The Walking Dead: A True Story?

Zombie are pretty popular nowadays. Not actual flesh-eating-zombies, but the idea of these horrible creatures. There are countless TV shows, movies and games based on just zombies. Why are we so entertained by these nasty monsters? I’m not sure but I do know if they were real we would not be so friendly.  Scientists have found out that a mutated rabies virus could actually turn humans into zombies. This doesn’t mean we could bring the dead back to life, but the virus does cause certain zombie-like behavior.

So what is this virus? Well, it’s a mutation of the common rabies virus. Rabies affects the central nervous system. Which can lead to the possibility of driving people mad. This infection does not affect it’s victims as quickly as it does in the TV shows and movie zombies. It takes time, as long as a year to take the body over completely! Signs a human might be infected with rabies; confusion, hallucinations, anxiety and it can even paralyze you. The ideal conditions for this “zombie” like virus would be if the rabies virus and a flu virus combined. This way the infection could spread through the air, contaminating more people. The only way rabies is spread is if a human is bit by an animal that is already infected with the disease. Thankfully the infection stops there.

 The only way this virus would cause an epidemic is if it were airborne. To do this it would have to take certain traits form the flu virus to spread. This is possible because it is not uncommon for virus to mutate by swapping pieces of genetic material with one another. Although it might not be possible to do this naturally, it is possible to engineer a virus like this one. It is extremely hard, but possible.

I picked this article because I found it really informative and interesting. And I’m definitely one of the people that is guilty of being suckered into watching these zombie TV shows and movies. But what I’m wondering is if this virus could be created and used as a weapon? And how fast would we be able to come up with a  cure?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/1001027-rabies-influenza-zombie-virus-science/