Could Scientists Really Create a Zombie Apocalypse Virus?
86 replies, posted
[QUOTE]
Maybe, but it’s not going to be easy. In West African and Haitian vodou, zombies are humans without a soul, their bodies nothing more than shells controlled by powerful sorcerers. In the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, an army of shambling, slow-witted, cannibalistic corpses reanimated by radiation attack a group of rural Pennsylvanians. We are looking for something a little in between Haiti and Hollywood: an infectious agent that will render its victims half-dead but still-living shells of their former selves.
An effective agent would target, and shut down, specific parts of the brain, says Steven C. Schlozman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and author of The Zombie Autopsies, a series of fictional excerpts from the notebooks of “the last scientist sent to the United Nations Sanctuary for the study of ANSD,” a zombie plague. Schlozman explained to PopSci that although the walking dead have some of their motor skills intact—walking, of course, but also the ripping and tearing necessary to devour human flesh—the frontal lobe, which is responsible for morality, planning, and inhibiting impulsive actions (like taking a bite out of someone), is nonexistent. The cerebellum, which controls coordination, is probably still there but not fully functional. This makes sense, since zombies in movies are usually easy to outrun or club with a baseball bat.
The most likely culprit for this partially deteriorated brain situation, according to Schlozman, is as simple as a protein. Specifically, a proteinaceous infectious particle, a prion. Not quite a virus, and not even a living thing, prions are nearly impossible to destroy, and there’s no known cure for the diseases they cause.
The first famous prion epidemic was discovered in the early 1950s in Papua New Guinea, when members of the Fore tribe were found to be afflicted with a strange tremble. Occasionally a diseased Fore would burst into uncontrollable laughter. The tribe called the sickness “kuru,” and by the early ’60s doctors had traced its source back to the tribe’s cannibalistic funeral practices, including brain-eating.
Prions gained notoriety in the 1990s as the infectious agents that brought us bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease. When a misshapen prion enters our system, as in mad cow, our mind develops holes like a sponge. Brain scans from those infected by prion-based diseases have been compared in appearance to a shotgun blast to the head.
Now, if we’re thinking like evil geniuses set on global destruction, the trick is going to be attaching a prion to a virus, because prion diseases are fairly easy to contain within a population. To make things truly apocalyptic, we need a virus that spreads quickly and will carry the prions to the frontal lobe and cerebellum. Targeting the infection to these areas is going to be difficult, but it’s essential for creating the shambling, dim-witted creature we expect.
Jay Fishman, director of transplant infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, proposes using a virus that causes encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain’s casing. Herpes would work, and so would West Nile, but attaching a prion to a virus is, Fishman adds, “a fairly unlikely” scenario. And then, after infection, we need to stop the prion takeover so that our zombies don’t go completely comatose, their minds rendered entirely useless. Schlozman suggests adding sodium bicarbonate to induce metabolic alkalosis, which raises the body’s pH and makes it difficult for proteins like prions to proliferate. With alkalosis, he says, “you’d have seizures, twitching, and just look awful like a zombie."[/QUOTE]
Source: [url]http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-02/fyi-could-scientists-really-create-zombie-apocalypse-virus[/url]
Cool.
Free zombie virus with a preorder of l4d3 anyone?
Great to know that an evil genious is one google search away from world domination.
Wouldn't they try to keep this a secret?
[QUOTE=Lazyboy0337;28270880]Great to know that an evil genious is one google search away from world domination.
Wouldn't they try to keep this a secret?[/QUOTE]
Where's the fun in that?
[QUOTE=johan_sm;28271052]What about human version of rabies?[/QUOTE]
Er how can you have a human version of rabies when we can get it anyway.
True zombies? hell no. Brain fried people called zombies from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ? maybe.
If anything they would be slow zombies because their brains would be so fried.
tbh a zombie apocalypse would be pretty fun for the first few days, as long as you didn't get infected and you didn't have any dumbshit friends with you
[QUOTE=Android phone;28271367]tbh a zombie apocalypse would be pretty fun for the first few days, as long as you didn't get infected and you didn't have any dumbshit friends with you[/QUOTE]
lol yeh totully man itd be like left 4 dead i love that game.
A real zombie apocalypse would be scary and sad as hell. Luckily it won't be happening.
[QUOTE=Zeero;28271976]lol yeh totully man itd be like left 4 dead i love that game.
A real zombie apocalypse would be scary and sad as hell. Luckily it won't be happening.[/QUOTE]
unless someone started to combine certain diseases together :tinfoil:
No
[editline]24th February 2011[/editline]
Eudoxia said it perfectly
Why would a brain damaged person want to eat someone else.
Edit: A disease like this might be possible but everyone would just stumble around and later die of hunger or tripping over a stair and falling to spinal damage.
Ha, I'm watching Dead Men Walking right now.
[QUOTE=Falchion;28272516]Why would a brain damaged person want to eat someone else.
Edit: A disease like this might be possible but everyone would just stumble around and later die of hunger or tripping over a stair and falling to spinal damage.[/QUOTE]
I could see it possibly working if it were like the infection from 28 days later. Just turning people into incredibly angry, ferocious people.
I don't think you have the ability to be ferocious or angry when you are in a near lobotomised state.
[QUOTE=Falchion;28272701]I don't think you have the ability to be ferocious or angry when you are in a near lobotomised state.[/QUOTE]
I'm not an expert on the film, but I believe the virus in 28 days later didn't lobotomize people, it just caused damage to some emotional center of the brain so the people were in a constant state of rage. This caused them to be so aggressive towards others that they would attack without remorse and they ignored the pain. So the people were almost as intelligent as they were before their infection...they are just really, really angry.
o cool im going to trythis out later wich me luck!!
Australia would make an excellent test group. It's surrounded by lots of water and the zombies can't go anywhere.
[QUOTE=Zet;28274814]Australia would make an excellent test group. It's surrounded by lots of water and the zombies can't go anywhere.[/QUOTE]
No some of my friends live there.
Lets find an empty island out in the ocean somewhere and use deathrow inmates as test subjects.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;28274822]No some of my friends live there.
Lets find an empty island out in the ocean somewhere and use deathrow inmates as test subjects.[/QUOTE]
Madagascar
"So... it's possible in theory?" Is what I gleamed from this article.
Rabies can be engineered pretty easily to produce symptoms for widespread infection.
In fact, I've been looking in depth at it for about a year now. The coding of the virus is not difficult to change, from a lab perspective, it's just a matter of no one wanting to get their hands dirty. You get it, add more protein bonds (strength over other cells), add a way to gain nutrients from the environment through the host, for example, nitrogen. Without boring you guys with details, a "rage" virus is one step away from rabies, and can be done. The rage would help with infection by having the host spread the virus by bodily fluids caused by open wounds on whomever the host is attacking.
[QUOTE=zombini;28271260]True zombies? hell no. Brain fried people called zombies from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ? maybe.[/QUOTE]
If your brain is fried. it cannot tell your heart to beat or your lungs to breath.
Also, no.
[editline]25th February 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;28274822]No some of my friends live there.
Lets find an empty island out in the ocean somewhere and use deathrow inmates as test subjects.[/QUOTE]
Shutup, It was a prison colony anyway why not try it anyway?
[QUOTE=Android phone;28271367]tbh a zombie apocalypse would be pretty fun for the first few days, as long as you didn't get infected and you didn't have any dumbshit friends with you[/QUOTE]
Apart from you know your friends and family dieing, possibly having to kill them, the thought of the world coming to an end/being dramatically changed forever would make you severly depressed, insane, or both. I think only the real strongest of people would be able to overcome the emotional panic and actually put up a resistance, the rest would be in a corner of their barricaded homes crying and slowly going insane. If you could actually find a zombie apocalypse fun you must be an empty emotionless shell of a person, kinda like a zombie. This isn't necessarily directed at you since I don't know if you're joking or not, just throwing my views out there.
A zombie-like virus sounds possible, but the flesh eating part doesn't. Putting them in a constant state of rage sounds more likely, but then I can just imagine everyone running breaking and punching random shit.
[QUOTE=Lazyboy0337;28270880]Great to know that an evil genious is one google search away from world domination.
Wouldn't they try to keep this a secret?[/QUOTE]
Because not everyone has access to a genetics lab, and the people who do understand how the stuff works and how horrible it would be.
Not only that but the La-Li-Lo-Le-Lo would stop them before they could even change the first protein chain.
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