100 Kathryn Hume, “From Saga to Romance: The Use of Monsters in Old Norse Literature,”
Studies in Philology, vol. 77, 1980, pp. 1-25.
101 As above. Skuld (“by evil Norns, ill created”) in The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki (Penguin Books, London, 1998) , in a battle, raises dead Viking warriors as quasi-zombie minions:
“Skuld,” Badass of the Week, at http://www.badassoftheweek.com/skuld.html.
102 N. K. Chadwick, “Norse Ghosts (A Study of the Draugr and the Haugbúi,” Folklore, vol.57, 1946, pp. 50-65.
103 “Jiangshi,” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangshi.
104 Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead (Three Rivers Press, New York, 2003).
52
THORFINN SKULLSPLITTER
Bodily functions cease, the person “dies,” but the brain is dormant as the virus causes cel s to mutate to create a new brain, which acts independently of oxygen. The body is then reanimated, with some bodily functions remaining, but others shutting down. Usual y this process is complete in under 24 hours. For humans the virus is 100
percent communicable and 100 percent fatal, which is thematical y convenient.
It is not waterborne or airborne (contrasting with I am Legend (2007), where there is an airborne virus as well as one transmittable through bites). Infection comes from direct fluid transfer by a bite or splatter. The solanum virus is similar to rabies insofar as both diseases are transmitted by infected bites, and in the case of both diseases, the infected have a propensity to attack and bite. Solanum differs from rabies, as there is no cross-species active infection (rabies being transmitted to humans from bites from infected animals such as dogs, wolves, and bats), because solanum is fatal to all animals, but presumably not plants. Reanimation only occurs in humans (contrasted to the infected dogs in the Resident Evil series and I am Legend, if this is taken to be a zombie film rather than a vampire or hybrid vampiric-zombie film).
Brooks-zombies do not have superhuman abilities; they have visual and sound detection, a keen sense of smell to detect human prey, no sense of touch, no powers of regeneration, and a lifespan on average of 3-5 years depending on environmental conditions, with zombies in cold climates general y lasting longer than zombies in hot climates. The solanum virus apparently slows down normal decomposition. Nevertheless, zombies ultimately decompose, if for no other reason than that their bodies do not regenerate and they wear away. Zombies may raise their rude finger to existing physiological knowledge, but they are still bound by the laws of physics (e.g. the second law of thermodynamics, of increasing entropy).
Unlike your unfriendly neighborhood cannibal, human flesh is not food for Brooks-zombies, whose digestive system is decomposing; presumably, they eat out of primal savagery. Such zombies have no circulatory system, just tubes of congealed blood, which makes 53
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOW!
transmission of the virus by blood splatter used by melee impact weapons, difficult, but not impossible. They have the same strength as the living (unlike vampires), but do not fatigue.
Brooks-zombies have ultra-low intelligence, and little capacity to learn or use weapons. They are dispatched by destroying the brain’s cerebel um (which controls motor skil s and co-ordination) and the brain stem by piercing through the brain’s dura matter into the white matter. The standard Romeo/ Brooks zombie is “slow,” but there are also “fast” zombies (“the infected”), as in 28 Days Later (2002), 28
Weeks Later (2007) and World War Z (2013). In this case a mere drop of infected blood into one’s eye can transform one into a zombie in as little as 12 seconds without actual death (as in World War Z (2013)), whereas in The Walking Dead, the transformation involves some hours, with death and reanimation. Hence World War Z-style zombies are not the “living dead,” but brain-destroyed, crazed and savage humans, who primarily do not eat flesh, but could tear flesh with their teeth as part of their “rage” (e.g. 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later).
Matt Mogk in Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Zombies, argues that the creatures of 28 Days and 28 Weeks are technical y not zombies, with the ghouls dehydrating/starving in 28 days, whereas conventional zombies do not. While that argument about the title of “28 days” seems plausible, it does not hold for the film 28 Weeks, which surely refers to the time of the zombie apocalypse. In any case, the ghouls on Zombieland (2009) are not the “living dead” and Mogk says, “almost anyone will tell you that Zombieland is a zombie movie.”105 Thus, “zombies” may not be the “living dead,” “reanimated human corpses,” and need not be flesh-eaters and such, although they are typical y human flesh destroyers. Further, the living ghouls traditional y classified as the mere “infected,” are in the light of film developments, such as Brad Pitt’s World War Z (2013), justifiably classified as zombies. The term “zombie” is as spongey and open-textured as the entities it denotes.
105 Matt Mogk, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies, p. 22.
54
THORFINN SKULLSPLITTER
George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) was inspired by Richard Matheson’s novel I am Legend (1954).106 The novel, which has vampires instead of zombies, has been made into three films: The Last Man on Earth (1964) (starring Vincent Price), The Omega Man (1971) (starring Carlton Heston) and I am Legend (2007) (starring Will Smith). I am Legend (2007) involves a genetical y engineered viral-based vaccine for cancer being administered to the entire human race (extremely unlikely). The virus (probably in a live attenuated vaccine (lav)) mutates, killing off 90 percent of humanity. The rest become vampiric-zombie creatures. Like vampires, they are vulnerable to light, fast moving with almost Spider-Man-like climbing abilities, and agility and strength far beyond normal humans. Perhaps such beings are just a type of vampire or genre-benders, mixing vampires and zombies. Such creatures do not appear to be decaying.
One of the major conceptual problems about zombies is inconsistency of their nature. Most zombie movies have the “living dead” as devoid of higher cognitive functions. Zombie reanimation restarts the brain stem, although the neocortex is dead. The problem is that “walkers” do things inconsistent with being literal y “the walking dead”—sounds like gunfire attract them and they see lights and detect smel s—implying that major organ systems and the parts of the brain supporting them must still be intact. The movement of limbs requires functioning nerves and muscles, making The Walking Dead- style zombies, “walking contradictions.”107 If only the brain stem was reanimated, zombies could not walk and sense. To be able to attack and eat prey requires a functioning motor cortex, parietal lobe, part of the neocortex (for seeing and hearing) and also the temporal and occipital lobes. Romero/Brooks/ The Walking Dead zombies are physiological y impossible beings if the cause of zombieism is viral.
However, if the cause is supernatural, or maybe even alien nanobot technology (as part of a nanobot attack to exterminate us (as in Plan 9
From Outer Space (1959) and Slither (2006), where the alien organism 106 Richard Matheson, I am Legend (Gol ancz, London, 2006; first published 1954).
107 Robert A. Delfino and Kyle Taylor, “Walking Contradictions,” in Wayne Yuen (ed.) The Walking Dead and Philosophy: Zombie Apocalypse Now (Open Court, Chicago and La Salle, 2012), pp. 39-51.
55
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOW!
causing the zombie apocalypse crashes to earth in a meteor), such zombies may be physical y possible if their causal agents exist.
The neurology and psychology of zombies remain something of a philosophical problem for the genre as Matt Mogk notes in one of his “Romero rules,” zombies are capable of communication, using weapons, retaining memories and “eventual y even out-smart humans.”108 Thus, the zombies in Romero’s Day of The Dead (1985) are capable of learning new skil s and using weapons. In The Walking Dead season 1, episode 2, (“Guts”), inconsistently, a zombie in a crowd in one scene uses a rock to break through the glass doors of an Atlanta
department store.
In The Crazies (2009), starring Justified series star Timothy Olyphant, a US military bioweapons program gone wrong, contaminates the water of a small US town, turning most of the population into ultra-violent quasi-zombies (meaning that this, for zombie purist, may not be a zombie movie), who while not appearing to desire to eat flesh, certainly seek to destroy it, using fire and weapons such as pitch forks to impale people. In the film Dog House (2009) “zom-birds” who prey exclusively on men, use a variety of weapons of murder, including scissors, an axe, a metal cleaver and even a broadsword. In the Japanese zombie movie Chanbara Beauty (2008) (directed by Yohei Fukuda), as a result of experiments by mad scientist Sugita, smarter zombies capable of using weapons roam the Earth. However, Aya (Eri Otoguro), clad in a fluffy bikini, and wielding big tits and a katana, proves more than a match for them (and probably most guys).
The trend of zombies having intelligence and some quasi-moral sense, which would entail the survival of a fair part of the neocortex, began with Romero’s Land of the Dead (2005) (i.e. use of a softball bat by Number 9, a softball player turned zombie), and is taken to its logical or illogical conclusion in In the Flesh (2013) and Warm Bodies (2013). In Warm Bodies, the zombie “R” develops a love interest in a warm bodied female, taking modern liberalism’s universal cosmopolitan love philosophy to its reductio ad absurdum. However, 108 Matt Mogk, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Zombies, as above, p.51.
56
THORFINN SKULLSPLITTER
it was only a matter of time before it happened. The question is: given the lack of blood circulation in zombies, will R have erection problems or is he already stiff?
Harvard psychiatrist Steven Schlozman, author of The Zombie Autopsies 109 has moved some distance from the Romero/ The Walking Dead “living dead” zombie to suggest a scientifical y more credible zombie. A virus, as yet undiscovered, causes Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome (ansd). It destroys key parts of the brain except the amygdala, that part of the limbic system responsible for the fight or flight response. The brain stem also survives. The destruction of the ventromedial hypothalamus results in an insatiable appetite as there is no neural mechanism regulating eating. That would explain the bug eating in Night of the Living Dead, the attack on Rick’s horse on season 1, episode 1 and 2 in amc’s The Walking Dead, and the zombie munching on the family dog in season 1, episode 3 (“The Dog”) of Fear the Walking Dead.
Neurologists Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek, authors of Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?110 believe that a more “realistic”
conception of zombies entails seeing them not as the walking dead, but as blood-thirsty, stimulus-driven humans suffering from cdhd –
Consciousness Deficit Hypoactivity Disorder. This is characterized by a “loss of rational, voluntary and conscious behavior replaced by a delusional/impulsive-reactive aggression, stimulus-driven attention, and the inability to coordinate motor or linguistic behaviours.” The impulsive-reactive aggression disorder arises from the loss of orbitofrontal control signals to the amygdala. Ataxic movements occur because of cerebel um loss. Other brain damage in the zombie brain includes loss of the arcuate language circuit; bilateral hippocampal damage (lack of memory consolidation); damage to the secondary somatosensory cortex, resulting in lack of pain response; bilateral damage to the posterior parietal cortices 109 Steven Schlozman, The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse (Grand Central Publishing, New York, 2011).
110 Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek, Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2014).
57
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOW!
(co-ordination difficulties); ablation of the claustrum (lack of “meta-consciousness”) and final y, the dysfunctioning of ventral striatal reward pathways, leading to an addiction to flesh-eating. For the non-neurophysiologist, the zombie is just a special type of brain-damaged human. Verstynen and Voytek distinguish between the
“slow” zombies of The Walking Dead (suffering from cdhd-1) and the “fast” zombies of World War Z, 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later (suffering from cdhd-2), by the degree of brain damage suffered.
Neither type of zombie is literal y the “walking dead.”
In conclusion, working through zombie fiction returns us to the real horrors of our world. Max Brooks in his zombie works was not presenting a parody of a horror genre, but was attempting to capture a contemporary fear that “the systems are breaking down,” as seen in “neighbors knifing each other for food, women being raped, the cops not showing up, children dying of starvation.”111 This fear of civilizational col apse is represented in zombies and is well-captured in season 1 of Fear the Walking Dead (2015), where the stench of socioeconomic col apse precedes the zombie apocalypse. Mel Brooks, Max Brook’s father and comedy legend has said:
the zombies aren’t comedy. It has to do with life-and-death survival, the modus operandi for the need to survive.
In this context emergency authorities in the United States and Canada have also used the metaphor of the zombie apocalypse as a study guide to help people prepare for more probable threats such as severe storms, tornadoes, floods, hazardous material spil s, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, nuclear disasters and other fun things. In the US state of Montana, hackers broadcasted a zombie apocalypse warning in February 2013, claiming (falsely of course), that the bodies of the dead were rising from the grave. This il ustrates 111 Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Max Brooks is Not Kidding about the Zombie Apocalypse,”
The New York Times, June 21, 2013, at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/max-brooks-is-not-kidding-about-the-zombie-apocalypse.html.
58
THORFINN SKULLSPLITTER
what I believe is something of a collective unconscious awareness, if not perverse desire and fetish, for death, destruction and doomsday.112
If one is ready for the zombie apocalypse, then presumably one is ready for anything, including death.113
Ali S. Khan’s “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse,” published online at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website on May 16, 2011, attracted considerable attention.114 An online comic, Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic, was also available.115
The basic cdc strategy is for people to get together an emergency kit (also known as a bug out kit, discussed in chapter 4. This bag should contain water, food, medication, first aid supplies, sanitation and hygiene goods, tools and supplies, clothing and bedding and important documents (e.g. passport, driver’s license). Then one needs an emergency plan, where to go so that the authorities can help (“Never fear – cdc is ready”). That is fine assuming that the cdc has not been zombiefied or otherwise destroyed, as il ustrated in season 1, episode 6 (“ts-19”) of The Walking Dead. No mention is made of self-defense weapons and the comments section of the cdc blog rams this point home, sharply and firmly up to the large intestine.116
By contrast, the Missouri Department of Conservation website has an article “Invasive Species Alert: Zombies,” where it is stated:
“Chainsaws, axes and machetes are excellent weapons for quickly 112 “Hackers Broadcast Zombie Apocalypse Alert,” February 13, 2013, at http://www.
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9864063/Hackers-broadcast-zombie-warning-on-US-TV.html.
113 “Zombie Preparedness Week: Are You Ready?” At https://www.emergencyinfobc.gov.
bc.ca/zombie-preparedness-week-are-you-ready/.
114 Ali Khan, “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse,” US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 26 2011, at http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05/preparedness-101-zombie-Apocalypse/.
115 US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse, at http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm.
116 See “Zombie Apocalypse,” at http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm; (zombie blog), http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05
/preparedness-101-zombie-apocalypse/, (social media), http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies.asp.
59
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOW!
‘dispatching’ zombies.”117 Whether these are “excellent weapons” for zombie dispatching or not, will be discussed in book 2.
The Pentagon also has a plan stop a zombie apocalypse.118 The document “conop 8888” is a zombie apocalypse survival plan that recognizes that zombies are fictional, but sees merit in using them as a training exercise. conop 8888, also known as “Counter-Zombie Dominance” (April 20, 2011), uses zombies to avoid the public mistake of a “real plan” with a real world enemy. The document covers familiar ground of the causes of the zombie apocalypse (e.g. radiation, evil magic extra-terrestrial origin, weaponized (genetical y engineered, nanotech), symbiont-induced, plant-only eating zombies (e.g. the game Plants vs. Zombies and many sequels and spinoffs), with the danger from consumption of food resources)). The conplan phases to deal with a zombie apocalypse are:
1. Shape – zombie awareness in formation.
2. Deter – large-scale training.
3. Seize initiative – personnel to duty stations, fortification.
4. Dominance – lock down for 30 days.
5. Stabilization – recon teams deployed after 30 days.
6. Restore civil authority – aid surviving civil authorities and restore basic services.
Interestingly enough, the lockdown of all usstatcom operating locations for 30 days, without an energetic attempt to curb the growth in zombie numbers, will according to mathematical models of the zombie apocalypse,119 lead ineluctably to societal col apse. Thus, usstatcom, after their lock down may be surprised to find little 117 Missouri Department of Conservation, “Invasive Species Alert: Zombies,” at http://
Zombie Apocalypse Now! Page 6
