Is This A Good Idea? Preparedness for Zombie Attacks?

September 14, 2009

Some of my critics have noted that I’ve been writing a lot lately about the pros and cons of developments that so far exist only in science fiction, such as warp drives for spacecraft and head transplantation. Why don’t you write about something that actually might happen?, they chide me. My response: Let’s see if you like this week’s topic better. Should we be better prepared for a flesh-eating zombie attack?

OK, roll your eyes back into your head. That seemingly far-fetched menace is the subject of an actual scientific study, “When Zombies Attack! Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection." In the paper, which is included in the just-released book Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress, University of Ottawa assistant professor of mathematics Robert Smith? (that’s not a typo—his surname ends with a question mark) and several of his students mathematically model the impact of a pandemic of reanimated corpses who’ve turned into cannibals—a scenario similar to the one depicted in director George Romero’s 1968 classic horror flick, Night of the Living Dead, and multiple sequels. Their predicted outcome is, well, horrific:

An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A cure would only result in some humans surviving the outbreak, although they will still coexist with zombies. Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time.

Furthermore, these results assumed that the timescale of the outbreak was short, so that the natural birth and death rates could be ignored. If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilization, with every human infected, or dead. This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert. Thus, if zombies arrive, we must act quickly and decisively to eradicate them before they eradicate us.

Now, I know what you skeptics out there are thinking. Why prepare for a zombie attack when the chances of this actually happening are nil, since zombies don’t actually exist? Well, let me point out that the supposed death panel provision in proposed health-care reform legislation doesn’t actually exist either, and that’s not stopping people from shouldering their AR-15s and marching outside town hall meetings in outrage. So why not arm and organize ourselves against the prospect of an onslaught of imaginary rampaging ghouls as well?

Beyond that, however, I would argue that unlike many of the things we fear, there actually is at least a possible, albeit tenuous, basis in reality for concern about zombies. As the excellent HowStuffWorks.com article on zombies details, the idea of zombies originated in Haiti, where folklore contains tales of corpses reanimated by sorcerers and turned into mindless slaves. Occasionally, people actually will show up in Haiti who claim to have been resurrected and turned into zombies. Back in 1993, for example, Cox news service correspondent Anne-Marie O’Connor actually interviewed a purported zombie named Andre Ville Jean-Paul over lunch at a Port-au-Prince bistro. Jean-Paul explained that voodoo cultists had unearthed his coffin and handed him over to a houngan—a voodoo priest.

The houngan put him to work in the rice fields with 18 other zombies, he said. Calling themselves "beef in the garden," they slaved in the nude, supervised by a dwarf zombie whose attire consisted of a belt of bells around his waist that tinkled when he danced.

They were fueled by a steady diet of moonshine, rice, biscuits, bananas, charcoal and meat they were told was human flesh, he said.

After an undetermined number of years, one of the zombies could take no more and he beat their master to death, breaking the spell of their servitude, Jean-Paul said. Disoriented, they wandered out of their compound, clutching their farming implements. "We were wandering like cows in the streets," Jean-Paul said. "We didn't know where to go."

Harvard-trained ethnobotanist and explorer Wade Davis, who investigated the zombie phenomenon in the 1980s and wrote the best-selling 1985 book The Serpent and the Rainbow based upon his experiences, came up with a science-based possible explanation. Davis obtained samples of the voodoo sorcerers’ zombie powder and found that they contained, among other ingredients, puffer fish, whose skin and organs contain tetrodotoxin, a potent poison that binds to nerve cell membranes and blocks transmissions in anyone who ingests it. As this Biology Online article explains, Tetrodotoxin poisoning is often fatal, but in sub-lethal doses it can induce complete paralysis and slow heartbeat and respiration to imperceptible levels, mimicking death so convincingly that tetrodotoxin-poisoning victims have been pronounced dead by medical rescuers, only to later awaken. Those would be the fortunate ones; the less fortunate find themselves sealed into caskets and buried alive — or perhaps exhumed and revived by cultists. The latter then force-feed the undead a paste made of sweet potatoes, cane syrup and Datura, a genus of plant also known as the “zombie cucumber,” which contains the hallucinogens atropine and scopolamine, and induces symptoms that include confusion, delirium, psychosis and amnesia. To complete the zombification, victims are fed a salt-free diet, which keeps them listless and lethargic in Haiti’s sweltering climate.

Granted, that’s a slightly different explanation than the one given for the contagious flesh-eating zombies in Night of the Living Dead, who apparently have been reanimated by radiation from a returning space probe; in the sequels, the phenomenon is left unexplained, and the zombie outbreak morphs into a purely existential dilemma, like the fine print in our health insurance plans.

But whether real or imagined, a zombie attack is a potent metaphor. Think of the undead not as klutzy cannibals but as the X factor, the Rumsfeldian “unknown unknown," the totally unexpected menace that suddenly confronts us. (The Canadian researchers’ mathematical modeling of zombie attacks maybe seem like an elaborate joke, but in actuality it was led by a mathematician whose expertise is in studying the spread of actual epidemics such as malaria and West Nile Virus, and its underlying purpose was to demonstrate the progression of a rapidly spreading, unfamiliar public health threat.) In recent experience we’ve been confronted increasingly with such X factors, ranging from AIDS to terrorism to climate change. And time and again, we’ve been exposed as dangerously unprepared to deal with such paradigm-shattering threats. I’m not talking about stocking up on bottled water and Spam, having a battery-powered radio, a shotgun and the ingredients for Molotov cocktails. I’m talking about our societal tendency to do exactly what most of the characters in the Romero movies do when confronted with a zombie attack — i.e., to become hysterical and fight among themselves for control of the group, which ultimately leads to them squandering resources and opportunities for survival, and undermining each others’ efforts. I think we need to find a way to tone down the cable TV news-induced histrionics and learn to cooperate towards a common objective, before some real menace arrives to do us in.

So what do you think? Express your opinion below.

Comments

[Lyn Silarski]

That last paragraph, chilling!

It would be interesting to imagine, and I'm not taking a poke at you, the current administration as zombies. How would that play out given the hot topics of the day?

At the very least, it could be funny and there should be some fun I think. At least I'd like some!

Where do I pick up the cocktails?

[MarkV]

That's the best last paragraph to a blog posting that I've read in a very long time. Nicely done.

I'm also glad to see that old movie plots can be reworked by clever academics back into promising dissertation material. I'm all about recycling. We're going to see some real ground-breaking research on vampire/human romantic sociologies as soon as the next 'Twilight' sequel hits.

[Patrick J. Kiger]

Hey Lyn, you can take a poke at me if you like. I'm pretty squishy, though. :) I'll have to figure out how to send those molotov cocktails through the mail without getting busted by those killjoys at BATF.

[Patrick J. Kiger]

Mark: thanks, but you've still got the best blog title, "Extremely Late Renaissance."

[fred]

wow, intelligent life is on the internet after all... i commend you, sir, on an article well written, with subject matter that doesn't make me want to spew forth violent projectile vomit. well done. you and people like you should be working for the media, and the government. minds like yours are what we need.

[charles martinez]

dude, ive already prepared for the zombie attack and worse. it can be rolled into a package, atomic fallout, zombie attack, w.w.o. fema out of control. it all comes down to the basics, survival and who will. those who have prepared food ,canning, drying ,seeds,gardens,and guns, and ammo. and the basics such as water purifacation. and first aid. and stock piled anti-biotics. its easy to prepare for the worse.just make sure you got good locks on your bunker doors.

[Johnny (the brother that turned into a zombie)]

They're coming to get you, Barbara!

[Rob Zombie]

Best article on zombies that I've seen.

[Zombiekiller]

Brains! Theyd starve in Washington!

[Zombiekiller]

Wait a minute.The Zombies already have arrived.And there all in D.C.!

[Zombiekiller]

Now im off to play some Left4Dead!

[natural man]

hey, zombies are people too. Or at least they used to be.

[sandy]

Have we learned nothing from all these stupid zombie movies? For one the zombies are stupid and they walk very slowly so taking them out would be very easy and alot of fun. However if they are anything like the Land of The Dead or Resident Evil zombies where there in mobs. It would be alittle harder to take them out but I'm up for it. People get your guns it's zombie time.

[Allyson Jones]

It would be easy to pwn the zombies from Shaun of the Dead or Plants Vs. Zombies. But not the ones from Dead Space and Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead. They're crazy fast and scary and tough...actually, the ones from Dead Space are more like alien zombies called necromorphes but whatever..

[zombiehunter]

If its the Flood Zombies from Halo then we need Master Chief.And if its the head crab zombies from Half Life we need Gordan Freeman.

[Jay]

I dont think the zombies from Halo,HalfLife,or Dead Space really count as real zombies.There more like alien parasites.But the others do since its the human body itself that is being reanimated.Without an outside force controlling it.

Now vampires.There a different story.

[M.N.]

I thoguht this article made several good points. If a zombie epidemic were to occur, most likely humanity would struggle greatly. The only problem though, what kind of things today pose a threat at becoming potential zombie makers? Being prepared is good tohugh, I agrre. I'm not prone to buying a fallout shelter or amory anytime soon thoguh.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1207423780]

The only thing that would make this article better is if Francis was here to hate it.

[Astroboy]

Francis the talking mule?

[Bob]

I hate zombies if I saw one I would freeze in fear.

[caneyempor]

i already bought a bunker fully loaded it have turrets and am working on a cure maybe oh no their getting me help hey let go of my typeing hand zommbie

[C-Brix]

Here is how I break down the "Zombie" factor..

There are many man made/synthetic viruses among us today... Also the technologies that we call "state-of-the-art" was mostly made and used by the government before we had a clue on what they where. For example the Stealth Bomber, I remember in the mid 90's a civilian pilot seen about 5 Stealth Bombers flying in V Formation, the U.S. Government allowed the general population to be classified as UFO's not literally Unidentified Flying Objects but as extra terrestrial life - So keep in mind all the new stuff today - blue-ray, wifi, and wireless internet connections was around long before they started marketing these products...

Which brings me to the conclusion.. If they are making technologies today that wont be released for another 15, 20, even 30 years but is fully effective and operational right now.. Imagine what these Scientists are coming up with chemical and biological wise.. A Virus that reanimates dead tissue or causes people to go literally insane is a literal possibility.

For instance The medulla oblongata controls such emotions as anger and rage.. a simple virus that would cause this part of the brain to swell or to take an odd infection or deformation would cause zombie like behavior such as - violent behavior toward anything and everything in the way, as well as a very high pain threshold. That alone is enough to cause problems..

Science Fiction aside, such precautions should be taken anyways in case of wide spread hysteria or fall of governing establishments.