Walking Corpse Syndrome

Hello Zombiology Students and a warm welcome to the ZomBlog.

Today we're looking at Walking Corpse Syndrome, also known as Cotard's Syndrome. This rare mental condition causes people to believe they are dead, putrefying and missing internal organs - essentially Zombieism of the mind.

You have a medical licence right?

Cotard's Syndrome takes its name from French Neurologist Jules Cotard who encountered a patient named, Mademoiselle X (perhaps a relation of Professor X). Mademoiselle X claimed to have no brain, no nerves, no chest, no stomach, and no intestines. She also believed she was immortal and therefore didn't need to eat. She died of starvation.

"I ain't related to no French Bird Bro. They don't even have a word for entrepreneur."

The condition is usually found in patients suffering from depression and schizophrenia - leading many Doctors to see it as a component of these illnesses.

More recently a patient, known only as Graham, was identified with the syndrome. Graham believed his brain had died. Neurologists Adam Zeman at the University of Exeter, UK, and Steven Laureys at the University of Liège in Belgium, met with Graham and took scans of his brain. The type of scan they carried out is called positron emission tomography (PET) and is used to produce detailed, three-dimensional images of the inside of the body. Before being scanned the patient has a radioactive substance passed into their body. The substance gives off gamma waves (a type of radiation) that can be detected by the scanner. The scans taken of Graham were the first ever conducted on someone with Cotard's Syndrome.

A PET Scan. Or maybe this is a CAT Scan. I get them confused.

What they discovered was amazing. The activity in certain areas of his brain was so low it was comparable to someone in a vegetative state.

Laureys explained,

I've been analysing PET scans for 15 years and I've never seen anyone who was on his feet, who was interacting with people, with such an abnormal scan result. Graham's brain function resembles that of someone during anaesthesia or sleep. Seeing this pattern in someone who is awake is quite unique to my knowledge.

Adam Zeman continued, "It seems plausible that the reduced metabolism was giving him this altered experience of the world, and affecting his ability to reason about it."

The condition caused Graham to completely withdraw into himself. He found no pleasure in anything, he stopped eating, speaking and even brushing his teeth. This caused his teeth to turn black, further compounding his feelings that he was dead.

After lengthy psychotherapy and drug treatment Graham gradually recovered. There have been reports that using antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers combined with traditional talking therapies have helped those who suffer from the illness.

With being such a rare condition, research into this mysterious syndrome is very limited. Could it be that when Zombies do appear the disease affecting them will induce such a syndrome? Only time will tell.

Keep up your studies and join me again next time for more science behind the undead here on the ZomBlog.

Best wishes,

Doctor Austin

Doctor Austin ZITS BSz MSz DPep, is a Theoretical Zombiologist and Head of the Zombie Institute for Theoretical Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland UK.

Left: Doctor Austin Right: HRH The Queen

Hypothetical Hunger

Welcome once again Zombiology Students,

I was contacted by Albert who asked me the following;

“Say there was a zombie apocalypse and all humans were eradicated.  What would the zombies do after they have eaten all the human brains and (as far as I know) depleted their only source of nutrients?  Is there any knowledge regarding this topic?  They wouldn't just starve themselves out, would they?”

But we haven't thought about food security, not one meeting.

Before I can answer it we must first establish some points about Zombieism. Regular visitors will be aware of our Institute’s current Zombieism research and can skip this section, but for those of you not familiar with it, read on. Here at the ZITS we believe that zombie’s will most likely be caused by a new type of prion disease, similar to vCJD AKA human mad cow disease. Unlike movie zombies, sufferers will not eat only human flesh or brains, but any food source they come across. In fact there is presently nothing that can occur in a human to make them only want to eat human flesh or brains. Genuine Zombieism is highly unlikely to make a person become clinically dead, then return to life, referred to in fiction as undead. They would in reality be a human who has contracted an illness with specific symptoms. They would not live indefinitely, but wither and die as the disease progressed. How long that would take very much depends on the causal agent.  Furthermore, prion disease is very rare in humans, to date there have been less than 200 cases of vCJD, so at the moment it is very unlikely we will reach a scenario whereby there were no humans left who were not infected.

Of course there is no guarantee that Zombieism will be the result of a prion disease, it might be a new strain of virus or a previously unseen parasite. So to answer Albert’s question we can widen our net to include these biological agents. The fact that you are alive and reading this means that there has not yet been a disease that has wiped out the human race, or left only infected humans, unless such a disease occurred a very long time ago to a different species of Homo genus.   

The Homo Simponus perhaps ...?

If we look at the most deadly disease pandemics that have occurred we can try and seek a comparison. The Spanish Flu may be the deadliest pandemic in history, with somewhere between 20 – 200 million people dying because of it. Then there is the infamous bubonic plague that throughout its history has claimed the lives of some 200 million victims. Now whilst these diseases have produced a tremendous loss of life it is worth bearing in mind that the human population is presently just over seven billion. So Zombieism would have to be particularly vicious to turn us all.

But let’s think hypothetically, say Zombieism did spread to the entire population of the world, how long would the food supply last? We produce around seven billion tons of food each year. If everyone in the world has succumbed to Zombieism, it is safe to say no one will be producing any more. It is very difficult to get exact figures to work with here. It is hard to know how much food is readily accessible to the zombies. Some may be in cans they cannot open, and as a zombie isn’t exactly a gourmet chef, they’re going to be going for raw food only. Zombies may also consume each other when they get desperate.

'We've had some times zombie-ing together Bill but I can't take your moaning one minute more'.

The average person/zombie needs between 2,000 – 3,000 calories a day. In 2003, the world produced 2,809 calories per person per day, but by the end of 2006 there was only enough of a reserve to last the world 57 days. I haven’t been able to source data more recent than that, but we could assume that we’re running a careful balance these days whereby we only just keep producing enough food to get by, without having large reserves. So by the time we reached a point where there were only zombies, and no one producing more food, these zombies would run out of food in probably a matter of weeks, maybe even days.

How long the zombies will ultimately survive from there depends on how long the disease takes to kill them, assuming they don’t die of starvation, or dehydration, first. With a prion disease we estimate a person surviving three to six months after full onset. A more aggressive biological agent, like a virus, may act even quicker.

So in conclusion, the answer to the question, ‘what would the zombies do after they have depleted their only source of nutrients’ is ... they would die. However it is unlikely we’d reach a scenario where everybody was infected by Zombieism in the first place, and if we do there’s no need to worry, because you’d soon be dead.

As always, if there is anything you want to know about the real science behind zombies, do get in touch. We’ll always do our best to answer your questions, no matter how difficult or strange. You can contact the Institute at info@zombiescience.co.uk.

Best wishes,

Doctor Austin

Doctor Austin ZITS BSz MSz DPep, is a Theoretical Zombiologist and Head of the Zombie Institute for Theoretical Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland UK.  

For even more Zombie Science pick up the official Zombie Science book on Amazon now.