Are Zombies Real?

A warm welcome to all of you fine Zombiology Students.

As I travel the UK delivering our new tutorial Zombie Science: Worst Case Scenario I find myself regularly being asked one question in particular, ‘are Zombies real?’

Whilst this question may seem to evoke a simple yes or no answer, it is actually a little more complicated than that.

I hope it's a yes, otherwise I'll be looking pretty stupid right now...

Certainly the Zombies (dead human bodies reanimated with an unending desire to consume flesh and the ability to transform those they bite) that populate the world of television, films, comics and games do not presently exist in the real world.

However that doesn’t preclude them from ever existing. There are many agents capable of causing disease including viruses, bacteria, parasites and rogue prions. Whilst none of these produce all the symptoms found in a fictional Zombie it is important to remember that these agents are always changing.

Think for a moment of the flu. We’ve all had it at least once, but it’s far more likely you’ve had it several times. It is caused by the influenza virus, and like Lady Gaga it’s always changing. As with all living things the virus makes small mistakes, called mutations, each time it reproduces. In every generation there are slight differences and overtime these differences build up. The fancy term for this process in ‘antigenic drift’ and this is why scientists have to continually update and change flu vaccines, to try and keep up with changes in the virus.

From this example we can see how a virus can change. Who is to say that at some point in the future a virus might change enough to produce an illness that matches the fictional version of Zombieism?

Now remember, I said this wasn’t a simple question.

Zombies are real and do exist, there’s even a law banning them from being created – although they’re not like those you’ve seen on the silver screen.

Don’t believe me? Then let’s travel to the Caribbean country of Haiti, as ethnobotanist Wade Davis did over 25 years ago. Here we find a deeply spiritual culture with a deep belief in the existence of Zombies – albeit far from the Zombies of Romero or Kirkman.

Let’s say you’re Haitian and you’ve got a family dispute. Perhaps your brother borrowed your wife, or your Gran keeps asking you to explain the internet – how do you resolve it? Simple, get the local sorcerer to turn them into a Zombie slave – problem solved!

To the Bingo? Eh, yeah, of course we are Gran.

That’s precisely what is believed to have occurred there as Wade Davis discovered. Through meetings with these sorcerers (known as Bokors) Davis managed to acquire samples of their Zombie powder. Analysis revealed the presence of a range of substances including one in particular; Tetrodotoxin. Found in species of puffer fish this toxin is one of the deadliest poisons known to humanity. However if administered in small doses it doesn’t cause death but rather gives one the appearance of being dead via paralysis, the slowing down of body functions, and the like.

Now which one is the Zombie Powder and which one is the Paprika?

The Bokor would place the Zombie powder in an unsuspecting victim’s shoes, down their back or generally anywhere where it would come in contact with the skin, nose, and throat. The victim would appear to progress toward death, eventually fooling people that they were indeed dead, and be buried.   

The Bokor and his minions would then exhume the victim and feed them another concoction designed to keep them somewhat ‘out of it’, so that they wouldn’t attempt to escape or talk back. Many claim these Zombies were then put to work as slaves, but how useful they’d be in performing even a basic task is debateable.   
As I mentioned earlier, creating a Zombie in Haiti is illegal, as article 246 of the Haitian penal code states:

It shall also be qualified as attempted murder the employment which may be made against any person of substances which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic coma more or less prolonged. If, after the person had been buried, the act shall be considered murder no matter what result follows.

So as we have seen, ‘are Zombies real?’ is a hard question to answer, but I’ll try and make it as simple as possible. The answer is yes, and no.

If you want to know anything about the real science behind Zombies, do send your questions in to info@zombiescience.co.uk or post them in our Book of Faces (www.facebook.com/zombiescience).

Just remember to stay on good terms with your family if you ever find yourself in Haiti,

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.

See the Zombie Science: Worst Case Scenario tutorial –

Brighton Science Festival 2013:
Date: Sunday 10th February 2013
Times: 5.30pm & 7.30pm
Venue: Sallis Benney Theatre, 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton, BN2 0JY
Tickets: Visit Brighton Science Festival’s Official Website 

Glasgow International Comedy Festival
Date: Monday 18th March 2013
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: The Stand Comedy Club, Woodlands Road, Glasgow, Scotland
Tickets: Visit the festival’s official website

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.