The popularity of zombies has long gone beyond the horror genre. The "living dead" became the favorites of kids, fighting with plants in children's games. They are one of the typical enemies in fantasy shooters and TV series. Become an element of youth design in clothing. Are chilling horrors really a thing of the past, and today no one cares if a zombie apocalypse is possible? Let's try to figure out how relevant this topic and what is the probability of the appearance of the "living dead" on the streets of modern cities.

Do zombies exist in real life?

Creatures with rotten flesh, snarling and pulling their hands and teeth to the brain, overgrown with many stories, legends and superstitions. They appear in mystical thrillers and melodramas, teen comedies much more often than their "colleagues" of vampires, adding a bit of humor or symbolizing the oppressed layers of society. In the world of cinema, the living dead are constant extras, which are divided into two main categories:

1. Classic zombies are corpses that have risen from the graves, often not distinguished by intelligence and quick wits.
2. The living dead are the result of some kind of pandemic that has turned most of humanity into aggressive carnivorous creatures.

What about reality? It is authentically known that zombies in the original sense are not a fiction of Hollywood directors. The word comes from one of the African languages ​​and means "Dead Man's Soul". To the question "Who are zombies and do they exist?" the voodoo priest will answer in the affirmative, adding that he would not mind getting a couple of specimens for gardening.

1. The rite of turning a person into a submissive slave, indeed, exists in this religion, but does not imply it. real death. In Haiti, such practices are illegal.
2. For the ritual of a potential zombie, the sorcerer needed a puffer fish containing a strong nerve poison - tetrodotoxin. A person who tasted the drug of a voodoo priest fell into a coma.
3. Relatives mourned and buried, and then the "dead man" came to life - the poison was excreted from the body. However, the "zombie" was too confused and scared to return home. The sorcerer constantly drugged him drugs and made it work.

Fictional "living dead" are distinguished by incredible vitality and strength. They are able to find victims by sound or smell. Neuroscientists have even published a book on the zombie brain to humorously understand the functioning of these strange creatures. In Andrey Cruz's book The Age of the Dead, the infected have a frightening effect, demoralizing not only ordinary survivalists, but also professional military personnel. Consider whether a zombie apocalypse is possible in real life.

• Even an army of obedient slaves of a voodoo priest, who do not pay attention to pain and bullets, are not capable of causing a global catastrophe of civilization. A horde of this kind can be easily stopped by ordinary police or a special forces detachment. Enough sleeping pills to stop them from being dangerous.
• In the event of an epidemic, the virus will be quickly localized and investigated. So far, there is not a single strain that turns a person into a superzombie. Sick people are weakened due to pathological disorders in the body and are not often able to bite even a doctor. The plague epidemic caused significant damage to the Medieval civilization, but the problem lay in the reduction of the population.
• For the functioning of a living person, the coordinated work of many systems is required. After death there is no reversible process decomposition. The resurrected zombies will not be able not only to growl, but even to walk. Although their behavior can be explained by disturbances in certain areas of the brain, but stories with voodoo or an epidemic still remain more plausible.

Should you prepare for the zombie apocalypse?

Behind the crowds of aggressive "living dead" lies the fear of war, devastation, the collapse of civilization. All this has already happened before, is happening now and will happen in the future without any participation of revived or infected beings. There are also zombies in the natural world.

Prion detection

In West African and Haitian Voodoo teachings, zombies are human beings without a soul, their bodies are nothing more than a shell controlled by powerful sorcerers. In the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, an army of clumsy, half-witted corpse-eaters brought to life by radiation attacks a group of local residents Pennsylvania. We're looking for a cross between Haiti and Hollywood: an infectious agent that will make its victims half-dead, but still living shells of who they used to be.

This effective agent will target and block specific areas of the brain, the scientists say. And although the living dead have intact motor skills - the ability to walk, of course, but also the ability to vomit, necessary in order to devour human flesh, their frontal lobe, which is responsible for moral behavior, planning and restraining impulsive actions (such as the desire to bite someone something) will cease to exist. The cerebellum, which controls motor coordination, is likely to be functional, but not fully functional. This explains the fact that the zombies in the movies are easily outrun or knocked over with a baseball bat.

Most likely, protein is the culprit of such a partially destroyed brain. More specifically, a protein-like infectious particle called a prion. It's not exactly a virus or a living particle, but it's nearly impossible to destroy and there's no known way to treat the disease these prions cause.

First prion epidemic was discovered around 1950 in Papua New Guinea, when representatives of one of the local tribes were struck by a strange tremor. At times, the sick people of this tribe burst into uncontrollable laughter. The tribe called the disease kuru, and by the early 1960s, scientists had discovered that the source of the disease stemmed from the tribe's cannibal funeral customs, including brain-eating.

Prions became widely known in the 1990s as the infectious agents responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease. When a deformed prion enters our body like a mad cow, holes form in our brains, like holes in a sponge. Brain scans of prion-infected people looked like they had been shot in the head with a shotgun.

Scary Assumptions

If we think that the evil geniuses are planning to destroy our world, then all they will have to do is attach the prion to the virus, since prion diseases spread very easily among the population. To actually make things even more catastrophic, we need a virus that spreads very quickly and that will spread prions to the frontal lobe of the brain and cerebellum. It will be difficult to target the infection precisely to these parts of the body, but it is very important in order to create the shambling, dumb creatures that we need.

Scientists propose to use a virus that causes encephalitis, an inflammation of the cerebral cortex.

A herpes virus will do, but it's unlikely to be able to attach a prion to a virus. Once infected, we will have to stop the spread of the prion in the body so that our zombies do not become completely immobile and their brains completely useless. The scientists suggest adding sodium bicarbonate to stimulate metabolic alkalosis, which raises the body's pH and makes it harder for prions to multiply. In this case, the person will have seizures, convulsive muscle contractions, and he will look as terrible as a zombie.

For many decades, zombies have been tied to pop culture, but only in recent times came to the fore, largely due to the series "The Walking Dead", which quite plausibly depicted the post-apocalyptic world. And although the main characters of the series are dead monsters, hungry for human flesh (which in itself is impossible), many of us believe that this can happen to us one day. Moreover, especially zealous fanatics even develop special plans for survival in the event of a zombie apocalypse.

There is still something special about this undead that feeds the irrational fear of mankind. But what really happens if the brain dies and the body remains functioning? According to most, there is something sinister about the way an empty human shell roams the earth. Below you can read ten interesting facts about zombies you've probably never even heard of.

10 Zombies Are From Haiti

The first mention of zombies was found in Haiti. The descriptions of these zombies sound familiar: they have tough gray skin and lack any emotion. It is said that zombies are the resurrected dead who do not feel pain and are alien to any needs inherent in the living. A zombie can become any person who will behave incorrectly with certain people.

9. Zombies are created and used by magicians
Most of the Haitian population believes in witchcraft and magic. It is probably for this reason that people who call themselves sorcerers or shamans have power. Usually such people are called "bokor", according to stories, they use black magic in order to bring the dead back to life. They usually revive the corpses of dead family members and use them for their own purposes, most often as a labor force. Many zombies become slaves to their masters. The local population of Haiti lives in fear of the possibility of being zombified, giving local shamans full power over the settlements.

8 Real Evidence Of Zombies


Not all evidence of such incidents is old. In 1996-1997, researchers described three different cases of "back from the dead" people in Haiti. These are rather curious stories, as there is no official explanation for their return to life.

The first story reads as follows: “F.I. was about 30 years old when she died due to a fever. Her family buried her the next day in the family vault near their home. 3 years later, she was discovered by an acquaintance wandering near the village. The woman was identified by the family and then taken to a psychiatric hospital.

The second case occurred with 18-year-old VD. He died and was buried, but later appeared in the village, coming to the cockfights. He accused his uncle of zombification.

The third case turned out to be the strangest: “After 18-year-old M.M. in the company of friends, she performed a ritual of prayers for her neighbor, who was zombified, she came down with diarrhea and fever, her body was swollen. The girl died a few days later. 13 years later, she reappeared. According to her, all these years she was in slavery, and now, since her bokor died, she was freed.

7. Real zombies are not as bloodthirsty as people think they are.
...A bloodthirsty zombie approaches you and reaches out with its arms, trying to grab your throat.. A familiar sight, isn't it? But it is far from reality. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the West has made zombies more bloodthirsty, it's much more interesting. However, zombies originally meant something completely different. According to the lore of the people of Haiti, zombies are actually unfortunate walking corpses. They are not aggressive and they do not covet human flesh. Most of the time they wander aimlessly, waiting for their souls to be released so they can leave this world.

6. You can get out of this state


After you have turned into a walking corpse, you still have a chance to return to normal human form. There is a way to reverse this process. Creates a specific bokor for a zombie, but its death breaks the spell and the zombies are released. In addition, he can release zombies while still alive, since the souls of the dead are stored at the bokor.

5 Zombies Used As A Threat
As mentioned above, turning into zombies was, and still is, a fairly real threat, according to the people of Haiti. Bokors are considered incredibly powerful sorcerers that no one can handle. The threat of zombies was previously used by them in some regions of the country, where the people tried to resist their power.

4. The first rumors about zombies reached America in the early 20th century.


From 1915 to 1934, when American soldiers were first stationed in Haiti, they witnessed tales and stories of black magic. It was the soldiers who brought these legends to the continent. And although they were not taken seriously, zombies have since become firmly established in American pop culture. Although the soldiers themselves, who are far from home, in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by superstitions, could probably succumb to legends and believe in the power of the Bokors.

3. Bokors break into crypts in search of corpses that could be turned into zombies.
As if other legends surrounding zombies weren't enough, here's another one for you: many claim that bokors love to roam the crypts in search of fresh corpses, which they try to bring back to life. In addition, for their spells, they often take certain parts of the body from the dead. Black magic, what can you do. It is not clear how successful their rituals are, but the very fact of such creepy stories is a little scary. There is something about it that reminds known history Frankenstein.

2 Zombies Are Illegal In Haiti
And while most of us aren't afraid of zombies, that fear lives on among the people of Haiti. Officially, the creation of zombies is considered illegal and is equated with murder. Even the fact that this is a reversible process does not remove the severity of such an offense.

1. Modern zombies: myth or reality?
While zombie origin stories are somewhat nebulous and often divergent in many ways, that doesn't stop them from being as popular as ever. Modern zombies in our fantasies have evolved from a sad, tormented soul to a hungry monster. All this, for the most part, because of the bloodthirsty desire of the West to make modern world a little more interesting and exciting. But what can we say about the real evidence of the appearance of zombies? Are they real? Can this phenomenon be explained scientifically? Many scientists believe that this is possible with the use of some strong poisons that cause brain death and literally turn a person into a weak-willed vegetable.

Zombies... Lovely, poor zombies, they are being killed, but they are not finished, poor things. The very theme of the living dead is extremely delivering: everyone is uncomfortable with the idea that billions of dead people will rise from their graves and have to defend themselves. Many dudes stubbornly believe that all voodoo magic is bullshit, but in this post we will delve a little into the wrong steppe. A zombie may well be still alive, but at the same time he may categorically not think anything. So fear, dear reader, today we will tell you why the zombie apocalypse is real and which scenarios are the most real.

2. Neurotoxins

There is an indecently large number of poisons that slow down almost the entire vital activity of the body. Only a good doctor can understand whether a person is completely or only partially dead. An example of such poisons is the poison of puffer fish. After poisoning, the victim is brought out of the trance with special drugs, loses his memory and personality, turning into a real zombie. By the way, all those talks about Haiti and zombie plantation workers are the real truth, especially considering that they are quite alive, but submissive and dumb as a cork.

3. Rabies virus

Like in the movie 28 Days Later. In fact, it’s quite a real thing, especially considering that there is a mad cow virus in the world. Check if you have any of his symptoms:

• change in gait;
• hallucinations;
• problems with coordination (for example, stumbling and falling);
• muscle twitching;
• myoclonic seizures or convulsions;
• rapidly developing delirium or dementia.

Given that such a virus is transmitted through blood and saliva, it can be considered a very real threat of a zombie invasion. Only now it is rarely found in nature. But aggression with the desire to break and bite will be available.

4. Neurogenesis, stem cells and other joys of science

With the help of stem cells, it is absolutely possible to renew the human brain, at least everything is going towards this. And here the time has come for real paranoia for fans of zombiefication. Let them replace the arms and legs, but the crippled brain, restored by cells with the same flaws as its “mother brain”, will be just as incapacitated, but it will be new. Also, the body can be kept in suspended animation for some time, but the resuscitation of this person can bring certain problems with it due to the destruction of the cerebral cortex. Let the human brain be new, but the connections in it will be lost, the personality will degrade to the state of a child, you will have to re-teach him everything, but he will be happy to watch TV shows based on the Russian zombie box. Simply put, it will be a zombie, because it will not have a personality, but there will be obedience and humility.

5. Nanobots

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Nanotechnologies are being developed not only in Russia. Small nimble robots will soon be able to build a small city inside a person or destroy their carrier. And why can't such babies destroy the connections in the human brain? Yes Easy! Read a good science fiction novel "Invincible" by Stanislav Lem about small nanobots. Suppose that the bots remain in our bodies after death, that they should reanimate your body? And imagine that there will be as many such bots in the bodies of a person as there are leukocytes. Scary? To horror!

Abnormal infectious proteins, called prions, can block parts of the brain while leaving others intact, creating a zombie out of a person. It may well be, but it's not that easy.

In West African and Haitian Voodoo teachings, zombies are human beings without a soul, their bodies are nothing more than a shell controlled by powerful sorcerers. In the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, an army of clumsy, half-witted corpse-eaters brought to life by radiation attack a group of local Pennsylvanians. We're looking for a cross between Haiti and Hollywood: an infectious agent that will make its victims half-dead, but still living shells of who they used to be.

This effective agent will target and block specific areas of the brain, the scientists say. And although the living dead have intact motor skills - the ability to walk, of course, but also the ability to vomit, necessary in order to devour human flesh, their frontal lobe, which is responsible for moral behavior, planning and restraining impulsive actions (such as the desire to bite someone something) will cease to exist. The cerebellum, which controls motor coordination, is likely to be functional, but not fully functional. This explains the fact that the zombies in the movies are easily outrun or knocked over with a baseball bat.

Most likely, protein is the culprit of such a partially destroyed brain. More specifically, a protein-like infectious particle called a prion. It's not exactly a virus or a living particle, but it's nearly impossible to destroy and there's no known way to treat the disease these prions cause.

The first prion epidemic was discovered around the 1950s in Papua New Guinea, when members of one of the local tribes were struck with a strange tremor. At times, the sick people of this tribe burst into uncontrollable laughter. The tribe called the disease kuru, and by the early 1960s, scientists had discovered that the source of the disease stemmed from the tribe's cannibal funeral customs, including brain-eating.

Prions became widely known in the 1990s as the infectious agents responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease. When a deformed prion enters our body like a mad cow, holes form in our brains, like holes in a sponge. Brain scans of prion-infected people looked like they had been shot in the head with a shotgun.

Scary Assumptions

If we think that the evil geniuses are planning to destroy our world, then all they will have to do is attach the prion to the virus, since prion diseases spread very easily among the population. To actually make things even more catastrophic, we need a virus that spreads very quickly and that will spread prions to the frontal lobe of the brain and cerebellum. It will be difficult to target the infection precisely to these parts of the body, but it is very important in order to create the shambling, dumb creatures that we need.

Scientists propose to use a virus that causes encephalitis, an inflammation of the cerebral cortex. A herpes virus will do, but it's unlikely to be able to attach a prion to a virus. Once infected, we will have to stop the spread of the prion in the body so that our zombies do not become completely immobile and their brains completely useless. The scientists suggest adding sodium bicarbonate to stimulate metabolic alkalosis, which raises the body's pH and makes it harder for prions to multiply. In this case, the person will have seizures, convulsive muscle contractions, and he will look as terrible as a zombie.