Zombie Research Society
Following up on a previous post, The Zombie Time Lag, ZRS Researcher, Doug Fulton, suggests that a span of hundreds of years might pass between zombie outbreaks, making it difficult to track, impossible to predict, and an immediate global threat when it does finally rear its ugly head. He points to the most resilient and hardy microorganism on the planet, the endospore, as the foundation of his argument.
Endospores are infectious organisms that have the ability to protect themselves inside a hard cellular casing when external conditions are harsh. The hibernating spores can remain in a dry, passive state for hundreds, thousands, even millions of years. They literally shut down, waiting for the right time to strike, but they never die.
“When finally triggered, endospores can suddenly wake up, rapidly activate themselves, germinate in their new host, and begin multiplying at an alarming rate.”
Furthermore, Fulton reasons that because this process in zombies is only theoretical, it is impossible to discover what the trigger may be. A new strain of a common disease, like H1N1, could be the catalyst. A product innovation, new chemical compound, or even global climate change could be all it takes to cause trillions of zombie endospores to infect their hosts, multiply, and seek out new hosts with reckless abandon.
If Fulton is correct, the zombie plague would likely start everywhere at once, consuming the entire planet in days, or even hours, rather than flaring up in just in a few isolated locations. Humankind would be powerless to stop the progression.
Shudder to think…
Just realized, we’re only prepping for THE apocalypse, what about after it? I maen what if some dictator gets ahold of a strain of the virus and releases it into the population and actually restarts the apocalypse again?
I think this is how it is: Endospores are lurking all around the world with the shall we call “Earth Fail-Safe” virus. By itself, it isn’t lethal but it is harmful. But mix the EFS virus with weaker immune systems and combine it with present day modernization and the blanket of nature not around to guard us against this and you get zombies. It’ll be just like a fire, it needs those three things to survive. Think about it: zombies lifespan is what? 3-5 years, if that? That would be plenty of time for nature to take back the earth and bury the EFS virus again after all of the zombies are gone.
I wonder if there are different kinds of endospores with differents kinds of diseases inside of them. That way, the people of Roanoke might have ran into something totally different than what we might be facing in the forseeable future. Thus preserving Jack’s “Fail-Safe Theory”. That way, the planet is ready for whatever we humans throw at it. We have to realize that, as much as we think we are, we aren’t the masters of this planet.
Endospores could be used in conjunction with a virus to create a zombie virus today, but if your stating that there are already zombie spores around, then your whole article de-bunks it’s self. I swear this website is run by a bunch of high-school kids.
Perhaps zombieness is enconded in our junk DNA sleeping waiting for the right trigger….
My theory is that the endospore is probably the planets natural fail safe system for when certain conditions arise. Such as when deadly viruses spread, or a sudden population explosion happens, like in roanoke.
id like to see an article about how to deal with a zombie who when alive was a person, or the human threat an infected person causes and what to do about them
Here’s a question, what were the weather conditions at Roanoke back when the settlers disappeared? Could these endospores have caused this then gone back to hibernating? I think this would bare further study.