Should we be preparing for a zombie apocalypse? Well, it depends on what kind of zombie we're talking about.
My biggest problem with the zombie apocalypse genre is - wouldn't all those corpse teeth rot and fall out of those corpse heads within days of their reanimation? And what's keeping those bones strong enough to hold them up and allow them to barge into houses and overturn cars indefinitely? Fortunately for my sanity, according to science, zombies of the reanimated dead kind are a fairly unlikely possibility.
But the flesh-eating rage virus kind of zombies? Hypothetically absolutely possible, says AsapSCIENCE. The main factor involved is finding a virus specific to the brain areas for these symptoms, while leaving other areas intact.
Viruses can enter the body and affect cells in many ways, but if we're talking about zombies, we need to focus on how viruses affect the neurons. Neurons are some of the longest cells and can transport molecules and proteins across our entire bodies. Rage-inducing viruses such as rabies take advantage of a process called retrograde axonal transport, which allows them to enter the body from wherever you're bitten and make its way up to your brain or central nervous system.
What would need to occur to recreate a flesh-eating zombie rage virus is for the virus to use specific neurons to infect particular parts of the brain to induce a zombie-like state, without damaging the entire brain. Which is pretty unlikely, right? Well… not so fast, says AsapSCIENCE.
Watch above to find out why the zombie apocalypse isn't entirely impossible, according to science, while we stuff our closets full of newly acquired riot gear. Just in case.