ZOMBIES, QUARANTINES, AND TECHNOLOGY

It’s a common scene in many zombie films. Barbed-wire lined fences. A heavily armed military presence checking body temperatures. Spotlights shining over crowds of panicked citizens as they push back against their steel cage. Perhaps some make their way out of the quarantine zone following health checks, but as the people amass there is inevitably one of the infected amongst them. But then the gates close, panic and violence ensue, and the outbreak begins.

Quarantines are hardly ever effective in zombie films. To be fair, if they were, these movies might end up being quite short. But would enforcing a quarantine prevent the spread of a zombie contagion in the real world?

Quarantine measures have a long history, dating back to the spread of the plague (caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis) in the mid 1300s. While isolating infected people is often an effective way to prevent the spread of disease, quarantines have also historically been used to target specific cultural or political groups. As Eugenia Tognotti writes in Lessons from the History of Quarantine, from Plague to Influenza A, “In some countries, the suspension of personal liberty provided the opportunity – using special laws – to stop political opposition.”

Tognotti also notes that “cholera epidemics provided a justification (i.e., the enforcement of sanitary measures) for increasing police power.” Despite the potential human rights violations inherent in quarantine measures, there is also the risk of isolating healthy people with the sick, essentially condemning those healthy individuals to whatever disease has been trapped inside. You don’t need to look any further than the quarantine of the Diamond Princess cruise ship during the initial SARS-CoV-2 outbreak for a clear example of such a situation.

Largely regarded as a failure, the quarantine of this ship created the highest concentration of the novel coronavirus outside of China at the time. The ship was isolated with 10 confirmed cases of the virus, and ended up with over 700. Imagine how much worse this outbreak could have been if the infected were actually blood-thirsty zombies; actively seeking out survivors!

We can simply look at our current circumstances to understand how the world responds to a pandemic. As the novel coronavirus continues to infect and kill people across the world, every country has had to respond in some way to protect public health. Following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in the Wuhan province, China enforced a strict lockdown of its citizens involving door-to-door checks and forcibly isolating people that displayed any symptoms. In other parts of the world, such measures were regarded as cruel and draconian, though some argue that these severe policies bought the rest of the world time to prepare.

The enforcement of quarantine is often criticized for inciting panic, or causing people to flee. The uncontrolled spread of people then defeats the purpose of imposing a quarantine in the first place. And without any way to track these individuals, there is no way to predict where they could be spreading a pathogen. This panicked spread of disease is the downfall of many quarantines in zombie films, eventually leading to a deadly and uncontrolled pandemic.

The short-comings in establishing a “perfect” lock-down have led to the development of different tactics and technologies to track and prevent the spread of disease. Self-imposed quarantine, social distancing, and increased personal hygiene have been employed to fight the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. However, U.S. citizens continue to resist and protest even these simple measures for fear of a potential power-grab by a tyrannical government.

Perhaps even more dramatically, the development of enhanced facial recognition in China – a technology that can identify an individual with a 95% recognition rate, even when wearing a surgical mask – allows the government to trace people and the possible spread of disease. Other technologies, like the use of smartphone applications to measure fevers throughout various counties, can also be used to track potential outbreaks. Phone apps can aid in contact tracing by location tracking, alerting users they’ve been in the vicinity of an infected person.

Though these applications greatly enhance our ability to trace infections and stay safe, they also raise concerns about violating privacy. Atlantic writer Derek Thompson clearly states, “In these strange times, common rights that once seemed nonnegotiable have been suddenly renegotiated. Compared with our life just six weeks ago, smartphone tracing might seem like a violation of our dignity and privacy – and compared with our life six years from now, I hope it will be. But compared with our present nightmare, strategically sacrificing our privacy might be the best way to protect other freedoms.”

In the case of a zombie apocalypse, standard quarantine measures may very well fall short of protecting us. The zombie pathogen spreads faster than anything the human population has experienced, drastically reducing the window of opportunity to isolate infected individuals. Rather than quietly stay in bed, people infected with the zombie pathogen actively seek out healthy individuals, so tactics like self-isolation, distancing, and hygiene are not sufficient. Perhaps advancing technology in tracking infections can help us isolate a zombie outbreak, but the question remains – how much freedom are you willing to sacrifice to stay alive?

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Guest post by Ashley Knox – Ashley Knox is a Colorado native living in Denver. Her love of zombie movies started at a young age and resulted in such antics as a zombie-themed “Sweet 16” birthday party, acting in a haunted house attraction, numerous zombie crawls, and a college thesis on post-humanist philosophy in zombie films. Fascinated by the virology of a potential zombie pathogen and curious about how such a disease could spread, Ashley chose to pursue a career in microbiology. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado, where she is working on a PhD dissertation based on her studies of gammaherpesviruses.