Zombies. Fact Or Fiction?

That’s pretty cool. Like you, I’m sure something along those lines was tried during the cold war. You’ll probably find there are a few lunatic cadavers in cold storage somewhere in America just waiting for the plug to be pulled & to thaw out before the killing spree begins.
I’m not so sure about the jellyfish/superhuman thing…. although it certainly conjures up an image :)
I suspect the closest thing to Zombies are those Haitian, chemically lobotomised victims of Voodoo or Santeria that you sometimes hear about.

I’m fairly convinced that there will be something akin to a zombie apocalypse happening. In my life time. I’ve researched gun laws, even. But then again, I’m a weirdo.

Well i read the article on that Jellyfish and went on to reading about Bio Immortality and it says it’s not possible in any human or anything larger than that jellyfish. I don’t think we’re smart enough to do that yet, but we are stupid enough and when we do find out how to i’m betting that we will. I just hope im not alive then.

Yes, the government has had the T Virus for a while.

A human cannot be biologically immortal. The jellyfish you mention does so by being able to revert to an earlier stage in the life cycle. A human cannot do this, because there are innumerable irreversible changes that take place during puberty and as the person matures.

One important reason humans die of old age is telomere degeneration. Telomeres are strands of non-coded amino acids at the end of every DNA strand that form ‘sticky ends’ to keep the strands together. Each generation that develops from an original cell will have progressively inferior telomeres, which leads to a weaker cell that is more likely to mutate.

A human is also destined for cancer, provided they live long enough (at current life expectancy, one in every four people will contract some type of cancer). A jellyfish is relatively genetically simple, and so has a much lower risk of cancer than a human.

It is a good idea to play around with in sci fi stories, and I’m sure some hack scientists out there are trying something, but I doubt it will ever become a reality.

Voodoo has a zombification process, involving neurotoxins. The person doesn’t biologically die, but their capacity for conscious thought is shut down and the process gets them declared legally dead, meaning that they have no rights or chance to for rescue.
They do not crave brains.

The movie The Serpent and the Rainbow is loosely based on true events about an ethnobotanist who went to Haiti and investigated the zombie phenomenon. It was both interesting and creepy but not a good foundation for believing in zombies.

Are zombies real? I highly doubt it. I believe there are elements in nature (chemicals or drugs) that can induce a state that one might think someone was in a death state. One of these would be Tetrododoxin. Throw in some Datura stramonium along with a little Scopolamine and you could have yourself a home grown zombie. Maybe.

Let’s wait until 2012 and see.

@erichw1504 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw

BUM BUM BUMMMM lol :O

Zombie processes are a fact for the Unix operating system.

Fact.

Well every time a cell replicates a part of it’s genome (I think) get cut off. Eventualy it get so small it cant replicate any more and it dies. Thats what doctors mean when people die of old age. My friend was recently talking about some woman who’s cells replicated perfectly and could theoretically live forever died from cancer. And if the scientist who harvested some of her cells figure out what was going on with all that we might actually have a shot at eternal life.

@FireMadeFlesh : A hundred GAs if I could give them.

@XOIIO : Fiction. For the genetic reasons mentioned above (although I’d be interested to read up on this lady whose cells replicated perfrectly, @Bugabear ). Great question.