Photo: Sir Mildred Pierce

Parasites, virii, bacteria, evil alien brain worms. These things can all potentially live inside you and destroy you from the inside out. I’ve written about Toxoplasma before. It’s a parasite that decreases fear in rats, causing them to be eaten by cats. Pregnant women must avoid cats and undercooked meat, as Toxoplasmosis can cause sexual promiscuity, more male births and excessive risk taking. It can make men less intelligent, more jealous and anti-social, cause schizophrenia, or slow reaction times. This little worm can even be the cause of car collisions. Death.

From a report on Toxoplasmosis and car accidents:

“The subjects with latent toxoplasmosis have significantly increased risk of traffic accidents than the noninfected subjects. Relative risk of traffic accidents decreases with the duration of infection. These results suggest that ‘asymptomatic’ acquired toxoplasmosis might in fact represent a serious and highly underestimated public health problem, as well as an economic problem. “

I’m not saying Toxoplasma causes zombism — but it can create strange mental faculties, cause aggression and risk taking and reduce reaction time. Are cats evil? Quite possibly yes.

Are food-borne parasites a major cause of car accidents? – Science that Matters.

Czech scientists discover link between accidents, blood group and parasite – Radio.cz

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?

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.

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.

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

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