The science behind real-life zombies

The biggest problem with trying to provide logical explanations for supernatural beings is that said explanations tend to sound either really disappointing or really stupid. A few examples: mermaids are what you get when you combine dugongs and the remarkably poor judgment of sailors, an alien sighting turned out to be horned owls seen through the 1950s equivalent of beer goggles, and vampires were created simply because people needed a scapegoat for every single terrible thing to come their way.

 

But what about zombies?

Although a full-scale undead invasion in real life remains about as plausible as catching a blue whale with a fishing rod—unless you’re living in a Pokemon game, of course—it hasn’t stopped us from wondering exactly how such a nightmarish scenario could be possible.

In the case of the television show The Walking Dead, the process of explaining the zombie infestation problem is bypassed by taking a cue from the eponymous comic book - four seasons in, and the show’s approach is still “It just happened, don’t ask.” Then again, this creates another problem: when you’re running away from decomposing corpses that want to eat your brain, the first “why” question on your mind tends to be “Why is this happening?” (The second, of course, would be “Why me?”)

 

Fortunately, science wants to apologize for murdering a million childhoods after drawing a picture of a giant chicken and calling it a dinosaur. Here are five scientific explanations for a real-life zombie apocalypse, when (or if) it ever comes to pass:

 

(1) Drugs—er, “voodoo magic”

The idea of the zombie traces its roots to the Caribbean country of Haiti. The word “nzambi” means “spirit of a dead person”, which manages to be concise and downright terrifying at the same time. Haitian voodoo priests, known as bokor, supposedly used some kind of magical powder (reportedly made out of the poisonous puffer fish, toads, and – gasp – human remains) to strip people of their free will, turning them into zombies and using them for slave labor.  The most well-documented case was the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who showed up in a Haitian village in 1980 and claimed to have been drugged and shipped off to work in a sugar plantation… after being declared dead eighteen years earlier.

 

Not big on the whole voodoo thing? Remember the “cannibal zombie” from Miami who made headlines in May last year for (a) going on a naked rampage, (b) being unbelievably strong and resilient, and (c) straight-up chewing a man’s face off? Well, it turns out that he was under the influence of a powerful synthetic drug known as “bath salts”.

 

 

The moral of this story? Stay the heck away from drugs (and weird voodoo priests).

 

(2) Getting bitten by nasty things (that aren’t even zombies)

Thinking of going as one of Michael Jackson’s back-up dancers this Halloween, but have no money for make-up or prosthetics? No problem! Just find a tsetse fly and get bitten by it. These little bastards carry the parasite Trypanosoma brucei, which causes the more-terrifying-than-it-sounds sleeping sickness. A victim of sleeping sickness experiences headaches, muscle pains, and itching, leading to reduced motor functions and a “zombie-like state”. Eventually, the victim falls into a coma, after which he either comes out with irreparable brain damage or just plain kicks the bucket. “Silly writer,” you say, “those tsetse flies are prevalent in Africa, not in the Philippines!” Guess what, hotshot – cases of sleeping sickness have been documented here as early as 1958.

 

 

Of course, you could just get bitten by a rabid dog, which would make you an equally convincing zombie (more on that in a bite, er, bit).

 

 

(3) Brain parasites

The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a species of fungus found in Brazilian rain forests, is a strong contender for the title of “most badass hitchhiker in all of creation”. It hijacks and eats the Camponotus leonardi ant’s brain and wears the carcass like a meat puppet, turning the otherwise mundane life of the ant into a cross between Freaky Friday and Grand Theft Auto. Why would this fungus do something so sadistic, you ask? Why, for reproductive purposes of course! Upon taking over the ant’s body, the fungus moves the ant to a mathematically precise position under a leaf, makes it bite down hard, and then lets it hang there permanently, with the lifeless corpse of the ant serving as the transport vehicle for more spores to spread and grow.

 

 

While we’re on the subject of zombified ants, let’s look at other instances of mind control in bugs, because it really bears emphasizing that the insect kingdom is full of unspeakable terrors that would eat us for breakfast if it weren’t for our size advantage.

Glyptapanteles is a species of wasp that lays eggs inside geometrid caterpillars. When the larvae hatch, they’re treated to an all-you-can-eat buffet, and devour the caterpillar from the inside. Then, in a microscopic reenactment of Alien, they burst out of the caterpillar and wrap themselves up inside a cocoon somewhere nearby.

That’s it, end of story, I hardly knew ye, caterpillar… Wait a minute, what’s that? The caterpillar gets up, crawls over to their cocoons, and stands guard over the cocoons until they hatch? That’s all sorts of messed up (and cool).

 

 

What the heck does this have to do with human beings, though? This fungus only attacks ants, and wasps prefer to sting us, not use us as nurseries. We can’t possibly be infected by brain parasites of our own, right?

Schizophrenia-inducing parasites that are present in about half of the world’s population – that’s not an actual “thing”, right? Well, Toxoplasma gondii begs to differ, and laughs in your general direction. In fact, you’re probably hearing the laughter right now.

 

 In. Your. Head.

 

(4) Insanely dangerous viruses

Earlier in this article, the admittedly terrible idea of willingly getting bitten by a rabid dog was brought up. That’s because rabies is said to be the main inspiration (http://io9.com/5919645/the-virus-that-inspired-the-whole-zombie-genre) for the “rage virus” trope, which is the usual cause of infection in most zombie movies.  There are actually two varieties of rabies - the “dumb” and the “furious”. The former renders the victim disabled and paralyzed, eventually killing him after putting him in a coma; the latter turns the victim into an aggressive, slobbering mess of violence. Either way, the victim is screwed.

 

Of course, you could just bypass the whole “getting bitten” thing and just eat the wrong kind of hamburger. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is the fancy term for the Mad Cow virus when humans contract it, and based on the list of symptoms, it looks like something straight out of a horror movie. It causes muscle twitching, seizures, and dementia, and turns you into a shambling mess of clumsiness.

 

 

Maybe you should just ditch the idea of dressing up as a zombie, wrap yourself up in tissue paper, and pretend to be a mummy instead.

 

(5) Science shenanigans

If you’ve ever played games like Half-Life, you’d know that the craziest things happen behind the reinforced glass doors of heavily-guarded laboratories. While it is true that modern research intends to move humanity forward, can scientists blame us for getting all jittery every time the march towards progress starts to resemble a zombie shuffle?

 

Say, do you remember the Matrix movies? Thanks to Keanu Reeves’s memorable performance as a thinly-veiled, emotionless, and extremely bored Jesus analogue, we learned two things: one, that the Wachowski brothers aren’t particularly good at making sequels, and two, that it’s a bad idea to allow sophisticated AI access to our mental driver’s seats.

Unfortunately, because you can’t spell “technology” without “oh no”, scientists have succeeded in building nanobots that enter the body, intended to find and fix whatever’s wrong inside it. Nanobots are like an anti-virus program for people, only without the incessant nagging to get a paid subscription.

These helpful nanobots have also been engineered with the ability to replace damaged neural links, and can even continue operating even after the host has expired. They're basically tiny machines with the ability to think for themselves: little horrors that can take over a body and keep operating it even after it dies.

Hmm. Artificial intelligence that can take over humanity, control (or exterminate) all life, and turn everyone into shambling cyber-zombies? Did we just accidentally spoil the plot of The Avengers 2?

 

 

Think this is all just panic-mongering? Fun fact: science has already proven that creating “zombies” is possible, by placing clinically dead bodies in suspended animation and bringing them back to life, sort of, after a certain period of time. Scientists have even managed to revive patients who were rendered comatose due to severe head trauma.

It’s only a matter of time before science tries to see if combining these two ideas would work as well as peanut butter and chocolate (which is a poor choice of metaphor to use in this context – hope you didn’t have that for breakfast this morning).
 

None of these things, however, explain how or why the undead horrors in Plants vs Zombies developed an appetite for freaking vegetables.  — TJD, GMA News