Alarming News: Zombie Holocaust Not Entirely Impossible!
The Zombie genre has come to dominate the movie culture and the explanations for their origins range from dark magic to strange UFO`s and Satellites. But the concept of zombies has been around for thousands of years and it looks like the idea originally came from the world of epidemiology, not the world of legends. This is what`s so scary about it! It comes to biting, fear of light, speechlessness, and the intense aggression that most zombie movies display all come from a single source; rabies. So take a look at the original “rage virus.” In the zombie film 28 Days Later and Dawn of the dead, I Am Legend, an unstoppable viral plague sweeps across humanity, transforming people into mindless monsters with cannibalistic tendencies. Though dead humans can’t as far as we know come back to life. But certain viruses can induce such aggressive, zombie-like behavior, scientists say in the new National Geographic Channel documentary The Truth Behind Zombies, premiering Monday at 10 p.m. ET/PT. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society, which part-owns the National Geographic Channel.)
For instance, Rabies is a viral disease that infects the central nervous system, and it can drive people to be violently mad, according to Samita Andreansky, a virologist at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine in Florida who also appears in the documentary. Combine rabies with the ability of a flu virus to spread quickly through the air, and you might have the makings of a zombie apocalypse.
Rabies Virus Mutation Possible?
Unlike movie zombies, which become reanimated almost immediately after infection, the first signs a human has rabies such as anxiety, confusion, hallucinations, and paralysis don’t typically appear for ten days to a year, as the virus incubate inside the body. But once rabies sets in, though, its fatal within a week if left untreated.
If the genetic code of the rabies virus experienced enough changes, or mutations, its incubation time could be reduced dramatically, scientists say. Many viruses have naturally high mutation rates and constantly change as a means of evading or bypassing the defenses of their hosts. There are various ways viral mutations can occur, for example through copying mistakes during gene replication or damage from ultraviolet light.
Latest: “New, Fast-Evolving Rabies Virus Found and Spreading.”
“If a rabies virus can mutate fast enough, it could cause infection within an hour or a few hours. That’s entirely plausible,” Andreansky said. And if it was an airborne virus, Rabies would create a “Rage Virus” But for the rabies virus to trigger a zombie pandemic like in the movies, it would also have to be much more contagious. Humans typically catch rabies after being bitten by an infected animal, usually a dog and the infection usually stops there.
Thanks to pet vaccinations, people rarely contract rabies in the United States or the western world today, and even fewer people die from the disease. For example, in 2008 only two cases of human rabies infection were reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This have strangely enough increased in the last years. A faster mode of transmission would be through the air, which is how the influenza virus spreads.
“Zombie Virus” Possible via Rabies-Flu Hybrid?
“All rabies has to do is go airborne, and you have the rage virus” like in 28 Days Later, Max Mogk, head of the Zombie Research Society, says in the documentary. The international nonprofit is devoted to “raising the level of zombie scholarship in the Arts and Sciences,” according to their website.
To be transmitted by air, rabies would have to “borrow” traits from another virus, such as influenza. Which is not totally impossible. Different forms, or strains, of the same virus can swap pieces of genetic code through processes called re-assortment or recombination, said Elankumaran Subbiah, a virologist at Virginia Tech who was not involved in the documentary. But unrelated viruses simply do not hybridize in nature, Subbiah told National Geographic News. Likewise, it’s scientifically unheard of for two radically different viruses such as rabies and influenza to borrow traits, he said.
“They’re too different. They cannot share genetic information. Viruses assemble only parts that belong to them, and they don’t mix and match from different families.”
But there are natural parasites that can turn victims into mindless, zombie-like slaves are fairly common in nature. There’s one called toxoplasmosa gondii that seems to devote its entire existence to being terrifying. But, did I mention that half of the human population on Earth is infected with toxoplasmosa, and don’t know it? Maybe you’re one of them?
This is a real horror virus in a 3-D image, a bacteriophage aggressively attacks a bacterium I`s like in a B-movie horror style, according to creator Jonathan Heras of Equinox Graphics, Ltd. The digital ambush snagged an honorable mention in the illustrations category of the 2010 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. Bacteriophages are viruses with “alien, spindly legs” and sucker-shaped mouths used to “relentlessly pursue their prey,” Heras said in a statement. The viruses hijack bacteria’s biology and use the victims as virus “replication factories, he said.
Take a look at this video, how far-fetched it might sound! Could the Rage Virus be identified as an US Army Nano Weapon?
Secretly Engineering a Zombie Virus Possible?
It’s theoretically possible though extremely difficult to create a hybrid rabies-influenza virus using modern genetic-engineering techniques, the University of Miami’s Andreansky said.
“Sure, I could imagine a scenario where you mix rabies with a flu virus to get airborne transmission, a measles virus to get personality changes, the encephalitis virus to cook your brain with fever” and thus increase aggression even further “and throw in the Ebola virus to cause you to bleed from your guts. Combine all these things, and you’ll get something like a zombie virus,” she said. This has gone so far now that The US Department of Health’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was forced to issue an official statement denying the existence of a “Zombie Virus” following a recent spate of incidents involving people behaving in a zombie-like manner. Despite the CDC’s reassurance, another case of man-eat-man was reported in Staten Island later, as one diner patron bit off the eat of another customer in the midst of an altercation over which TV channel to put on. It`s still going on…
Here are some of the latest reports!
- Maryland where a man has been charged with killing a man and eating his brain’s and heart.
- Canada about a porn star turned murderer and cannibal who is currently on the run from police.
- Sweden where a man is alleged to have cut off his wife’s lips and eaten them.
- And a separate story where a woman is alleged to have bitten her boyfriend’s penis.
- New York where a man chewed the ear of another man at a Staten Island restaurant.
- New Jersey where a man stabbed himself repeatedly in front of police and then threw his skin and intestines at them.
- New York where a naked zombie attacks and injures two bite victims.
- In China Oct 11 2012, a brutal subway attack takes place, as a man is chewing all over another mans body.
- Florida where a man under the “Zombie” influence gets naked, bites off chunk of man’s arm, and it takes 7 hits from the Police`s tasers, to get him down.
These are NOT coincident`s according to me. Something is going on!
