Some Thoughts On Zombies...
In light of this exciting election season where the fate of western civization seems to hang in the balance and we face the very real potential of either great adavances in our nation and the evolution of our society or four more years of death, destruction, anti-intelectualism, and the erosion of civil liberties, I've been thinking rather intently about--what else--Zombies.
What exactly is going on when one is reanimated into the "Living Dead"? I've come to some conclusion which I would like to share with you.
First off let's define terms. I'm not talking about voodoo zombies. The voodoo type of zombie requires only one one word to explain every aspect of it's existence: Magic. If you acknowledge the action of magic, you don't really have to explain anything else. It's kind of like saying "God did it." No, I am specifically talking about the George Romero, Night of the Living Dead, brand of Zombie. I am also drawing a line at the Resident Evil, House of the Dead and 28 Days Later franchises as those are fast moving, enrage dead things and should probably be named something other that "Zombie". This may be overly parsing the necrotic community, but when I hear "zombie", I think of shambling not running. Also, and some of you may disagree, but John Russo's contribution to the Living Dead mythos should be summarily ignored. In other words, Zombies do not talk and they do not hunger for brains, any more than intoxicated punk rocker chicks spontaneously strip and dance, not to music but to the movie soundtrack, in graveyards (see Return of the Living Dead, or rather don't bother seeing it). In a nutshell I am restricting my source material to the four George Romero Living Dead films, and the book World War Z.
So what really is going on inside these walking corpses?
What are Zombies capable of and what are they not capable of? They walk, they eat, they perform repetitive tasks from the lives of their bodies, and they transmit their condition by way of these activities. They cannot reason, talk, problem solve, feel pain, or remember cause and effect. This would suggest that what we're dealing with is a virus that grows and feeds off specific parts of the central nervous system. It seems that the virus somehow stimulates, arguably overstimulates, the areas of habitual motor function (hence the ability to walk and perform repetative tasks) and the instinct to eat and ability to recognize in a basic sense "meat" or things that seem like meat. These are all activities housed in the Cerebellum, Occipital Lobe, and Parietal Lobe. The Frontal Lobe is obviously off line, and oddly, as Zombies have been shown to have no heart beat, respiration, or other autonomic functions, the Medulla is also off line. In the absence of circulation, we must assume that the virus itself has some means of locomotion within the body, presumably in the lymphatic system. The black ichor that they leak would seem a reasonable candidate for this transmission medium. The virus, directly permeating the central nervous system and periferal motor neurons, then creates what could be seen as a seizure of habitual neural pathways. It is through these most basic of activities, recognizing something to bite, moving toward it, and biting that the virus is transmitted and thus propogates it's DNA. The bite itself is not the sole transmitter, though. The virus is already ubiquitous--seeded by a comet in the first movie-- but it would seem that it cannot become active in anything but necrotic neural tissue. If you die, you are reanimated, regardless of bites. But, redundncies are not unheard of in the natural world. It would make sense for an interstellar contagion to have multiple means of propogation to adapt to the inevitable variety of media that it could find itself in. Bite transmittal works faster than death by natural causes, so perhaps that functions as an accelerator to give the infection a toe hold faster than the host could respond.
Although no film that I know of has brought this up, it would be logical to assume that a Zombie would have a limited lifespan (or "undeathspan" perhaps), as the virus would eventually run out of neural material on which to feed. This would mean that were a living dead outbreak to occur, containment would actually be a relatively simple process of evacuation and waiting it out. There is no telling though how long the virus would talk to exhaust its host, so that could prove logistically untennable. Best to shoot them I guess. Better safe than sorry.
What exactly is going on when one is reanimated into the "Living Dead"? I've come to some conclusion which I would like to share with you.
First off let's define terms. I'm not talking about voodoo zombies. The voodoo type of zombie requires only one one word to explain every aspect of it's existence: Magic. If you acknowledge the action of magic, you don't really have to explain anything else. It's kind of like saying "God did it." No, I am specifically talking about the George Romero, Night of the Living Dead, brand of Zombie. I am also drawing a line at the Resident Evil, House of the Dead and 28 Days Later franchises as those are fast moving, enrage dead things and should probably be named something other that "Zombie". This may be overly parsing the necrotic community, but when I hear "zombie", I think of shambling not running. Also, and some of you may disagree, but John Russo's contribution to the Living Dead mythos should be summarily ignored. In other words, Zombies do not talk and they do not hunger for brains, any more than intoxicated punk rocker chicks spontaneously strip and dance, not to music but to the movie soundtrack, in graveyards (see Return of the Living Dead, or rather don't bother seeing it). In a nutshell I am restricting my source material to the four George Romero Living Dead films, and the book World War Z.
So what really is going on inside these walking corpses?
What are Zombies capable of and what are they not capable of? They walk, they eat, they perform repetitive tasks from the lives of their bodies, and they transmit their condition by way of these activities. They cannot reason, talk, problem solve, feel pain, or remember cause and effect. This would suggest that what we're dealing with is a virus that grows and feeds off specific parts of the central nervous system. It seems that the virus somehow stimulates, arguably overstimulates, the areas of habitual motor function (hence the ability to walk and perform repetative tasks) and the instinct to eat and ability to recognize in a basic sense "meat" or things that seem like meat. These are all activities housed in the Cerebellum, Occipital Lobe, and Parietal Lobe. The Frontal Lobe is obviously off line, and oddly, as Zombies have been shown to have no heart beat, respiration, or other autonomic functions, the Medulla is also off line. In the absence of circulation, we must assume that the virus itself has some means of locomotion within the body, presumably in the lymphatic system. The black ichor that they leak would seem a reasonable candidate for this transmission medium. The virus, directly permeating the central nervous system and periferal motor neurons, then creates what could be seen as a seizure of habitual neural pathways. It is through these most basic of activities, recognizing something to bite, moving toward it, and biting that the virus is transmitted and thus propogates it's DNA. The bite itself is not the sole transmitter, though. The virus is already ubiquitous--seeded by a comet in the first movie-- but it would seem that it cannot become active in anything but necrotic neural tissue. If you die, you are reanimated, regardless of bites. But, redundncies are not unheard of in the natural world. It would make sense for an interstellar contagion to have multiple means of propogation to adapt to the inevitable variety of media that it could find itself in. Bite transmittal works faster than death by natural causes, so perhaps that functions as an accelerator to give the infection a toe hold faster than the host could respond.
Although no film that I know of has brought this up, it would be logical to assume that a Zombie would have a limited lifespan (or "undeathspan" perhaps), as the virus would eventually run out of neural material on which to feed. This would mean that were a living dead outbreak to occur, containment would actually be a relatively simple process of evacuation and waiting it out. There is no telling though how long the virus would talk to exhaust its host, so that could prove logistically untennable. Best to shoot them I guess. Better safe than sorry.
posted by John McKenna at 10:44 AM
2 Comments:
I thought World War Z didn't find that they ever re-died unless they lost their head (sever the spinal cord at the base), so the 'germ' you are suggesting might have the ability to go into hybernation when it runs out of food from its initial source, but could re-re-animate in the presense of a new food source. Regardless, DIE ZOMBIE SCUM!
Yes, good reasoning. Considering the harsh conditions that the virus necessarily endures during interplanetary travel, it would make sense that the organism would have some means of encysting itself. Kinda like yeast.
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