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How the Zombie Apocalypse Can Explain the Spread of Diseases
When the zombie apocalypse is upon us and the undead begin their global domination, we will all be left to fight for our lives or run for the hills. But did you know the scenario of a zombie apocalypse can help to explain just how diseases can spread in society?
In modeling a fictional zombie apocalypse, researchers are able to get a more in depth real world look at disease outbreaks worldwide. The techniques used to study a zombie apocalypse prove to be useful when researching real life diseases. Researchers at Cornell University have explained that a worldwide outbreak of a zombie apocalypse are similar to what a large scale outbreak of a virus like Ebola may look like. In the zombie apocalypse, there are four different stages to the virus.
First stage is the human stage, second is the infected, third is the zombie, and last is a dead zombie stage. These stages interact and combine with each other in a similar way to chemical reactions in the body.
In Depth Look into the Zombie Virus
If there was a zombie apocalypse, we usually assume that all areas are affected at the same time, and months after the initial outbreak occurs, there are pockets of survivors here and there. But realistically this isn’t the way that a disease outbreak will actually go down.
Don’t be too shocked that the zombie apocalypse we know of from our favorite movies and television shows isn’t entirely true. Researchers are able to provide you with a more inside look as to how an actual virus outbreak such as the zombie apocalypse would occur. They predict that dense populated cities will be the first to fall to the virus, and typically they’d likely fall quickly due to overcrowding and the spread of disease.
It would take time however for the zombies to penetrate through to more remote rural regions like that of the Rocky Mountains. The best place you would want to be during an outbreak is a place as far away as possible from people. This way you will be more unlikely to be near any places with an outbreak. Of course this model includes the assumption that people wouldn’t be on the move, so if in fact more people flocked to the mountains, well it wouldn’t be a safe option anymore.
Take for example this image from Cornell University. This image shows a heat map, which depicts a 28 day stretch of the zombie outbreak. The lighter areas are those in which will be hit the hardest and fastest when a zombie outbreak does occur. Again this is all speculation from the research team at Cornell. More remote locations will have a huge advantage with less people, on the other hand supplies and resources will be limited.How Disease Spreads
How Disease Spreads
So do you remember that time a dog on your street came down with rabies, then later in the day, every other dog on the block ended up having rabies too? No? That’s because biting is a terrible way of spreading disease. So when looking at a zombie virus, to a traditional virus, biting may not spread the disease as fast as our movies have taught us.
Successful diseases have a clever way of spreading to their victims. The flu has killed over 10 million people because it hits through the air, the plague was spread by fleas, and sexually transmitted diseases work through sharing intimate contact with the infected. I don’t think anyone really will be in the mood to have sex with a zombie, so it looks like we’re safe there.
Traditional diseases have been able to mutate in order to infect more unsuspecting victims in a quick period of time. If biting is the method of infection with a zombie virus, we may just have time to run off to the middle of nowhere before the infection gets to us. And just like traditional diseases and viruses, the zombie virus shows a transition. If the overall total of the disease is below a certain level or point, well it’s more than likely that humans will come out on top, otherwise, look out.
If Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that larger cities always fall first, even with a large amount of supplies. Perhaps the best route would be to plan ahead by gathering supplies and stocking up, while locating to a more remote location. And they always said living out in the middle of nowhere had its disadvantages. Seems to me that this is quite the opposite when we are dealing with an army of undead moving on us, wanting to devour our brains for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Real Life Zombies in Everyday Life
When we think of zombies, we think of the undead, bloodthirsty ones depicted in movies and television. They moan, groan, shuffle, and remained focused on one thing, brains. The truth is, there are already real-life zombies walking amongst us. Things are getting a bit weird out in our world today. If one things for certain, these real-life zombie stories will at least keep you on your toes, and teach you what to look out for, since our zombies are not necessarily the ones out of your favorite movie or show.
A little girl wakes up at her own funeral
Just this past June, there was a 3-year-old girl that awoke at her very own funeral, talk about a heart attack for her parents. The little girl had been suffering hard from a fever and was taken for emergency care at a local hospital where the doctor had declared her dead from the lack of a pulse.
A neighbor of the family was attending the little girl’s funeral when she lifted up the lid to the coffin and saw the little girl move her head. This is when the little girl jumped up, springing to life, eating all the attendants. Well that part is a joke, but she did move her head. The parents immediately removed the little girl from the coffin, gave her some water, and took her to the hospital where they preceded to yell at the doctor who almost caused them to bury their little girl alive.
Chinese man attacks a woman and chows down on her face
When I think of China, it’s not a place I would necessarily want to be when a zombie outbreak occurs, due in part to their large population. But they’ve also already have recorded a few of their very own real-life zombie occurrences. In 2012, a drunken bus driver, was angry because a motorist was blocking their path. Instead of waiting, he got out of the bus, jumped on the woman’s hood, and began chowing down on her face. The woman thankfully survived but did require some plastic surgery to fix her wounds from the attack. Many in China believed the bus driver was being possessed at the time by Jiang Shi, a zombie creature of legend who was believed to kill and absorb the qui of all the living people.
Bath salt zombies scare cadets straight in Navy-produced video
The Navy has a new weapon in its arsenal against designer drug abuse: the mini-movie Bath Salts: It’s Not a Fad, It’s a Nightmare.
Available to the public on YouTube (and at the bottom of this page), the 6:37 minute movie uses horror-movie style special effects to simulate the hallucinogenic and often violent effects of the drug.
Shot from a young sailor’s point of view, the first 2 minutes of the video put the viewer behind the eyes of a cadet as he smacks his girlfriend in a bowling alley, witnesses his roommate morph into a horrific demon, and ultimately ends up convulsing on a hospital bed as he is held down by camouflage-wearing doctors.
According to Lieutenant George Loeffler, Chief Psychiatry Resident at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, treatment centers within the armed forces are seeing more cases of bath salt abuse every month. In early 2012, the Navy announced an “alarming increase” in designer drug use, which led to 1515 sailors being discharged in 2011 alone according to the Navy-run Jet Observer.
Mr. Loeffler explained that paranoid delusions and psychotic episodes that last long after the drug is out of their systems. “When people are using bath salts, they’re not their normal selves. They’re angrier, they’re erratic, they’re violent, they’re unpredictable.”
“People will start acting really weird, seeing things that aren’t there, believing things that aren’t true,” Loeffler continued. “Some people describe people spying on them, trying to kill them and their families, other people talk about seeing demons, and things that are trying to kill them.”
The designer drug has the potential to cause permanent damage. “One of the most concerning things about bath salts is that these hallucinations, these paranoid delusions, will last long after the intoxication’s gone,” Loeffler says.
Similar to the designer drug spice—the synthetic version of marijuana until recently sold over the counter in tobacco shops—bath salts contain unknown ingredients which vary widely depending on the source. This makes experimenting with the drug essentially a game of Russian roulette, often with devastating effects.
Reports of a 31-year-old man named Rudy Eugene attacking a 65-year old homeless man in Miami, stripping off the victim’s clothes, and proceeding to eat his face recently brought national attention to the potential dangers involved with bath salts.
It later turned out that Mr. Eugene was not in fact using the synthetic drug, though the psychotic episodes and paranoid delusions experienced by the assailant are consistent with known side effects.
The military treats soldiers who test positive for drug use with a strict “zero tolerance”, and are increasingly able to detect many designer drugs. Many of the most dangerous chemicals, however, do not register on drug tests, according to Mr. Loeffler. This fact has been used specifically to market the drug to sailors, soldiers, and marines.
Are the Navy’s methods to discourage bath salt use excessively dramatic in their recent video, or appropriate to counter an increasingly threatening epidemic of designer drug abuse?
Decide for yourself after watching the video:
Kansas militia expects zombies, and it’s dead serious
It’s got to be one of the coolest names ever for a group:
The Kansas Anti Zombie Militia.
But the group is real and its members are pretty serious about it.
Once the Zombie Apocalypse hits, they’ll be ready for it and they want you to be too.
“Can a natural person change into this monster that many fear?” Alfredo Carbajal, the militia’s main spokesman, said in an interview. “The possibilities are yes, it can happen. We have seen incidents that are very close to it, and we are thinking it is more possible than people think.”
Carbajal and other true believers aren’t so much scared of movie zombies. The apocalypse they see coming is a pandemic spread by a virus that creates zombie-like symptoms.
Last month, the Discovery Channel featured the Kansas militia in a documentary that concluded that such a Zombie Apocalypse — or Zompoc — was possible. The program featured scientists who speculated some evolving virus is bound to jump to humans on our overcrowded planet.
Of course, scientists have been warning about pandemics such as bird flu that don’t produce zombies, but zombies are the hot monsters right now.
A packed house listened last year at St. Mary’s College of Maryland as a chemist, psychologist and student acknowledged the possibility of an epidemic, according to the school’s newspaper.
The panel pointed out that there already have been zombie-like symptoms dating back to 1594; they were eventually determined to be the first recorded human case of furious rabies — an especially serious form of rabies.
Carbajal, 28, didn’t start out as a zombie fighter.
He and several friends grew up in Wamego, home of the Oz museum, watching zombie movies like “Shaun of the Dead,” “28 Days Later” and “Night of the Living Dead” and playing video games like the Left 4 Dead video game series.
The friends designed a web page for fun but then they began wondering what to do if there was actually a zompoc, and their thinking turned serious.
The group has five founders but about 1,500 likes on its Facebook page.
It’s not all zombie crusading; the militia also sponsors a Zombie Walk in October to raise money and food for charities.
But the group’s website points out that the militia is committed to research and preparing for a zompoc.
“We are not crazy. We are not paranoid. We believe in preparedness in any situation,” it says.
Everything you need to know about surviving a zombie attack can be found on the militia’s website — never take on a small horde of zombies by yourself because that would be suicide, and make sure all your skin is covered because blood spatters can be infectious.
Blunt objects are better to use than, say, knives because blades tend to dull after each use. A metal bat and a collapsible baton are the two most recommended weapons.
The site also notes as “a real-life threat to humanity” a biosecurity lab planned near Manhattan, Kan.
Carbajal and his group are not alone in their deep fascination over zombies. Much of the country has been touched.
The “Walking Dead” cable series broke basic cable ratings records with more than 10 million viewers for the first show of season three. And already hype for a movie, based on the book “World War Z,” is widespread even though its release date is six months out.
How-to books have been published in recent years, including the “Zombie Survival Guide,” which made the New York Times Best Seller List, and the “Zombie Combat Manual,” which warns “During a zombie outbreak, 98% of individuals will have to destroy an undead opponent without the aid of a firearm. Will you be ready?”
Carbajal said that if you aren’t a true believer, just being prepared for any apocalypse or natural disaster is a good thing.
“My thought is if you are ready for zombies, you are ready for anything, whether it be natural disasters, fall of government, invasion from another country — the possibilities are endless,” he said. “The point is to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.”
Others agree.
Using the guise of a zombie apocalypse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state emergency management agencies are trying to get people to be prepared for a natural disaster with at least several days of food and supplies, copies of important documents and a plan.
“It’s a spoof; we are not encouraging a zombie scare,” said Devan Tucking-Strickler, Kansas Division of Emergency Management spokeswoman. “We use the tagline, ‘If you are prepared for zombies, you are prepared for anything and prepared for the unexpected.’ ”
Kansas even used the militia to help promote general disaster awareness.
Members of the group were featured in a photograph with Gov. Sam Brownback when he signed a proclamation declaring October as Zombie Preparedness Month in Kansas.
A little preparation for disaster can prove very important later, but most people don’t prepare, said another viral disaster worrier, Shawn Beatty, who also was featured on the Discovery documentary.
“You can get a first aid kit for $100, something that you should have in your house anyway, or you can go to dinner, take a trip, or have a really nice night out with that $100,” said Beatty, a public-school teacher in Columbia. “Who is going to say, ‘Let’s go buy something that you may not use?’