanimated earlier corpses.

Parasitic Infections

There exist in nature certain organisms that cause paralysis, altered survival, behavioral and sexual patterns and can evenmake their host suicidal. They use either toxins, neural paralysis or behave as parasites to cause their host to enter a state of zombism, sacrificing itself for the reproductive nature of the parasite.

Zombie-state Causes

The emerald cockroach wasp (Ampulex compressa) is a parasitoid wasp that temporarily paralyzes cockroaches, and takes careful aim at the roaches brain, nullifying its evasive response. The wasp then controls the roach through its antennae, much like a dog on a leash. It steers the heavy roach to its lair, where the wasp lays eggs that later hatch and eat their way out.

Similarly, an unclassified species of Costa Rican wasp attacks an orb weaving spider, which is temporarily paralyzed as it lays eggs on the tip of the spider’s abdomen. On the night before the parasitic larvae kill their host, normal web-weaving events take a bizarre turn. Through some unknown mechanism, the larvae compel their host spider to build a web that is very different from that it has always constructed before – the spider builds a stout, reinforced platform which is much smaller. When the new web is complete, the larvae kill their host, and cocoon themselves on the structure.

Toxoplasma gondii is a species of parasitic protozoa that has an interesting means of reproduction. It has the ability to change the behavior of rats and mice, making them drawn to, rather than fearful of, the scent of cats. This effect is advantageous to the parasite, which will be able to sexually reproduce if its host is eaten by a cat. The infection is almost surgical in its precision. Human behavior may also be affected in some ways, and correlations have been found between latent Toxoplasma infections and various characteristics such as decreased reactionary time, feelings of insecurity, neuroticism, and possibly even cases of schizophrenia and paranoia. T. gondii is also correlated strongly with an increase in boy births in humans, leading to an alteration of the human sex proportion. Other possible behavior modifications are suggested by a study suggesting that people not infected with the parasite found women with toxoplasma more attractive. Similarly, brain eating amoeba cause death in humans – and show little signs until its too late.

On a larger scale, the nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) hairworm lives and breeds in fresh water. However, it spends a part of its life eating the insides of live grasshoppers and then brainwashing the grasshopper into committing suicide by hopping into a pool of water and drowning.

Rabies. Need I mention this? It already carries the common traits of traditional Zombism. Rabies lives in the brain, is transmitted through infectious saliva and alters an animals mind to produce an aggresive, rage filled state. Infections in humans also can cause paralysis, hydrophobia and hallucinations.

Admittedly, a parasitic brain-stabbing wasp or hairworm has quite a leap to go from a simple insect to a human host. It is within reason to assume that such a wasp could attempt an attack on small mammals or otherwise mutate or evolve its patterns if roaches are in low supply or develop counter-tactics. As mammals don’t have antennae their ability to steer one is a bit of a stretch. Yet, a mammalian host is still receptive to being internally devoured by wasp larvae or hairworms. With an effective species jump, the hairworm could cause mammals to produce similar suicidal traits. Neither of these would result in zombism, but serve to illustrate brain chemistry and that an organisms behavior can be modified to that of even the smallest parasite. T. gondii’s decreasing the male populous is interesting, as it shows even homo sapiens is suceptible to mind and biology altering parasites.

Zombie Parasite Transmission

Rabies serves as the most interesting and most likely candidate for infectious parasitic zombism. While not a zombie in the conventional undead sense, all the characteristcs would be displayed, mainly an aggressive nature, infected brain matter, and transmission through saliva. Infected humans of a mutated or even radioactive strain of rabies would definitely exhibit these feral symptoms – and would probably be fast too. As shown in the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” or the “28 Days Later” movies, fast zombies are a real problem. Though a “zombie” in thoughtless, rage filled terms, a headshot will still bring these humans down. Heart and body shots are another matter – filled with adrenaline and crazed, they may exhibit symptoms of “quislings” and not be brought down as easily as uninfected humans.

Scientifically Altered States

The third, and most probable cause (though mush less dangerous) is through an altered state of consciousness. George A. Romero or John Carpenter would have us believe we’re already in this state if commercialism, suburbanites and mass apathy are any indication. However, I am referring to altered brain and body states as induced by hypnosis or toxins.

Altered Consciousness

As documented in “The Serpent and the Rainbow”, the tetrodotoxin (TTX) of the puffer fish can be used by voodoo priests to cause a zombie-like state of near death. TTX is a highly potent neurotoxin which causes paralysis and eventual death. Gram for gram, TTX is 10,000 times more lethal than cyanide and posesses a terrifying modus operandi — 25 minutes after exposure it begins to paralyze, leaving the brain fully aware of what’s happening. Death usually results, within hours, from suffocation or heart failure. No antidote exists. A victim pronounced dead can be lucky enough to wake up just before his funeral, fully conscious and aware of his surroundings throughout the entire ordeal. TTX has the unusual characteristic that if a nonlethal dose is given, the brain will remain completely unaffected. If just the right dose is given, the toxin will mimic death in the victim, whose vitals will slow to an immeasurable state, and whose body will show signs of rigor mortis and even produce the odor of rot.

Methods induced by sickness, hypnosis or raditation could produce a similar, slowed-brained result. In either case, the zombified person would be neither dead nor aggressive (unless provoked or instructed to be), most likely a threat only to his or herself.

Transmission

Transmission of this type of zombie would be impossible, as the source of zombification remains with the host – either through poisoning or hypnosis. This is non-transferrable and the process could in fact be reversed with proper medical care or a well-placed snipers bullet. This type of zombism is seen as the only plausible kind, and skeptics debunk it as a world-ender much as I have. However, they fail to mention the above methods.

Conclusion

Voodoo zombies remain a curse – but only in the literary sense. Throughly studied, they pose no threat to humankind. Research into reanimating or resuscitating the recently deceased is under investigation and has been in practice since the 1940′s – but no serious headway has been made, and the physiology of keeping some dead thing alive takes a bit of a stretch – but could be possible.

The most probable cause of a zombie pandemic would be through an opportunistic or mutated parasitic organism or virus. Virii remain the dominant form of life on the planet, able to quickly mutate, adapt and change to live (and kill) a variety of hosts. Vaccination serves little purpose and would only serve as an opiate or pacifying agent – much like “Phalanx” in Max Brooks’ “World War Z”. The cause of zombies in his world is through a virus called “Solanum” which reanimates corpses, turning their blood to goo and bears many of the same characteristics of zombies.

Should any of the discussed sources merge or attack at the same time – science help us. Stay away from rabid dogs, eh?

Resources

• Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality
• CDC Rabies Just 4 Kids
• Wasp performs roach-brain-surgery to make zombie slave-roaches
• Toxoplasma gondii
• Mind-Controlling Wasps and Zombie Spiders
• How Zombies Work

Pittsburgh. Reanimated Corpses. The Zombie Holocaust.

Except this time, its not a movie.

Naturally, there are great medical benefits of prolonging death. It grants doctors more time to operate and save patients, but there remains a great unpredictable factor of bodily decay and brain rot associated with reanimating patients, even in a closely controlled setting. Even some of the dogs have suffered permanent damage.

I’m sorry, this center for reanimation is in fucking Pittsburgh. PITTSBURGH. Consistently the site of Hollywood zombie outbreaks, attacks, apocalypses, sightings, feasts and record-setting zombie mall walks. Those poor inhabitants of Monroeville, PA can ususally be found stumbling about in various states of decay and death, either at the mall, in the parking lot, or shambling the eight miles from the Safar Center for Zombie Creation.

The experiment bears a frightening similarity to that of Communist Russian scientists in the 1930’s that experimented with reanimating and sustaining life in severed dogs heads, as well as attaching multiple heads to single bodies. Surely this kind of practice cannot publicly be performed today, yet dogs remain an abundant and useful test subject for reanimation and resuscitation practices. A controversial communist Russia film was released in 1943 to American scientists. The video shows Reds working on a reanimated severed dogs head hooked up to an Autojektor, one of the first artificial hearts used to maintain life.

From Time Magazine, Monday, Nov. 22, 1943:

The autojector, a relatively simple machine, has a vessel (the “lung”) in which blood is supplied with oxygen, a pump that circulates the oxygenated blood through the arteries, another pump that takes blood from the veins back to the “lung” for more oxygen. Two other dogs on whom the experiment was performed in 1939 (were still alive four years later). The autojector can also keep a dog’s heart beating outside its body, has kept a decapitated dog’s head alive for hours—the head cocked its ears at a noise and licked its chops when citric acid was smeared on them. But the machine is incapable of reviving a whole dog more than about 15 minutes after its blood is drained—body cells then begin to disintegrate.

I’ll post the entire film with review and notes later. Here’s a short, distrubing excerpt.

Safar Center scientists, it would seem, are filling in the gaps left in these grizzly experiments performed over 60 years ago. It’s the same thing — killing and reviving dogs in the name of science — but the end results can have strange, perhaps undead outcomes. How long can a dog remain dead? Can half a dog be reanimated? How long before the brain is damaged to a feral, bad-dog state?

Zombie dogs are really freaking hard to kill as evidenced in say, Wolfenstein, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or any other video game for that matter. Heck, even mean, fully live dogs are hard to deal with — deranged reanimated hounds from the depths of science hell are something that should never be fooled with.

• Weekend of the living dead: Zombies return to the Monroeville Mall
• Boffins create zombie dogs
• NY Times: Zombie Dogs
• Safar Center for Resuscitation Research
• Film – Russian Scientists Reanimate Dead Dogs – and severed heads
• Experiments in the Revival of Organisms – Creepy 1939 Russian real Undead Film
• Red Research into reanimating severed dogs heads – Time responds to the Red Zombie film

The 2012 thing – if you’re reading this article, chances are you’re already familiar with it. The 2012 thing refers to the conveniently predicted end-of-the-world or great change coming December 21st, 2012. Many apocalypse theories are vague and dark, leaving many details rough, ambiguous and open to interpretation. The 2012 eschaton comes from several cultures and gives us a very certain date to prepare not necessarily for the end of existence or the world, but “the end of the world as we know it” – TEOTWAWKI.

The date of 12/21/12 is derived from the end of a 5,125 year cycle for the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, most notably used by the Maya civilization. The calendar completes its 13th cycle from its starting point. Correlating the Mayan date to our Gregorian calendar yields several different dates ranging from the 21st through the 23rd, but the 21st seems likely, as it coincides with the winter solstice, and though astrology has little to do with our daily affairs, astronomically the Earth is said to be aligned facing the center of the Milky Way behind the Sun on the 21st. This interesting termination of the calendar in our immediate lifetimes is what brings many to reckon the date will bring about great global change or cataclysm.

Prophecies aside, how does 2012 relate to a zombie apocalypse? Certainly our world could be forever changed on this date by an unnoticed eschatological asteroid, disease or terrible quaking of the earth. The walking dead? Also plausible. Current scientific research into disease, reanimation and cellular re-genesis is progressing as rapidly as other scientific disciplines. Particularly terrifying is the reanimation of the 1918 Spanish influenza virus, responsible for a pandemic that killed an estimated 20 million people. Scientists have gathered important new clues to why the virus spread quickly and killed efficiently (though its use as a bio-weapon has not been confirmed). The viral resurrection is brought about for research and a vaccine against itself – which of course has already been eradicated – and the virus is being harvested from corpses, notably the body of a woman buried in the Alaskan permafrost. Unchecked adaptive and opportunistic pathogens claim a definite component of our eschaton, and an escaped weaponized version will most certainly wreak havoc against an unprepared and innocent populace. There’s no guarantee the new vaccine will work well on humans, a problem because nobody born after 1930 is immune to the 1918 strain.

The physical walking dead demand a certain suspense of disbelief of course. Assuming a plausible 20% of the worlds population has been infected by a terminal pathogen, our fragile infrastructure and socioeconomic systems will begin to break down as well. Weakened immune systems will render humans more susceptible to the likes of Trypanosoma brucei, a parasite that carries nightmarish qualities, reducing many of its victims to a zombie-like state before they slip into a coma and die. Toxoplasma gondii can alter brain functions in rats, leading them to the jaws of cats – and in humans can change brain patterns to induce neuroses, paranoia and schizophrenia. Left with a rotting brain and primitive fight-or-flight instincts, an entire populace can be reduced to weakened lumbering shadows of humans, stumbling around for food. Not actually dead or undead, these stupefied humans will be harbingers of disease, parasites, bacteria and infectious rot, whose saliva and blood will be rich with zombifying toxins.

Disease ridden walking corpses are one thing. Reanimating brain-dead humans has been discussed before and is a very real possibility. Restoring a human from a cryogenic stasis and reanimating their dying brain tissue yields the possibility that a human may not be the same as they were when they expired. This leaves much speculation as to a reanimated form of a human being, but combined with the virii and diseases mentioned above – you get the idea.

Five years is a fine timeframe for viruses to be developed and mutate as well as science achieving groundbreaking results in reanimation. “Where will I be in five years?” Loading shotguns and pistols seems like a nice course of action, but they’re more for your protection against opportunistic looters, crazies and deranged survivors rather than walking corpses. In five years I will be watching the news with cautious eyes – and stocking up like I would for any emergency.

Guns and beer.

• Researchers Reconstruct 1918 Pandemic Influenza Virus
• Scientists Describe How 1918 Influenza Virus Sample Was Exhumed In Alaska
• Reanimated Infection
• The disease that makes people zombies
• Toxoplasmosis

Check these out if your brain is hungry for more:

Stem cell research is a double edged sword. On one hand, the potential benefits to science, humanity and health are immense, and on the other hand it can be plagued with ethical and moral dilemmas involving life, cells, tissue and some may say – playing God.

Scientists in Britain are developing a technique to cultivate live tissue from the stem cells in dead embryos. This tends to escape any moral dilemma as the cells are no longer dividing and are considered dead. Dead tissue, brought to life. Nothing wrong there! I don’t have to explain much to illustrate where this is going.

Tissue Regeneration.

Setting aside all ethical and moral dilemmas about cultivating and developing stem cells and where they are harvested, stem cell research will progress and it will yield strange new results to us. There are certain things that should be brought up when considering a futurist look at stem cells. Specifically, tissue regeneration and reanimation. It is not so far fetched to consider – stem cells bear the unique property of being able to form into any cell the body needs, liver, heart, arm, brain. Perhaps in twenty to fifty years, we will have reached the point where stem cell therapy will allow quadriplegics to walk and the dismembered to grow new limbs. This is fantastic. And terrifying.

From the Max Planck Institutes:
“the possibility of regenerating the complex structures of entire organs, such as the kidneys for example, is already conceivable, although a comprehensive understanding of the organogenesis is necessary”.

Activating stem cells to produce or grow new tissue, organs and limbs is a scary and unknown frontier for biotechnology, especially since technicians are reanimating them to begin with. Certain questions are brought to mind:

• How will developing tissues be controlled?
• Is there a limit on what will be grown or developed?
• How large a tissue sample can be reanimated?
• Will reanimated tissue samples take on the characteristics of HeLa cells?
• Can stem cells grow in a dormant host?
• Will stem cells be beneficial in reanimating dead brains?

Even our scientists and government are in on the action. DARPA has a $7.6 million grant to focus on tissue and limb regeneration. Hydra Biosciences is working on a drug to target regeneration of the heart – without using stem cells.

Tissue Reanimation.

Naturally, this is all speculation from a futurist, but things that must be considered. Reanimation research is shaky ground, though progress is being made. While British scientist sort out the problematic origins of stem cell cloning, scientists in Germany are truthfully working on reanimation research – and are having success restoring dead brain functions.

Reanimation research at the Max Planck Institutes focuses on restoring functionality to a dying brain after cardiac arrest and reanimating the neural processes. The brain poses a certain problem in reanimating an entire organism, as all other organs and life are tied to the functioning of the brain. Nerve clusters and neurological activities have been restored after an hour of death, but complete reanimation fails as the brain is overwhelmingly affected by cardiac arrest.

Reanimating the 1918 flu pandemic virus seems rather precarious – especially since no one has an immunity anymore. The virus could mutate, react violently with current medicines and turn into a resistant super strain, or perhaps just be itself and kill us all like it used to.

Not to sound like the bearer of bad news, but left unchecked, research into reanimating tissue, organisms and organs could have disastrous consequences. When radiation was first discovered, it killed its finders.

Resources:

• Scientists turn dead cells into live tissue
• Reanimation research
• Regenerative medicine and stem cell research
• The Scariest Ideas in Science
• Regeneration Sans Stem Cells

This assumes zombie cells are not immortal. There exists a certain type of cell that doesn’t break down. In fact, it’s IMMORTAL.  They can copy and reproduce without mutation or error and can split indefinitely, causing no breakdown of the original, in theory consuming everything they can and replicating to the point of infinity. These immortal cells exist and for now have been a gift upon science – we can experiment and develop vaccines. Left unchecked, the cells become a plague upon cultures and taint results. This particular immortal cell is called “Helacyton gartleri”, and it comes from a dead woman. In fact, there are more cells of this cancer than there ever were in this woman. A part of this woman lives forever, continuing to eat and replicate. Like a zombie.

These peculiar, though not undead, cells are from an average woman named Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951. The same cells pulled from her cervical cancer (from HPV) are still alive. These cells, called HeLa, are common in biological research and are still being grown in an unbroken lineage from the original cells over 50 years ago. They’re used in cancer research, vaccination development, and can reproduce faster than other cancerous cells. They consume, excrete, and will be here a thousand years from now still alive, along with the original culture from 1951. That’s right – for all intents and purposes, her cancer cells are zombies.

HeLa cells can even be classified as a new species - Helacyton gartleri – spontaneously arisen from Lacks. The exhibit the following factors:

• The chromosomal incompatibility of HeLa cells with humans.
• The ecological niche of HeLa cells.
• Their ability to persist and expand well beyond the desires of human cultivators.

Zombies are also incompatible with humans, this is an obvious point. The undead also have their own ecological niche – the ability to survive in most any clime, and the ability to consume most any flesh to add to their own hideously decaying cell structure. And the third point is also obvious – zombies are quite uncontrollable beyond human expectations.

Thus HeLa cells may have a cousin – that of the immortal zombie. If your brain tissue and brain stem become like HeLa, they will also live forever continuing those basic functions of motor skills and eating indefinitely – which is why I again stress that severing the base of the head and neck is most important. Brain cells are grown through neurogensis from brain stem cells, and if these cells take on the qualities of HeLa cells – well, you get the idea. A person is dead, but their brain will keep living – and feeding.

All we need next are scientists to experiment with manually regrowing dead brain cells.

A simple offensive kit consists of a primary weapon, an ammunitionless weapon, and a few other provisions. John Lucas at Craftster has created an excellent mockup of such a kit. While he uses non sharpened implements and non-live ammunition, I highly suggest building a fully-functional kit of your own.

The kit consists of an pump action shotgun, shells, large knife and a plexiglass shield. Note also the high quality instructions included with the kit. In preparing a kit of your own, it is suggested that you leave the shotgun fully loaded and maintain extra shells in an easy to use bandolier. There is no point of keeping an anti-zombie weapon on your person or premises if it’s not going to be loaded. Zombies don’t wait for you to reload while they chew on your collarbone.

This kit functions best as a stand alone offensive solution. Its best tacitical placement would be near obvious weak zones in your home, such as entries, near large windows, or in cramped locations. An excellent place for such a kit as this would also be an upstairs window, or near a porch roof – shotgun blasts to the head should be sufficient enough at this elevation to cause complete destruction of the cerebellum and pons. You don’t want a Mike the Headless Zombie” wandering around, trying to eat things with just a throat. It’s pretty gross.

Don’t forget that you’ll still need a larger kit, and should have your whole house prepared anyway. I suggest the following:

• Benelli Super 90 8 Shot Pump Action Shotgun
• 100 Shotgun Shells – though why limit yourself? Have at least 4 bandoliers per person.
• Pikes, ninjata or other polearm – for a ranged blade attack.
• Lightweight Machete or Ginsu Knife – you want something easy to swing in close quarters that will sever the spine on one blow.

Remember: a member of the undead — and a member of the living for that matter — can still function and move with just a brainstem. You want complete severing of that head! When taking a headshot, aim through the mouth and towards the back for a square, clean shot.

John Lucas
Emergency Zombie Defense Station