Mathematical models give little hope for mankind's survival in a real zombie apocalypse
Mathematicians and a psychiatrist have crunched the numbers, and our chances seem bleak if someday we encounter a virus of the Living Dead
There are the turbo snails in this summer's kid flick hit called Turbo. Then there are the turbo zombies in World War Z, the latest Hollywood zombie movie starring Brad Pitt looking like a reanimated Kurt Cobain.
Instead of the traditional walking dead with unsteady decaying feet, the undead now come running and leaping. Many critics have lamented this trend, which breaks the canonical law of zombie locomotion, established by George Romero in his 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead. As Max Brooks, who wrote the novel on which Pitt's movie was based, has noted, "the fastest [zombies] have been observed to move at a rate of barely one step per 1.5 seconds." They are supposed to be slower than practitioners of tai chi.
The emerging characteristic of deadly zombie speed has serious implications in that it invalidates two pioneering studies. One explores the possibility of a zombie virus existing in the real world; the other calculates the probability of humanity surviving such an outbreak: both studies assume the zombies would remain stumbling and shambling.
Two years ago, Harvard psychiatrist Steven Schlozman published The Zombie Autopsies, a novel based on scientific facts. Using examples from real-life brain-destroying diseases such as mad cow, he argues a zombie virus is possible. He calls the virus ataxic neurodegenerative satiety deficiency syndrome, or ANSD. It destroys all the brain's key parts except the amygdala, a part of the limbic system responsible for the fight- or-flight response.
Zombies always fight because of their insatiable appetite following the destruction of the ventromedial hypothalamus, the part of the brain that tells you when you are full from eating.
They can't think or make decisions because their frontal lobes, responsible for problem-solving, have been devoured by the virus. And they can't walk or move properly because the cerebellum, responsible for motor control, no longer functions. Presumably, however, the brain stem, which regulates breathing and heartbeat, survives the virus.
You can see that the new zombies have already overtaken Schlozman's brain model. They are not only running faster, but are getting smarter and becoming self-aware.