Zombie 101
- Mason Nguyen
- Dec 6, 2017
- 2 min read

(Courtesy of jonvilma.com)
Imagine one day you wake up to a zombie apocalypse... and you have no idea what is going on?!
Even though Dr. Amy Thompson of Austin Peay State University, a Biology professor, says, "It would take a perfect storm to achieve a pandemic of zombie apocalypse proportion.", it would still be a good idea to have basic knowledge of these creatures.
First of all,
What are zombies?
Zombies (or sometimes referred to the Living Dead) is a form of creature in a human corpse that is undead, often portrayed as a flesh-eating and brain-eating creatures who is a popular topic in the society pop culture since forever.
What do zombies look like?
The word “zombie” originally comes from the version of “zombi” in many ancient African language. In ancient Haitian language, “zombi” means “the spirit of the dead”. This often refers to a creature with an unsightly appearance with yellow, vacant eyes and green face.
Where are they from?
Zombies are believed to be the product of human body after contracted to a rare virus that turns a human being into a brain-eating machine. Zombies have an unquenchable hunger of human flesh and blood to keep them alive. They are basically dead humans but still have very little active brain cells, that turns them into the mankind’s worst nightmare. Zombies can not feel the pain or hurt physically because they have lost all the human senses; the only way that a zombie can be terminated is to destroy the root- which is their brain.
Zombie history in Haitian culture:
In Haiti, there was a tradition of Voodoo priests who has the ability to use “magic” to turn someone into a “zombie”. These priests use a substance called “tetrodoxin” that is found in porcupine fish, an extremely poisonous marine creature. People who volunteered to become “zombies” were the ones who could not find happiness in life and hated themselves so much that they wanted to end their lives but did not want to be totally dead. This substance can cause symptoms similar to being dead such as extreme low heart rates, inability to communicate or move and put the person is under substance in an unconscious state of mind. These people were then believed to be dead, but they came back to life shortly after, and became the Priest’s workers.

Influence of zombies in pop culture:
Zombies have always been one of the most popular topic when it comes to writing novels and producing films. There are numerous novels writing about this interesting creature such as Frankenstein by Mary Shelley or movies such as “Dawn of the Dead” by George Romero (1978) or the breath-taking TV series “The Walking Dead” by Frank Darabont (2010-present).
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