Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies (9 page)

Following this logic, if zombified blood is not able to flow at will, then a person who is bitten on the hand and soon after fatally shot through the chest would likely not become a zombie even though the brain was never destroyed. As long as death occurs before the zombie infection has fully taken hold, then another member of the undead legion would not be created.

Adding more weight to the argument that zombie blood likely flows, in 2010, researchers at Vanderbilt University showed that when cells move about in humans, they mimic the behavior of amoebae and bacteria searching for food. Study participant Alka Potdar explains that for the first time, we have a general framework for fully understanding the way cells move. And since the framework for self-propelled motion already exists inside human beings, a zombie sickness has only to insert its own selfish intention into the body’s existing structure to create an army of walking dead that enjoy the benefits of some level of blood flow.

And if zombie blood does in fact flow through the body in some manner, this may have an impact on the commonly held belief that the undead freeze in cold weather. A zombie with flowing blood probably functions much more like a cold-blooded animal than the warm-blooded human it used to be.

Several species of cold-blooded fish have a special substance in their blood called glycoprotein, which acts like antifreeze to help them survive very cold water temperatures. Glycoprotein depresses the freezing temperature of blood sufficiently to render the body immune to the cold. Much like a bottle of vodka in a freezer box, while everything around it is frozen stiff, it never changes from its liquid state.

If the undead body is able to access the existing glycoprotein therein, it may then have a workable system that no longer needs to regulate internal temperature in order to function. Though zombies would still likely move more slowly in extreme cold, their blood would never convert into a solid, continuing to flow and power the body.

T
hough he never made a zombie movie, Alfred Hitchcock is one of the pioneering masters of modern horror in film. Reflecting on what causes people to feel the chill of fear right down to their very bones, Hitchcock observed that there is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. And isn’t that the true essence of the zombie?

In their pure relentlessness, zombies are consummate hunters. They are the embodiment of a constant awareness of the inevitability of death. They never stop. They never plot or scheme. They can’t be bargained with or shown sense in reason. They have no meaning, no choice, not even any recognition of the existence of choice. They’re simply forever shambling your way, hunting you, trying to get just close enough to claw, to grasp, to chew.

They have no regard for the survival of any species, including their own. As long as they’re able, zombies will hunt until every last available prey is either destroyed or turned into yet another undead ghoul.
Sustainable living
isn’t in a flesh eater’s vocabulary, and this spells big trouble for the human race. But could their insatiable appetite actually be the magic bullet that saves the planet?

Mass extinction of species throughout history has served as Mother Nature’s reset button, periodically allowing the earth to refresh and renew itself. However, many scientists
argue that humans are unnaturally speeding up this process through overpopulation, resource depletion, and climate change, ultimately leading to irreparable damage. Cue the zombies.

In the event of a global zombie plague, there would be no need for a new ice age to destroy the billions of different animals and plants already living in harmony. Mankind, as the infecting parasite that has upset this delicate balance, would simply eat itself out of the equation. As the remaining hordes eventually sank back into the earth, the rest of the world’s species would then be able to go on living as if we were never here in the first place.

Of course, the fact that your demise may contribute to the global good will likely provide little comfort when a pack of hungry zombies breaks through your hasty home defenses to chew your arms off. If any of us hopes to survive long enough to see us destroy the planet ourselves, a more complete understanding of how the undead may hunt the living is needed.

Prevailing wisdom suggests that zombies do not simply stumble about without purpose but, instead, do everything in their power to relentlessly hunt and kill the living. To that end, their seemingly random pattern of movement when not actively
stalking prey may more closely mirror that of many predators when locating food over great distances.

Hungry sharks, turtles, fish, and other marine predators use a hunting system known as the Levy walk or Levy flight.
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Though it appears to be random wandering, the Levy walk is actually a superior strategy for finding prey in vast areas where food is sparse and hidden.

David Sims of Britain’s Marine Biological Association developed a computer model confirming that the predatory patterns are optimal for naturally dynamic prey fields, because the Levy walk involves moving in short bursts in many different directions, before taking a long advance toward a single point and then repeating the process. This allows a hunter to investigate one location before jumping to a completely different spot.

A 2010 study done by researchers at North Carolina State University found that humans also follow the Levy-walk patterns commonly observed in animals such as monkeys and birds:

Our study is based on about one thousand hours of GPS traces involving 44 volunteers in various outdoor settings including two different college campuses, a metropolitan area, a theme park and a state fair.
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If zombies instinctually employ the Levy walk the way sharks and humans do, their travels around a mostly abandoned city would allow them the best chance of finding and eating the few remaining humans left. In rural areas, a remote farmhouse could be stumbled upon in the least amount of time and with less effort, meaning that the apparently
chaotic movement of the undead may in fact be leading them straight to your front door.

Once a zombie is within striking distance of its potential meal, how is it able to differentiate its living prey from others of its own kind? If zombies hunt by sight, then walking like a zombie could afford potential victims functional invisibility. If they hunt by smell, then certain antiodor measures could be employed. Looking at the hunting technique of the smallest predatory mammal on the planet, the Etruscan shrew, one interesting hypothesis suggests that zombies use their sense of touch to find, capture, and devour their victims.

The tiny shrew must eat twice its body weight every day to keep from starving, and the animals it hunts—crickets, cockroaches, and spiders—are often as big as the shrew itself. It spots potential prey visually, then moves in to feel and confirm. Much like a zombie reaching out for its next meal, the shrew decides what to attack by touching targets with its nose and whiskers.

Because it’s widely believed that zombies are cold-blooded and because their imperfect body is dead and rotting, it stands to reason that the undead would have no trouble identifying a
warm, soft, living person using this touch method. Interestingly, this may also explain why zombies are thought to move about in packs. If they gather to investigate one another through touch, they would then be in a naturally formed group as they moved on to seek out humans to eat.

Another notion of zombie hunting behavior made popular in part by the hit AMC television series
The Walking Dead
is that zombies identify the living primarily through sense of smell. Though they are rotting corpses and therefore likely give off the revolting scent of death, the undead’s olfactory abilities may be enhanced through the same process that is a common side effect observed in users of psychedelic drugs.

Hyperosmia is a condition in humans that causes an acute increase in the ability to smell. It is often seen in patients with cluster headaches or migraines, but tests have shown that recreational use of LSD can result in the same or a similar outcome. Because it’s generally accepted that zombies are driven by their brains, it stands to reason that a brain disorder affording the living a tremendous increase in their sense of smell may also be at work in the undead.

People suffering from Addison’s disease, wherein the adrenal glands produce insufficient steroid hormones, are also inclined to experience hyperosmia. Zombies are unlikely to be
producing steroids with their limited body functions, so a de facto Addison’s hyperosmia scenario could be at work.

The modern zombie is nothing if not relentlessly aggressive, but the second-most universally espoused belief about undead behavior is that zombies generally move in large packs, or hordes. However, they are also thought not to work together when seeking out and attacking prey. This seeming contradiction could be explained away by their hunting style, or it could be a function of something more innate within the zombie’s core being.

When it comes to the zombie horde, could a more developed social structure be at work? Honeybees, along with ants and wasps, are able to carry out complex tasks involving thousands of individual participants with little or no communication. They all do their own thing, completely unaware of what their fellow bees are up to, but still they present a unified front, each marching toward a single goal.

Furthermore, the aggressive behavior created by the hive mind of bees is extremely similar to a typical depiction of a zombie outbreak. A horde of zombies may not work together or communicate in any traditional sense, but at the same time, they really represent a formidable threat only when they present a unified front, attacking as a group.