While zombies have been around for a very long time when associated with voodoo (from the Haitian Creole word zonbi), this is not what comes to mind in today’s world when you hear the word zombie. This changed in 1968 when George Romero directed “Night of the Living Dead” (although the creatures were never called zombies in the film). Popular culture and Hollywood filmmakers have completely changed what the zombie means to people. 

It would seem that modern science is right along with the entertainment industry in helping to define what makes a modern zombie. While zombies use to be created by an unknown source, it has evolved into a situation that involves a scientific mishap. Many times it is a biological weapon or a virus that gets out or a chemical agent that was accidentally (or on purpose) released onto the public. Even if we step out of the realm of science fiction things can get scary. 

Many make-up manufactures advertise “youth restoring” products. Stem cells as well as entire animals are being cloned. It could be a small misstep that makes the jump from looking younger to reanimating dead tissue and therefore a zombie.

Now, what is a zombie exactly? According to the modern explanations it is a human that has been changed by an agent into something that isn’t exactly a human anymore. It can either be someone that has died and come back to life or a person that has become infected to point that they have lost the characteristics that made them human in the first place.

Usually these characteristics are two main things.

1. The undead, or zombie, has an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Sometimes they are very fast and strong. Other times they stumble around like a heavily sedated mob. If they happen to be the slower version, they are not as dangerous unless you happen to get surrounded by a group of them. The zombies that are fast, sometimes known as the rage version, are much more dangerous. You will not be able to out-run them and they tend to be more predator-like than the slower ones.

2. The second thing about zombies involves their brains. Most of the zombies brain is not used. This is why they are not human. Just because they look like a friend or relative doesn’t mean that they are. All the parts of the brain that makes a human a human are non functioning. They can’t speak, they have absolutely no concept of right or wrong, and don’t feel any kind of pain. The only reasoning that they are capable of is their own basic survival, and that is to eat. They are not going to bounce off of a wall like a pinball to get at a food source. They will follow a human to eat them. 

The only part of the zombie’s brain that is still functioning is the brain stem. It will drive them to do nothing other than eat. Their hunger is insatiable. They are capable of moving (sometimes very fast, other times slow) and sustain extreme damage before dying (the second time). It is usually accepted that the only way to neutralize the threat of a zombie is to destroy the brain. Depending on the source (and the type of zombie), starvation may cause them to die again. Because of the different types of zombies you can not count on starvation happening.

Depending on what is causing the plague of zombies, it may not only be humans that are affected. While there is no conclusive evidence, it seems that other animals that can be affected are usually mammals. It is not very often seen or hear about zombie snakes or fish, but in the realm of zombies anything is possible.

Although there have been several reasons given for a zombie outbreak, the predominant theory tends to lean toward the source being a blood-born pathogen. If you get bitten (or sometimes scratched) it will lead to an infection that will kill you rather quickly. This is usually anywhere from a few hours to a few days. After you have died the blood-born pathogen will reanimate you into a zombie. The reanimation time also varies from a few minutes to an hour or so. In some cases it may take longer but for the most part it is a short incubation period. This is what makes getting bitten so dangerous (mainly to the other humans around you).

This is basically zombie 101. There is very little reliable scientific information on the subject. If you want to know about zombies, educate yourself. Read (and watch) all that you can. Use your own good judgement to weed out what is good information and what isn’t.