Zombies. It seems like there is a nonstop flow of movies, TV shows, graphic novels, books, and comic books about them. While they may enjoy a popularity now that they never have had before, that doesn’t make them a new thing.

Originally zombies were the sole area of witch doctors and high priests that practiced voodoo (and the parent religion hoodoo). The priest could induce a trance like state that made the person seem dead, get buried and then dig them up. The priest had complete control over the person so they were for all practical purposes their slaves. This is the type of zombie that comes from the Caribbean and parts of Africa (slaves brought the religion with them during the slave trade).

The zombie that comes to peoples mind today is an entirely different creature. They are the “living dead” and tend to feed primarily on living, normal humans.

The modernized zombie (as of yet) is a work of fiction. The reason that people become zombies varies from story to story. There are 2 schools of thought on how zombies come into being. Both usually have the background in some secret government lab that an experiment or some type of research goes wrong.

In older stories, the dead come back to life. As in, a person that was buried in a coffin and is decomposing is now walking the Earth. With these zombies an actual reason is rarely given and if it is, it is just in passing.

In the modern stories it is usually a biological weapon that somehow got out of a lab. This scenario may not be as far fetched as it may sound. 

While many times it may have started out as a positive thing, regeneration of cells to help people that have been paralyzed or medicines to regenerate brain cells in patients with dementia or even just as a beauty product to make older cells behave like newer cells, it can quickly go south. To put it bluntly, people are playing God. They are messing with genes and DNA when we are just discovering how they actually work.

The historical zombie was brought back to life by a “mad” scientist type character. The modern zombie is usually caused by a bacteria or (even worse) a virus that has mutated from it’s original form.

What does this mean to the average person? Science creates a super bug that completely changes what a human is. The virus usually attacks the central nervous system and can cause a person that should be dead (or was recently killed) to still have simple survival functions in the brain. That is the only functions that they have left. Survival. That means eating. Food of choice? Usually humans.

Since it is often a virus in modern zombies, that makes it a blood born pathogen. Some people may have a natural immunity to it, others will get infected if they get bitten, scratched, or the zombies bodily fluids enter their body in any way. Take the zombie factor out and it works just like the pathogens we know today. HIV, AIDS, hepatitis and all the other ones that plague the world. For the record, this isn’t a new thing, just new diseases. Smallpox, cowpox, measles, or the bubonic plague were all the same principle. Of course someone with the plague didn’t try and eat you once they were infected.  

 
People will watch an old movie about zombies and laugh even though it is a horror movie. With the historic zombie, science hadn’t made the advances that it has now. The historic zombie shambled along with its arms slightly out reached making a moaning sound (often in a sound that resembled “braaaiiiiiiinnns” but that is Hollywood). Today’s society finds it humorous because we know more about science in high school than they did when the movie/story was made.

Modernized zombies are different. We know the science. With the gene manipulation and cellular work that is being done so often that it doesn’t even make front page news, a designed virus is completely possible. 

As was stated earlier, a modern zombie is caused more by a blood born pathogen. This means that a person doesn’t have to be dead to turn into a zombie. The virus enters their bloodstream and will change them into a zombie. Of course, it could be stated that the virus actually kills the person very quickly and then re-animates them into a zombie (living dead).

The difference? Historical zombies were dead people that came back to life. For the most part completely fiction and in today’s world, not that scary. A modernized zombie is based on science that is being done every day of the week all over the world. The fact that one dropped test tube could end the human race makes the modern zombie much more scary. It is the realism behind it. As educated people we know what a virus can do to the body. It isn’t that much of a leap for a virus to mutate (we know that they have the ability to do that already) and create modern zombies. Scientifically it could happen at any time.

If you have an interest in the modern zombie phenomenon, there is a nation wide group known as the zombie squad. For information you can reach them at http://zombiehunters.org/