Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies (7 page)

Colonel Herzog and his undead Nazi troops behave much like mummies—they are preserved in ice, they just want their gold back, and they may not be contagious—but they’re called zombies by name throughout
Dead Snow
, making the intentions of this Norwegian romp clear.

Earlier Nazi zombie movies include
Shock Waves
(1977) and
Zombie Lake
(1981), both of which involve ghouls rising from bodies of water to terrorize the living.

ILLUSTRATION BY WILLIAM BLANKENSHIP

I
went to a demolition derby several years back, and it struck me that the competing cars had a lot in common with zombies. If you’ve never seen it, demolition derby is a motorsport consisting of a number of similar cars competitively ramming into one another until only one is still operational, while the rest lie motionless and destroyed.

Cars prepped for a derby are stripped down to their bare essentials. The lights are removed, the seats are ripped out, the suspension is cut down to a minimum, the dashboard is stripped, and the radio is trashed. Anything that doesn’t directly assist in the accomplishment of the driver’s narrow objective is history. Just like a zombie occupying what was once a fully functioning human body, the derby car is a shell of its former self.

A derby car isn’t tasked with having a long and productive driving life. Its only goal is to survive the other cars on the track for at least a few brief seconds. Zombies are likewise designed not for longevity but, rather, for viability. They only need to live long enough to spread their infection to a new host.

There’s a lot we can’t know about zombie physiology until the dead come clawing back for us. But examining the complex inner workings of a zombie through the lens of something
as simple as a demolition derby may help to clarify the potential issues at hand. I know it does for me.

The scientific community has embraced the living dead as a legitimate field of study in recent years. Largely because of their uniquely biological roots, zombies are the perfect research subjects, and serious work is being done in a wide range of fields, from mathematical outbreak modeling to the theoretical construction of the zombie brain.

In their paper “When Zombies Attack: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection,” a University of Ottawa research team concluded that a large-scale zombie outbreak would lead to societal collapse unless dealt with quickly and aggressively. The
New York Times
included the work among its top ideas of 2009.

That same year, Dr. Steven Schlozman, codirector of medical student education in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, gained national attention for his theory of ataxic neurodegenerative satiety deficiency syndrome (ANSD), which seeks to explain classic zombie behaviors such as slight uncoordination, reduced brain function, and perpetual hunger and aggression. Schlozman fictionalized the syndrome in his 2011 novel,
The Zombie Autopsies.
As he says:

In my novel, ANSD is the name given to the condition of zombie-ism by the World Health Organization. It is an airborne bug, spread in respiratory droplets like the common cold; though being bitten by someone with ANSD is a potent vector of disease transmission as well.

Let me be clear, though: all zombie research is theoretical. We don’t have an available walking corpse to capture, strap down, and cut up for the good of mankind, so certain assumptions need to be made on an individual basis. Though zombies are classified as dead, Schlozman’s theory is that they have beating hearts and that their lungs continue to take in oxygen. Other theories are built around flesh eaters that don’t breathe at all. Likewise, the Ottawa researchers also used their own specific set of parameters when developing their model.

No single theory will ever paint a complete picture of the modern zombie, and we’ll never know the full extent of the threat we face until the dead rise. But by taking a close look at the most compelling new and developing research in the field, we might foster a better understanding of the coming threat, thereby increasing our chance of survival as a species.

To that end, this section looks at the theoretical biology of the modern zombie, establishes its defining behavioral characteristics, and identifies existing pathogens that could be possible infection sources. We will also highlight strange zombielike animals from around the world and touch on disturbing current events that seem to suggest that all signs point to the coming plague.

I
n 2007, I attended
Wired
magazine’s fourth annual Nextfest in Los Angeles, a showcase of technological innovations meant to change the world. The convention featured dozens of exhibits, including a giant holographic fighting game, a single-wheeled motorcycle concept, and a gaggle of yellow dancing marshmallow balls. But the one demonstration that everyone wanted to see, billed by organizers as the premier spectacle of the entire show, was Kiyomori the samurai robot. So special was Kiyomori that it only came out of its fancy samurai battle tent twice a day.

Thirty minutes before Kiyomori’s scheduled appearance, crowds began to form along the rope, so I found a spot near the front and dug in to witness the future of robotics. My head swirled with visions of a fierce fighting machine that jumped and kicked and expertly readied its samurai sword for battle. What was about to happen? Would Kiyomori go haywire and kill an innocent bystander before wreaking havoc on the entire city? I’d seen
Robocop
; I knew the risks. Was this mysterious metal samurai a fateful precursor to Ed-209 or T-800? Maybe I should have sat farther back.

Ominous Japanese music started, Kiyomori’s introduction was made over a loudspeaker, and then it appeared. The robot hobbled forward on shaky legs, slowly moving to a fixed
position in the small ring. Far from an intimidating warrior, it looked like a tin suitcase with legs and arms in a cheap Halloween costume. Two nervous handlers stood on either side of Kiyomori, making sure it didn’t fall over. Needless to say, it was less than impressive to a robotics novice like me but paradoxically also not overbilled. Kiyomori
was
the future.

In March 2009, Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology debuted its new female humanoid robot at Tokyo Fashion Week. The Center for Advanced Vehicles at the University of Tehran, Iran, followed suit in August 2010 with a shiny white biped called Surena 2. Neither is substantially more physically capable than Kiyomori.

Thousands of the brightest minds on the planet have spent decades tackling this problem but have yet to create a life-sized humanoid robot that can move through space as well as even the most awkward zombie.
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The robots can’t avoid rotting bodies in the road or navigate cracked curbsides or burned-out porch stairs. They can’t maintain balance while grabbing, pulling, and eating their struggling victims alive. They can’t kneel to feast on the flesh of their fallen prey. What they can do is walk in a straight line on a smooth surface and then turn around and walk back again.

This isn’t a knock on robotics but, rather, the most striking evidence that the walking dead are more capable and likely smarter than most give them credit for. There is an inexorable connection between the brain and the body, so through theoretical observation of zombie behavior, we know that the zombie brain must be relatively high-functioning. Maybe not high-functioning compared to your average human, but certainly high-functioning compared to Kiyomori.

Put another way, your undead neighbor may not be likely to take up poetry as a hobby or memorize all the provinces of
Canada. But the very fact that he’s able to recognize a door or a window, claw at it to gain entry, then identify, chase, and capture food across wide swaths of varying terrain is a testament to his impressive undead brainpower.

Timothy Verstynen, PhD, is a neuroscientist at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition in Pittsburgh, specializing in human brain imaging and neural network modeling. Bradley Voytek, PhD, is a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, studying the role of neural oscillations in communicating brain networks. Together they authored a groundbreaking paper on zombie brain function titled “The Living Dead Brain,” in connection with their development of a complete three-dimensional model of a zombie brain. To say that these guys know what they’re talking about when it comes to the structure and function of the zombie brain is an understatement.

Voytek and Verstynen pioneered the theory of Consciousness Deficit Hypoactivity Disorder in the undead, defined as the loss of rational, voluntary, and conscious behavior, replaced by delusional, impulsive aggression; stimulus-driven attention; and the inability to coordinate motor and linguistic behaviors. In other words, zombies aren’t the most graceful creatures on the planet, but they sure do want to rip your guts out:

Together, these symptoms and their neurological roots reveal a striking picture of the zombie brain. Based on the behavioral profile of the standard zombie, we conclude that the zombie brain would have massive atrophy of the “association areas” of the brain: those areas that are responsible
for the higher-order cognitive functions. Given the clear cognitive and memory deficits, we would also expect significant portions of the frontal and parietal lobes, and nearly the entire temporal lobe, to exhibit massive degeneration.
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