Scientist: We can create Apocalypse zombies

Forget about a six million dollar man–we can create apocalypse zombies. We have the technology.

So claims Samita Andreansky. A virologist at Florida’s University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, Andreansky doesn’t look in the least like the typical mad scientist. And though she doesn’t have a lab in the top of a Carpathian Mountain castle, and her zombies will not be the dead returned to life, her gruesome vision is the next best (or worst) thing.

During a National Geographic special aired during the Fall of 2010, Andreansky outlined her Apocalypse zombie plan. She explained that combining the rabies virus with a mutated flu virus could create the basis for a worldwide zombie pandemic.

Wonderful.  

Zombies need love too

Apocalyptic zombies need love too.

Zombies lumbering up and down city streets are only found in lurid Hollywood horror flicks, right? Well, so far that’s been true. But viruses mutate incessantly and many things cause them to mutate. Exposure to various chemicals, heat, cold, wetness, dryness, air pressure, the ready availability of hosts and even the intensity of ultraviolet rays can and probably will cause mutation. The process of natural selection also will cause viruses to mutate based on availability of nutrients, response to the body’s immune system and mistakes in replication.

The genetic code is easily mutable and adaptable. Virus’s incubation periods have been known to change dramatically. And, as Andreansky is quick to point out, if a rabies-flu hybrid ever occurs then zombiehood could be a reality.

Well, zombies need love too.

Foaming at the mouth

Zombies don’t take no for an answer.

For centuries it’s been known that rabies are contracted in humans from the bite of a rabies infected animal. Untreated, death is a certainty within a week after symptoms appear.

The rabies virus hides inside the body for weeks or months. Sometimes it takes a full year before symptoms surface. Anxiety, mental confusion, mild madness followed by vivid hallucinations and paralysis consume the victim until a wretched death follows.

Victims foam at the mouth, twist into pretzel shapes, and sometimes dislocate their joints and cracking ribs.

Mutation to airborne zombie-virus

Dressed up for a night on the town.

To create a fast-spreading zombie pandemic like the ones in zombie movies, the rabies virus would have to mutate into an airborne contagion. That could be accomplished by rabies viruses “trading” some of their genetic material with influenza viruses.

The newly embedded genetic code would then allow them to propagate much faster and infect people through skin contact or through the air like cold and flu viruses are transmitted. This process is called recombination. Virologists are very familiar with it as it happens constantly and is the reason why new strains of flu come from the Far East and other parts of the world every year.

The rage virus and 28 Days Later

You should see him when he gets angry.

Max Mogk, head of the Zombie Research Society, is also interviewed in the National Geographic documentary. Mogk shares this cheery tidbit: “All rabies has to do is go airborne, and you have the rage virus.”

The rage virus is a fictitious disease that’s accidentally released and goes airborne infecting millions. This delightful scenario is the focus of the cult film hit 28 Days Later.

Here humanity, trapped on the quarantined British Isles, find themselves exposed to a virus that spreads like wildfire among the cities and countryside. Most people become rabid, psychotic zombies termed the “Infected.”

Not likely to happen, yet…

Most virologists agree that two disparate viruses such as rabies and influenza could swap genetic material in a recombinant way. Although they assure everyone that such an event is unlikely, some recall the strange episode of the Swine flu outbreak that seemed to have genetic markers of swine flu, avian flu and a third type not easily identified. At the time, the strangeness of the virus led some biologists to wonder aloud if it had escaped from a bio-warfare laboratory.

Genetically engineered zombie viruses

Zombies come in all forms – even Nazis.

The speculation over the Swine flu leads to the question of genetic manipulation in the laboratory. Could some “mad scientist” actually create a zombie-flu virus?

Experts admit creating such a monstrous thing is possible.

Andreansky mulled over the possibility of genetically engineering a viral zombie pandemic. “Sure, I could imagine a scenario where you mix rabies with a flu virus to get airborne transmission,” she said, “a measles virus to get personality changes, the encephalitis virus to cook your brain with fever and throw in the Ebola virus to cause you to bleed from your guts.”

Truly insane zombie world

Dr. Samita Andreansky

Who would ever initiate a bio-engineering project like that?

“Combine all these things,” Andreansky continued, “and you’ll [create] something like a zombie virus.”

Who in their right mind would ever fund a bio-engineering project to vreat zombies? Maybe Hollywood did have it right after all: a military bio-warfare lab.

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