This lends strong support to Romero’s original vision of a death through infection that lasts several hours.
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Dead Stasis
Our neurologists insist that some part of the zombie’s brain has to be functioning, even at a reduced level, for it to do what a zombie does. The motor functions have to be working, as well as some cognitive ability—after all, the little zombie girl in
Night of the Living Dead
uses a garden trowel to kill her mother; Bub in
Day of the Dead
is taught to load a gun, he feels grief, and even speaks a line of dialogue; and Big Daddy in
Land of the Dead
is the organizer of a very effective zombie revolt. Either these are examples of recovered memories, suggesting that the brains of the zombies are not total organic junk, or they possess the ability to learn—both from their actions and through coaching. Probably both.
The bottom line is that the brain must be preserved after death for a zombie to operate. That is one point we cannot dismiss. If total cellular death occurs, you do not have the potential for a zombie, no matter how strong the virus or other initiating causes. The zombie has motor functions, therefore, some of its brain is working.
This appears to lend support to the working theory that zombies are not entirely (or even
actually
) dead. Certainly they defy all conventional definitions of
dead
. Once a human succumbs to the zombie plague, he or she is presumed to be officially dead; but it seems more likely that he or she has actually lapsed into some kind of deep coma state in which most of the body’s functions have stopped but a few (such as the central nervous system) have merely gone into a kind of stasis. There is some support for this in nature.
Expert Witness
The wood frog (
lithobates sylvaticus
) is the only frog found in the Arctic Circle to freeze solid many times a year and revive unharmed. During the winter as much as 45 percent of the wood frog’s body freezes; ice crystals form beneath the skin and are scattered through the frog’s skeletal muscles. As this happens, the frog stops breathing, its heart stops and there is zero blood flow. By the long-held standards of clinical medicine, it is dead. Only it’s not.
Weird Science: Fido of the Living Dead
There’s just no way to be surprised that this news comes from Pittsburgh, but the Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research in Pittsburgh
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has successfully reanimated dogs several hours after inducing clinical death. The experiment is intended as a step toward a proposed method of flash-freezing severely injured soldiers so they can be transported from battlefield to surgical centers and then successfully reanimated under proper medical and life-sustaining conditions.
The Safar Center has accomplished this with dogs several times and went public with the information in late 2005.
Granted this isn’t the same as reanimating all the dead dogs in the pet cemetery, but when someone in Pittsburgh starts bringing back the dead, anyone in the post-Romero era is going to take notice (and possibly take flight).
“The wood frogs regularly undergo freeze-thaw cycles in the lab between 20 and a potentially infinite number of times,” says Dr. Kenneth Storey, a professor of biochemistry at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. “In nature they go through it about twenty times a year without harm. You can’t kill them with the normal temperatures; but if you froze it to the temperature of dry ice
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you’d kill it for sure.”
Can this process happen in humans? Storey, who also has the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Physiology, says, “No way. Frogs have a set of genes that we don’t have that allow them to undergo this process, and while it’s happening their bodies are producing huge amounts of cryoprotectant sugars. Normal levels are between about 4 and 8 mmol/L
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(70 to 150 mg/dL), and during the freezing process the frogs’ sugar level jumps to 400 mmol/L (7200 mg/dL). Humans go into a coma at 600 mg/dL. The human body can’t produce enough sugar to protect from cell and organ damage from the ice.”
I asked Dr. Storey how this might apply to zombies. “I’m afraid that’s not your answer. Freezing is fine for organs harvested for transplants. We use it to preserve sperm, eggs and embryos…but it won’t make a zombie or preserve a body that has become a zombie. Granted, in the lab we can introduce the gene from the frogs into a human cell and then freeze and thaw that successfully, but that’s a single cell. Try and duplicate that in a whole mammal and you destroy the mammal. Massive tissue destruction. In fact cold is used to destroy tissues, such as in the process of injecting frozen materials into tumors to destroy them, but that’s the reverse of a process that will reanimate a body. Can’t happen that way.”
That eliminates one possible theory, but it still leaves the question of hibernation. Could the infection cause the victim’s body to lapse into a hibernative coma so deep that it is virtually impossible (outside of a laboratory) to detect life? Ground squirrels appear dead when they’re in hibernation…why not humans?
“Understand the difference between hibernation in humans and that of some other animals such as the ground squirrel,” cautions Dr. Storey. “When a ground squirrel hibernates its metabolic rate drops from 100% to about 1%. When a human hibernates—say when a Swami goes into deep trance—the metabolic rate drops from 100% to only 99%. We’re a long, long way from inducing hibernation significantly deeper in humans.”
But the possibility still exists; and for our quest to find the scientific possibilities in the zombie this is an exciting lead. It’s a stretch, sure, but don’t forget that according to the physics of aerodynamics, a bumblebee
cannot
possibly fly. Science is exact, but it’s not yet complete.
This process of hibernation, both natural and induced, is being actively studied. At Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center scientists have been experimenting with hydrogen sulfide to temporarily convert lab animals from warm-blooded to cold-blooded, which is what happens during natural hibernation. It is not an
unnatural
process, and we know from our studies of all aspects of science that nature loves variation and mutation.
Hydrogen sulfide is a naturally occurring chemical in the body that buffers our metabolic flexibility. Among other things, this chemical regulates our body temperature at 98.6, regardless of whether you’re in Haiti or Nome. At the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists have already induced hibernation in mice. The researchers hope, among other goals, to be able to induce hibernation in patients waiting for organ transplants. The process is known as metabolic hibernation.
Military science views this as one of several possible methods of preserving soldiers injured in the field until they can be transported to proper military facilities. Researchers see it as one possible way to induce hibernation for long-distance space travel. Doctors hope that it will be a lifesaver for patients with dangerously high fevers, and oncologists are looking to this as a way of temporarily eliminating oxygen dependence in healthy cells to make them less vulnerable targets to radiation and chemotherapy.
There are even some military experiments ongoing to determine if it would be possible to totally exsanguinate
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a wounded soldier, (see the box, “Weird Science: Fido of the Living Dead,” on p. 149). There is some supporting material on this in animal testing, though the issue of cellular damage from oxygen deprivation, especially to the brain, has not yet been solved. Even so, it does contribute another splinter of plausibility to the concept of a body that has received massive trauma, has suffered blood loss, and has had a severe metabolic drop still being technically alive.
The Zombie Factor
It’s even more plausible if zombies are the result of a disease that mutates the molecular physiology during the infection process and dramatically lowers the metabolism. Outside of practical science? Sure, just as induced metabolic hibernation is currently outside of practical science. Outside of possibility?
Not at all.
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Raising Hell
What on earth would make the dead rise and attack the living? What sparks the reanimation process? What drives the hunger for human flesh, or in some cases, brains? What is the driving force behind this enduring and expanding mythology of zombies?
The simple answer is that there
is
no simple answer. There are almost as many theories as there are films and books in the genre, including radiation, plague, toxic spills, demonic possession, and even wrath of God. Granted, some of these theories are so absurd and unlikely that even the most die-hard zom fan (like me) have an impossible time suspending disbelief; while other theories are chillingly close to “possible,” according to modern science.
The zombie message boards and forums buzz constantly with discussions over which theory is the most valid; you hear it debated at genre conventions, book signings, or other events. So here are the leading theories on the cause of the zombie uprising, with some comments by a variety of experts.
Expert Witness
“The body is designed by evolution to have natural redundancies,” explains neurologist Dr. Peter Lukacs. “Without these redundancies we’d never survive injury or illness. For example you only really need about 10% function of the liver, and about 20% function of one kidney. If certain other functions were online, and the zombie possessed the ability to seal wounds, we would have as reasonable an understanding of how they work as science allows. And it’s not that far outside of science.”
To answer the question on which parts of the brain are required to make a zombie undead, it depends on how “human” the zombie is. Does the zombie have a pulse and/or breathes for example?
“A basic zombie’s functionability,” Dr. Lukacs explains, “is that it can walk and move its limbs. For this to happen, it would need the motor cortex—this is located bilaterally (both sides of the brain) near the top part of the brain and curves to the outer curvature of the brain—to be at least minimally functioning. The right motor cortex controls the left side of the body, and vice versa. The central part of the cortex moves the legs while the arms and mouth are located on the outer curvature. Actually, I would love to see a ‘stroke-like’ zombie shown in a film who has had a localized blow to one side of the head who drags one side of its body. Without a functioning motor cortex, a person is completely paralyzed.”
Considering the odd twitching and staggering of individual zombies in different films, it’s reasonable to assume that we
have
seen stroked-out zombies.
Dr. Lukacs adds, “Now consider the cerebellum, which is located near the base of the skull (lower part in back of the head). The basic function of the cerebellum is the coordination of movement. For example, in order to reach for an item, the arm muscles need to move smoothly so as not to under-or overshoot the item. If the cerebellum is damaged, the muscles work in a jerky fashion (causing ataxia). Without a functioning cerebellum, there is movement, but it is in a very jerky fashion (much like many zombies) though it makes it very difficult to walk but not impossible.”
So it would seem that a zombie needs to have at least a partially functioning brain. What else needs to be in operation?
We know from zombie movies that they moan, which means they either breathe, however minimally, or they possess the ability to draw breath as needed in order to moan. My guess, supported by science and common sense, is that they do breathe. Not well to be sure, but moaning is created by air causing the vocal chords to vibrate. Let’s take that as read, then.”
We can also assume that zombies have a working circulatory system. Again, we’re talking minimal function, but we’ve seen zombies bleed in too many films to dismiss it as a possibility. Plus, science tells us in no uncertain terms that in the absence of blood and oxygen the brain will cease to function and will soon decay so that even if resuscitative steps are taken, the brain will be so much gray goop.
So, we can also take it as read that zombies do have some kind of circulatory system, however feeble. As we’ve already discussed, we’ve
seen
them bleed in plenty of movies, including Romero’s; so let’s attribute the inconsistencies relative to bloodless zombies as bad reportage…and may Romero forgive me.
If we want to stretch medical credulity (and let’s face it, we are talking about zombies here), we could consider the possibility that zombies have a hyperactive wound healing capacity. Not on the scale of Wolverine from the X-Men, who regenerates back to complete health, but more on the lines of car tires when they’re filled with a can of sealant. Wounds do seal, as we know, otherwise we’d bleed out from a paper cut. Proteins called fibrins and high-molecular-weight glycoprotein containing fibronectins bond together to form a plug that traps proteins and particles and prevents further blood loss; and this plug establishes a structural support to seal the wound until collagen is deposited. Then some “migratory cells” use this plug to stretch across the wound, during which platelets stick to this seal until it’s replaced with granulation tissue and then later with collagen.