A new book entitled “Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress” contains a paper by a team out of the University of Ottawa regarding the impacts of a zombie outbreak. In their paper When Zombies Attack!, the team noted that an infected individuals should be destroyed immediately, lest civilization be destroyed.
They concluded there was no point trying to cure those infected or live with them – the best thing was to destroy them as quickly as possible.
“A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly,” they write in the book
“While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.
“As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.”
Never one to challenge how research funds are spent, as I make a hefty portion of my income from the academic world, I did begin to wonder about the relevancy of the study.
“Why,” I asked myself “would anyone want to know this? Unless… They must know something!” My overactive imagination immediately set to work giving me the cold sweats and causing me to cringe in fear anytime someone strolled past my office door.
Despite my nervousness, I decided to finish reading the brief article:
Joe Imad, the study’s co-author, said: “If you look at it in a more realistic way, zombies are about the same as any other major infectious disease, they get out and we try to eliminate them.
“Modelling zombies would be the same as modelling swine flu, with some differences for sure, but it is much more interesting to read.”
Yes. Interesting…
T. Keith Edmunds
3 Responses to “Scientific study regarding zombie outbreak worrisome”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I very much enjoyed reading World War Z and the Zombie Survival Guide. Although I’m skeptical about the existence of zombies, why not be prepared?
Also, there are relevant lessons to be learned from zombies, as the study authors point out. My guess is that post-apocalyptic mobs, a la Mad Max, would be similar in many ways to hordes of zombies (though, perhaps smarter).
FYI… http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fungus-makes-zombie-ants
Whoa — that is very weird. And more than slightly scary. It’s one thing to think that zombies might come from radiation, or toxic waste, or even bad voodoo. But a fungal infection? Yikes.
Thanks for the link! Now I guess I have to stock up on Tough-Actin’ Tinactin.