Zombie Apocalypse, Mmm Brains...

Zombie denotes an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli. Zombie folklore has a long, long history. Armies of the flesh-eating undead can be traced all the way back to the roughly tenth century BCE Akkadian work The Epic of Gilgamesh, which drew on earlier Sumerian mythology and was one of the first substantial written works in human history. Even the Bible talks of the dead racing from their graves before the new earth is created.

In modern times, the term "zombie" has been applied to an undead race in horror fiction. This version of the zombie is taken largely from George A. Romero's seminal film The Night of the Living Dead, which was in turn partly inspired by Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend. The word zombie is not used in Night of the Living Dead itself, The monsters in the film and its sequels, as well as its many inspired works, are usually hungry for human flesh, often specifically brains. Sometimes they are victims of a fictional pandemic illness causing the dead to reanimate or the living to behave this way, but often no cause is given in the story. They're relentless and oblivious to pain, and they continue to attack even after losing limbs. Usually, anyone the zombies kill returns as a zombie, so they quickly evolve from a nuisance to a plague. Although this modern monster bears some superficial resemblance to the Haitian zombie tradition, its links to such folklore are unclear, and many consider George A. Romero to be the progenitor of this creature. Zombie fiction is now a sizeable sub-genre of horror, usually describing a breakdown of civilization occurring when most of the population become flesh-eating zombies – a zombie apocalypse. They have appeared as plot devices in various books, films and in television shows. Especially throughout the last decade. It turns out that they may very well be possible and real. That a zombie apocalypse is fully plausible.

According to the tenets of Vodou, a dead person can be revived by a bokor (sorcerer). Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. There also exists within the West African Vodun tradition the zombi astral, which is a part of the human soul that is captured by a bokor and used to enhance the bokor's power. The zombi astral is typically kept inside a bottle. It is believed that after a time God will take the soul back.

In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village, and a family claimed she was a relative who had died and been buried in 1907. Hurston pursued rumors that the affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive drug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She felt that if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo some important medical secrets still unknown to medical science will be found that give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony.

In 1980, a man appeared in a rural Haitian village. He claimed to be Clairvius Narcisse, who had died in Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti on May 2, 1962. Narcisse described being conscious but paralyzed during his presumed death, he had even seen the doctor cover his face with a sheet. Narcisse claimed that a bokor had resurrected him and made him a zombie. Since the hospital had documented Narcisse's illness and death, scientists viewed him as a potential proof for Haitian zombies. Narcisse answered questions about his family and childhood that not even a close friend could have known. Eventually, his family and many outside observers agreed that he was a zombie returned to life.

Narcisse was the impetus for the Zombie Project, a study into the origins of zombies conducted in Haiti between 1982 and 1984. During that time, ethnobotanist and anthropologist Dr. Wade Davis traveled through Haiti in the hopes of discovering what causes Haitian zombies. He presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). As a result of his investigations it is claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being entered into the blood stream. The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike'), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin. The second powder consists of dissociative drugs such as datura. Together, these powders were said to induce a death-like state in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor.

Davis collected eight samples of this zombie powder. The powders were complex, made from dried and ground plants and animals, in their rituals. Their ingredients were not identical, but seven of the eight samples had four ingredients in common:
-One or more species of puffer fish, which often contain a deadly neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (TTX)
-A marine toad (Bufo marinus), which produces numerous toxic substances
-A hyla tree frog (Osteopilus dominicensis), which secretes an irritating (but not deadly) substance
-Human remains
In addition, the powders contained other plant and animal ingredients, like lizards and spiders, which would be likely to irritate the skin. Some even included ground glass.

The process was an initial state of death-like suspended animation, which resulted in a mistaken diagnosis of death and burial. It was followed by re-awakening into a psychotic state. The sorcerer would return to the cemetery and retrieve the body to do this. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised to re-inforce culturally-learned beliefs and to cause the individual to reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie, since they "knew" they were dead.


A zombie apocalypse is scientifically possible via the following.
An effective agent would target, and shut down, specific parts of the brain, says Steven C. Schlozman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and author of The Zombie Autopsies, a series of fictional excerpts from the notebooks of “the last scientist sent to the United Nations Sanctuary for the study of ANSD,” a zombie plague. Although the walking dead have some of their motor skills intac the frontal lobe, which is responsible for morality, planning, and inhibiting impulsive actions is nonexistent. The cerebellum, which controls coordination, is probably still there but not fully functional. This makes sense, since zombies in movies are usually easy to outrun or club with a baseball bat.

The most likely culprit for this partially deteriorated brain situation, according to Schlozman, is as simple as a protein. Specifically, a proteinaceous infectious particle, a prion. Not quite a virus, and not even a living thing, prions are nearly impossible to destroy, and there’s no known cure for the diseases they cause. The first famous prion epidemic was discovered in the early 1950s in Papua New Guinea, when members of the Fore tribe were found to be afflicted with a strange tremble. By the early ’60s doctors had traced its source back to the tribe’s cannibalistic funeral practices, including brain-eating. Prions gained notoriety in the 1990s as the infectious agents that brought us bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as mad cow disease. When a misshapen prion enters our system, as in mad cow, our mind develops holes like a sponge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

If we were set on global destruction, the trick is attaching a prion to a virus, because prion diseases are fairly easy to contain. To make things truly apocalyptic, we need a virus that spreads quickly and will carry the prions to the frontal lobe and cerebellum. Targeting the infection to these areas is going to be difficult, but it’s essential for creating the shambling, dim-witted creature. Using a virus that causes encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain’s casing. Herpes would work, and so would West Nile. After infection, we need to stop the prion takeover so that our zombies don’t go completely comatose, their minds rendered entirely useless. Adding sodium bicarbonate to induce metabolic alkalosis, which raises the body’s pH and makes it difficult for proteins like prions to proliferate. With alkalosis you’d have seizures, twitching, and just look awful like a zombie.

Another possibility that scientists say is possible is the combination of rabies and influence.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/1001027-rabies-influenza-zombie-virus-science/

Any of the contagious or spreadable possibilities would have to be created in at least a level 4 bio lab. Nobody really knows how many of these highly secure top-secret underground facilities exist. That is where they study very deadly viruses and the like, as well as research and create bio weapons. There are rumors some of these labs are working on a zombie like contagion as well as race specific ones. Check out this good article about the bio weapons industrial complex:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14568

Some other things that could be used to create the zombie are;
1 - Brain Parasites that turn victims into mindless, zombie-like slaves are fairly common in nature. There's one called toxoplasmosa gondii that seems to devote its entire existence to being terrifying. This bug infects rats, but can only breed inside the intestines of a cat. The parasite knows it needs to get the rat inside the cat, so the parasite takes over the rat's brain, and intentionally makes it scurry towards a cat. The rat is being controlled to get itself eaten, and it doesn't even know. Half the human population on Earth is infected with toxoplasmosa, and aren't aware. They've done studies and shown that the infected see a change in their personality and have a higher chance of going insane. All it takes is a more evolved version of toxoplasmosa, one that could to do us what it does to the rats. Imagine if half the world suddenly had no instinct for self-preservation or rational thought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii
The biological weapons programs around the world are intentionally weaponizing such bugs. You've got to wonder if the lab workers don't carry out their work under the unwitting command of the toxoplasmosa gondii already in their brains.

Check out this webpage for creatures in life that are regularly affected by parasites that make them zombies.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25336

2 - Neurotoxins are certain kinds of poisons that slow your bodily functions to the point that you'll be considered dead, even to a doctor. The poison from fugu (Japanese blowfish) can do this. The victims can then be brought back under the effects of a drug like datura stramonium (or other chemicals called alkaloids) that leave them in a trance-like state with no memory, but still able to perform simple tasks like eating, sleeping, moaning and shambling around. Haitian voodoo priests used naturally occurring neurotoxins to basically zombify people and putting them to work on the sugar plantations.

Even if some evil genius intentionally distributed alkaloid toxins to a population to turn them into a shambling, mindless horde, there is no way to make these zombies aggressive or cannabalistic.

3 - The "Real Rage Virus" was a virus that turned human beings into mindless killing machines in the movies. In real life, we have a series of brain disorders that do the same thing. They were never contagious until Mad Cow Disease came along. It attacks the cow's spinal cord and brain, turning it into a stumbling, mindless attack cow. When Mad Cow gets in humans, they call it Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Check out the symptoms: Changes in gait (walking), Hallucinations, Lack of coordination (for example, stumbling and falling), Muscle twitching, Myoclonic jerks or seizures, Rapidly developing delirium or dementia.

Widespread brain infections of the Rage variety are just a matter of waiting for the right disease to come along. You are just one brain chemical (serotonin) away from turning into a mindless killing machine (they've tested it by putting rats in Deathmatch-style cages and watching them turn on each other). All it would take is a disease that destroys the brain's ability to absorb that one chemical and suddenly it's a real-world 28 Days Later. Iimagine such an evolved disease getting a foothold through the food supply. This disease would just require being spread through blood-on-blood contact, or saliva-on-blood contact.

4 - Neurogenesis is of particular interest, the method by which they can re-grow dead brain tissue. The whole thing with stem cells is that they can basically be used to re-generate dead cells. They're already able to re-grow the brains of comatose head trauma patients until they wake up and walk around again. Couple that with the new ability to keep a dead body in a state of suspended animation so that it can be brought back to life later, and soon we'll be able to bring back the dead. The process of "reanimating" a person creates a problem. It causes the brain to die off from the outside in. The outside being the cortex. That just leaves the part that controls basic motor function and primitive instincts. You don't need the cortex to survive; all you need is the stem and you'll still be able to mindlessly walk and eat. This is how chickens can keep walking around after they've been beheaded.

So, you take a brain dead patient, use these techniques to re-grow the brain stem, and you now have a mindless body shambling around, no thoughts and no personality, nothing but a cloud of base instincts and impulses. Under every legal system in the world, all rights and responsibilities are terminated at death. All it takes is someone with resources and a need for a mindless workforce of totally obedient slave labor.

5 - Nanobots are microscopic, self-replicating robots that can invisbily build--or destroy--anything. Vast sums of money are being poured into nanotechnology. Scientists have already created a nano-cyborg, by fusing a tiny silicone chip to a virus. The first thing they found out is these cyborgs can still operate for up to a month after the death of the host. According to studies, within a decade they'll have nanobots that can crawl inside your brain and set up neural connections to replace damaged ones. Those nanobots will be programmed to keep functioning after you die. They can form their own neural pathways, meaning they can use your brain to keep operating your limbs after you've deceased
The nanobots will be programmed to self-replicate, and the death of the host will mean the end of the nanobots. To preserve themselves, they'd need to be programmed to transfer to a new host. Therefore, the last act of the nanobot zombie would be to bite a hole in a healthy victim, letting the nanobots steam in and set up camp in the new host. Once in, they can shut down the part of the brain that resists (the cortex) and leave the brain stem intact.


Some natural occurring diseases that can make you resemble a zombie are sleeping sickness, necrosis, leprosy, dysarthria, and rabies, Coupling any of the symptoms of these diseases gets you frighteningly close to a real approximation of the sight and sound of the walking dead.

There isn't a disease that makes people want to eat other people, at least none as currently recognized. (Cannibalism isn't considered a mental illness) There are certain culture-specific mental conditions like Wendigo psychosis, observed in certain native American peoples, that make people think they are turning into cannibals, but that's about it.

Rabies can, under certain conditions, approximate some of the conditions of the zombie lust for brains. The symptoms of rabies are: full or partial paralysis, mental impairment, agitation and strange behavior, mania, and finally delirium. The rabies virus causes massive inflammation of the brain, and it's most often transmitted by bites from infected animals. Human-to-human transmission of rabies is rare, and it almost always occurs from insufficient tests before organ transplants. About 55,000 people die annually from rabies, with almost all of these deaths occurring in Asia and Africa. Although vaccines do exist they have to be administered before the onset of symptoms if the patient is to survive.

Sleeping sickness is an infection that carries nightmarish qualities, reducing many of its victims to a zombie-like state before they go into a coma and die. Those that do survive can be left with irreparable brain damage. At first it will cause headaches, aching muscles and maybe itching. But in the late stages, when the parasites have invaded the brain, the signs become more obvious and ominous. Victims find it hard to concentrate. They become irritable, their speech is slurred and they stop eating. Their daily rhythm becomes disrupted to such an extent that they can't sleep at night and find it almost impossible to stay awake during the day. It even becomes very hard for them to do simple mental tasks, such as drawing a straight line. There are still no vaccines or ways to prevent infection occurring once the tsetse fly bites a person. Even the available treatments are less than perfect.

Necrosis is death, specifically of individual groups of cells before the organism as a whole dies. This isn't technically a disease but rather a condition with a lot of different possible causes. Cancer, poison, injury, and infection are all possible causes of premature cell death. A patient suffering from necrosis technically is partially dead, albeit still very much alive in all the important areas (the brain, the heart, and other vital organs). Necrosis triggers a series of events that can lead to even greater effects outside the affected area. The dead tissue stops sending signals to the nervous system, and necrotic cells can release dangerous chemicals that hurt nearby, still healthy cells. This chain reaction can cause the necrosis to spread (if it spreads enough it becomes gangrene) and can ultimately be fatal. The only way to cure the condition is through a process known as debridement or even amputation.

Dysarthria is a disorder affecting the motor controls of human speech. Dysarthria is particularly appropriate because it's neurological in its origin. There are a lot of different causes of dysarthric speech, but all are characterized by a malfunction in the nervous system that makes it difficult to control the tongue, lips, throat, or lungs. This in turn causes difficulty in articulation, which can take the form of an inability to communicate in more than unintelligible noises. The condition can be brought on by traumatic brain injury, metabolic diseases, or a stroke, all of which lead to a loss of control over the vocal muscles. Possible affected areas include the ability to regulate the volume of speech, the ability to create the proper inflection, and, most importantly for our purposes, the ability to create the correct sounds of speech.

Leprosy can cause damage and numbness in its victims, which could cause a slow, shuffling walk that might have inspired the gait that we associate with zombies. The main external symptom of leprosy is the outbreak of extensive skin lesions, which gives the skin a diseased, decaying appearance not unlike that of the common conceptions of zombies. Cases of leprosy have been reported going back some four thousand years.

Pica is a mental disorder that makes the sufferer have an uncontrollable urge to eat abnormal and even harmful substances. Often they desire things high in iron such as dirt, raw meat or blood. Conceivably they could have a desire for flesh or brains.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_(disorder)

Check out the official CDC zombie apocalypse preparedness 101 published by the US government
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

Sources
http://io9.com/5547673/5-real-diseases-that-could-make-you-act-just-like-a-zombie
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/zombie.htm
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-02/fyi-could-scientists-really-create-zombie-apocalypse-virus
http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen.html