Scientists are faced with a new wave of epidemic in animals, which turns them into something like the walking dead, who are slowly dying from exhaustion. In addition, experts have found that this virus can be dangerous for people.
As the site learned, a group of scientists from Colorado State University carefully studied the latest samples of infected deer that were carriers of the dangerous virus spongiform encephalopathy or chronic fatigue syndrome (Chronic Wasting Disease). This disease was discovered back in 1967, and after infection, deer refuse to eat and simply wander around the area like zombies, slowly dying from exhaustion. The virus attacks the animal's brain structure and causes the death of nerve cells. The latest data from scientists claim that this disease is dangerous for humans.
Previously, it was believed that a person could not catch this virus due to the interspecies barrier. However, experts have recently found that if people eat contaminated meat, they can also become infected with chronic frailty syndrome. In this case, a person may develop one of several prion diseases, which are currently incurable. So far it has been established that the dangerous disease can be carried by deer, elk, mules, and even cows. At the same time, the symptoms of the disease may initially occur unnoticed in the animal and appear only two years after infection.
According to the website, there has not yet been a single case of infection with a similar disease in humans. However, experts recall that during mad cow disease in the UK more than 20 years ago, 156 people died due to eating contaminated meat.
If we talk about zombies, then inevitably associations arise with the living dead from American horror stories. However, zombies are not only characters from horror films, but also very real people who have completely lost control over their actions and are completely subordinate to the “master”.
They do not feel pain, do not know pity and fear. They are ready to work all day long on plantations and engage in life-and-death battles at the first order. From this article you will learn how ordinary people are turned into zombies and what a living person with a “switched off” brain is capable of.
Tradition originating from Africa
What associations do you have, practiced by Africans (and not only them)? That's right, the first thing that comes to mind is making a doll that you need to poke with needles in order to take revenge on your enemy. But voodoo practices are much more complex and extensive; sorcerers have at their disposal methods not only of destruction, but also of enslavement. One such technique is turning a person into a zombie.
African shamans know a recipe for a psychotropic drink that has a hallucinogenic effect and temporarily paralyzes the victim. Having drunk a person (usually an enemy captured), the sorcerer places him in a sealed box. The victim, meanwhile, falls into a state and even stops breathing. The box is buried in the ground for several days.
Lack of oxygen and the influence of a potent psychotropic drink destroy brain cells. A few days later the victim is released from the makeshift “coffin”. But man has already turned into a “zombie” - a weak-willed slave, ready to carry out any orders of his master.
Zombie in a modern version
Leaders of religious sects too 
They use various techniques that allow them to influence their “parishioners” and instill in them false ideas. Of course, their methods of influence are far from the practices of African shamans. Nevertheless, the result is approximately the same - the victim is ready to transfer his savings to the sectarians’ account, give away his living space, and generally do any work for the benefit of the “owner.”
Cultists often use psychotropic substances that suppress a person’s ability to think critically and soberly evaluate their actions. They artificially create an “atmosphere of brotherhood and universal love.” Specially selected music and verbal techniques used by leaders only enhance the desired effect.
Attending meetings organized by a sect turns into a drug for a person. And one day the victim learns that pleasure must be paid for. Over time, the amount of “contributions” and “donations” is steadily growing, because sectarians need to satisfy their appetites.
How to protect yourself and your loved ones from the negative influence of this kind of manipulators? There is only one recommendation in this regard - to critically evaluate all current events and not rely on the opinions of others. There are very few people in this world who are ready to organize free “development circles”, “self-improvement groups” (in a word, sects) solely to help their neighbor.
First you need to decide what all the signs of a zombie are. Probably the biggest symptom, as we know, of being literally dead, has nothing to do with real medical parallels, so we will limit ourselves to only those diseases that make people look like the living dead. These may include decay and dead flesh, a trance-like state that robs a person of any cognitive function, an inability to communicate in ways other than moans and grunts, a slow shuffling gait, and a desire to taste human brains or at least bite someone.
Is there one such disease that includes all these symptoms? No. But there are a whole bunch of diseases that have some of these signs and it's quite scary.
Sleeping sickness
The scary thing is that there are still no vaccines or ways to prevent the spread of infection if a person is bitten by a tsetse fly. Even currently available treatments provide little benefit. Melarsoprol is one of the available treatments, but it is over fifty years old and contains enough arsenic to kill one in twenty people it is used on. And even if a person survives after this, there is still a risk that he will catch the disease again.
About 50,000-70,000 people die from sleeping sickness every year, although this figure can be much higher. In Uganda, one in three people is at risk of contracting the disease, leaving around six million people at constant risk of infection. So every year we have about 50,000 specimens of the living dead, although they do not remain in this state for very long.
Rabies
There is no disease, mental or physiological, that forces people to eat other people, at least, medicine does not know such diseases. (Cannibalism is not considered a mental illness, but rather part of some kind of mental disorder). There are certain culture-specific mental conditions, Wendigo psychosis, found among Native Americans. This is one of the best examples of people thinking they are becoming cannibals, that's all.
Although rabies under certain conditions can resemble some states, like zombies, when they feel the desire to eat human brains. The rabies virus causes severe inflammation or swelling of the brain and is almost always transmitted by bites from infected animals. About 55 thousand people die each year from rabies, most of these deaths occur in Africa and Asia. And although vaccines 
rabies medications exist and must be given before symptoms appear in order for the patient to survive.
Again, the symptoms of rabies are very similar to those of zombies: complete or partial paralysis, mental disturbances, confusion and strange behavior, possession and, ultimately, frenzy. Not all symptoms may be present, but a patient may be easily identified as having rabies if they are unable to think or communicate clearly, have difficulty walking, and exhibit aggressive obsessions that take the form of attacks on people.
Although such a zombie-like patient is medically possible, it is not actually realistic. Human-to-human transmission of rabies is a very rare occurrence and most often occurs due to insufficient screening before organ transplantation.
Necrosis
Anyone who is familiar with Greek roots already knows what the matter is: necrosis is death, namely of certain groups of cells in the body until the complete death of a person. It is not technically a disease, but rather a condition that has many different causes. Cancer, poisoning, injury and infection may be possible causes of premature cell death.
If we want to literally describe the living dead, then a patient with dead tissue may be the closest equivalent to a zombie. After all, a patient suffering from necrosis is technically half dead, although still alive in many other important parts of the body (brain, heart and other vital organs) that we associate with life.
If caused by external causes, necrosis triggers a series of events that can lead to even greater negative effects beyond the affected area. Dead cells stop sending signals to the nervous system, and dead cells can release dangerous chemicals that harm nearby healthy cells. If the lining of the lysosome inside a cell is damaged, enzymes can be released that also harm the cells around it.
This chain reaction can cause necrosis to spread (and if it spreads over a fairly large area, then this is gangrene) and, in the end, the outcome can be fatal. The only way that can help in this situation is to remove dead body parts. If the dead area is too large, amputation may be necessary.
The positive thing about this situation is that necrosis is not contagious, that is, it cannot in any way cause an outbreak of the zombie virus 
.
Because life is ahead of the dream!
Maria Pimenova
The difference between a person and a rat is not so great; it is not for nothing that new drugs are tested on rats. Now imagine that a little less than half of humanity (that’s how many are infected with toxpoplasmosis today) will lose their sense of self-preservation and lose their minds? (We mean even more so than now.) This could happen if Toxoplasma decides to evolve.
You can say that she had enough time for this and it is unlikely that it would occur to her, especially since she doesn’t even have a head! But don't forget about the biological weapons programs. Perhaps scientists are developing the latest species of Toxoplasma gondii bacteria right now, and they are not at all worried about the horrifying results of their own work (because they are most likely already infected with Toxoplasma).
It should be noted here that, technically speaking, people infected with Toxoplasma cannot be considered zombies in the narrow sense, because they were never dead. But it’s unlikely to console you if they start knocking on your windows.
Neurotoxins
Some poisons can slow down your vital functions so much that doctors pronounce you dead. Such neurotoxins include, for example, the poison of puffer fish (in small quantities it causes paralysis and lethargic coma). Very often, after emerging from a coma, a person loses memory and is able to perform only the simplest tasks: eating, sleeping and wandering with his arms outstretched forward.
How could this lead to a zombie apocalypse?
Actually, this has already happened in Haiti, the birthplace of the word “zombie.” If you don't believe me, ask a man named Clavius Narcissus. In 1980, he suddenly appeared in his home village and declared that all the time he was considered dead since 1962, he was a zombie. Clavius was recognized by his sister, despite the fact that she had attended his funeral 18 years earlier. The man claimed that he was forced to drink some kind of drink, after which doctors declared him dead (a medical certificate was even found). But Clavius did not die, but served as a zombie to a certain bokor sorcerer.
However, sorcerers in Haiti used zombies (they stopped people using the poison of the toad bufo marinus and a plant with the telling name “zombie cucumber”) to work on sugar plantations.
Next time you put sugar in your tea, remember that it could have been collected by the industrious hands of a zombie.
Fortunately, even if some very malicious sorcerer finds a way to poison most of the planet's population and turn them into weak-willed zombies, he still will not be able to turn them into bloodthirsty cannibals.
Virus
In the textbook film for all zombie fans, “28 Days Later,” the cause of the pandemic was a virus that turned people into mindless killers in a matter of seconds (in 15, if you’re being boring). In reality, some mental disorders can lead to the same result. They are, of course, non-contagious. This was the case before mad cow disease appeared. The disease attacks the animal's brain, causing symptoms similar to rabies. The first cases of the disease were identified in 1968 in England, and then in other European countries.
How could this turn into a zombie apocalypse?
A person infected with mad cow disease changes behavior, lacks coordination of movements, and sometimes experiences convulsions, hallucinations, and delirium. To date, there are not enough known cases of human disease with mad cow disease to seriously talk about an epidemic, but nevertheless, this proves that the possibility of a contagious disease affecting the human brain theoretically exists. This virus will be transmitted through bites. You can call it "super mad cow disease."
Neurogenesis
What do you know about stem cells? Basically, all you need to know about them is that they are used to regenerate dead cells. Thus, the interest of zombieologists (if such suddenly exist) may be aimed at restoring the brain in a dead body using stem cells.
How could this lead to a zombie apocalypse?
Brain death is perhaps the most unpleasant event that can happen to a person. Scientists have learned to grow organs, but if the brain has been without oxygen for a short time, the nerve connections cannot be restored, and this means the end of the human personality as it existed before. But with the achievements of modern science, scientists can reanimate the brain and, as a result, obtain a living being devoid of higher nervous activity. Just what we can call a real zombie - a living dead.
1982 - Harvard ethnobotanist Wade Davis led an expedition to Haiti. They discovered that local sorcerers can prepare a poison that can cause deep pain. When the powder is rubbed into the skin, it paralyzes the nervous system and breathing almost disappears.
With the help of local clergy, Davis was able to meet with the sorcerers and obtain samples of the poison for analysis. Its main ingredient turned out to be tetradoxin, one of the most powerful nerve poisons in the world, 500 times more potent than potassium cyanide. This poison is obtained from the two-toothed fish (Diodon hystrix). In Haiti, the recipe for such a poisonous powder was known 400 years ago. There are no convincing versions yet that could explain how tetradoxin works and why the victim remains fully conscious.
The practice of turning a person into a zombie was once brought to the island by voodoo priests and descendants of black slaves who came from Benin (formerly Dahomey). It consists of two stages: first, killing, and then returning to life. The victim, who was intended to be turned into a zombie, was given the poison tetradoxine in his food (according to other sources, this poison was rubbed into the skin). The victim immediately stopped breathing, the surface of the body turned blue, the eyes glazed over - the attack began.
A few days later, the deceased was kidnapped from the cemetery to supposedly be brought back to life. So he became a living corpse. Awareness of his “I” did not return to him completely or did not return at all. Accounts of eyewitnesses who have encountered zombies speak of them as people who stare blankly in front of them.
There is plenty of documented evidence of zombies in real life. So, in 1929, New York Times reporter William Seabrook published the book “The Island of Magic,” in which he talks about his life in Haiti, in the house of the famous witch Maman Celi.
This is how he described his meeting with the living dead: “The most terrible thing is the eyes. And this is not my imagination at all. These were in fact the eyes of a dead man, but not blind, but burning, unfocused, unseeing. That's why the face was scary. So empty, as if there was nothing behind it. Not just a lack of expression, but a lack of ability to express. By that time, I had already seen so many things in Haiti that lay outside the ordinary human experience that for a moment I completely switched off and thought, or rather, felt: “Great God, maybe all this nonsense is true?”
According to the observation of a researcher who spent 3 years in Haiti, physically stronger people were chosen in advance for zombies, so that later, after being brought back to life, they were used as slaves on sugar cane plantations.
As mentioned above, the practice of zombies was brought to Haiti by blacks who came from Benin. As you can see, some examples of returning to life are practiced in Benin in our time. A traveling doctor from America, who attended one of these sessions, spoke about this.
“On the ground,” he wrote, “lay a man who showed no signs of life. I sat down so as to shield him with my body, and with a quick movement I lifted his eyelids to check his pupillary reaction. There was no reaction, there was no sign of a heartbeat. The man was actually dead. The crowd, led by the priest, sang a rhythmic song. It was something between a howl and a growl. They sang faster and louder. It seemed that even the dead could hear these sounds. Imagine my surprise when exactly this happened.
The dead man suddenly ran his hand over his chest and tried to turn around. The screams of the people around him merged into a continuous howl. The drums began to beat even more furiously. Eventually, the living corpse turned around, tucked its legs under itself, and slowly stood up on all fours. His eyes, which a few minutes ago did not react to light, were now wide open and looking at us.”
It is possible that the eyewitness described here something similar to a Haitian zombie ritual.
Another story told by Z. Hurston, heard from the mother of a deceased boy. The night after the funeral, his sister suddenly heard singing and an incomprehensible noise on the street. She recognized her brother's voice, and her crying woke up the whole house. The family saw from the window an ominous procession of the dead and with them a boy who had been buried the day before.
When he moved his legs with effort and reached the window, everyone heard his pitiful cry. “But such was the horror inspired by these creatures that even his mother and sister did not dare to go outside and try to save him.” The procession disappeared from sight. After this, the boy's sister went crazy.
The zombie ritual strangely echoes the magical practice practiced among the Australian aborigines today. According to their stories, recorded by ethnographers, a person, previously designated as a victim, is abducted by a sorcerer and, laying him on his left side, thrusts a sharpened bone or stick into his heart. When the heart stops, it means that the soul has left the body. After which, through various manipulations, the sorcerer brings him back to life, ordering him to forget about what happened to him. But at the same time they convince him that after three days he will die. Such a person returns home without really knowing what happened to him. Outwardly, he is no different from other people, but he is not a person, but only a walking body.
In one Tibetan monastery, the writer and historian A. Gorbovsky observed the performance of the “rlang” ritual, the purpose of which was to help the soul in its posthumous state. In front of a large crowd of people, the deceased is brought and laid in the monastery courtyard. In front of him is a lama in the lotus position. Everything happens in complete silence. Some time passes, and the deceased slowly rises. His eyes are still closed, his face remains the face of a dead man. Moving like an automaton, he circles the place where he lay three times, lies down again and freezes, ready for burial.
Perhaps the technique of briefly reviving corpses in Tibetan monasteries is based on the belief that even in the absence of the vital functions of the body, some levels of consciousness, a certain principle in a person continues to perceive the environment.
Research in recent years has established that death does not occur immediately. This is a gradual long-term evolution of an organism with a known probability of reversibility - a special kind of existence. A corpse does not have a biofield, but this is also not a sign: a living person can lose it and live without it for some time.
Resurrection of a living corpse - how it is explained
Doctor of Economic Sciences, physicist by training Boris Iskakov created a bold hypothesis. Its essence is as follows. Modern science is accumulating more and more evidence of the existence in nature of such a phenomenon as the global leptonic gas (MLG), which permeates all bodies of the Universe. It consists of ultra-light microparticles, of which dozens are described today in the scientific literature - electrons, positrons, theons, muons... To put it extremely simply, leptons are carriers of human thoughts and feelings, information about objects and phenomena of the material world. The IGL contains information about everything that was, is and will be in the Universe.
It is through the interaction of the world's leptonic gas with the object of the physical world and the human brain that it is possible to explain many phenomena that are still considered mysterious to this day. This is telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. There are several hundred biologically active points on the surface of human skin. Their radiation creates the total quantum shells of the human body, located one inside the other - according to the matryoshka principle. One’s own body is not the whole person, but only his visible core, around which his information-energy doubles are located. Quantum shell emission may be associated with low-energy "cold beta decay" reactions occurring in nerve cells.
The experiments of some of the researchers have shown that when the “core” is destroyed, the quantum shells also begin to dissolve. If they do not receive information and energy supply, then their half-life will be approximately 9 days, and their complete decay will be 40 days. This applies to both living beings and inanimate objects.
It is curious that these dates coincide with the time of commemoration of the deceased. The ancient Russians believed that the soul “walks” around its home for six days, and for another three days through the fields and vegetable gardens near its native village. Therefore, they celebrated the following rituals: on the 3rd day - burial, on the 6th - farewell to the house, on the 9th - farewell to the village, on the 40th - farewell to the Earth. Interestingly, Buddhism also includes 40 days, during which the soul searches for a new body for reincarnation. During these 40 days, the lama had to read instructions to the deceased, loudly, clearly and without mistakes. During reading it was forbidden to cry or lament, because this was considered harmful to the deceased.
According to the theory of B. Iskakov, it is possible to assume that sensitives of antiquity could observe the quantum shells of deceased people and see critical moments when these dead people needed to be nourished by the thoughts and feelings of relatives and friends.
With further development of this theory, it would perhaps be possible to find explanations for the mysterious phenomena in Tibetan monasteries.