Are zombies possible in real-life?

Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 82 points – 6 months ago

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Of the type often seen in movies where the body is rotten, no. Dead tissue doesn't move.

However, there are approximations:

For starters there's a type of fungus that hijacks ants, using it to spread its spores into other ants. It can control the ants movement to the point where it will cause the and to go to certain good spore-spread8ng places before the ant is devoured.

Then there's the disease that affects raindeer in some places. I don't remember the illness, but basically the mind goes byebye while the body is left to be controlled by less and less sophisticated parts of the brain, to the point where the animal can do nothing but walk in circles.

The deer one is chronic wasting disease

I’ve heard concern of it becoming a pandemic in deer populations and also scientists are worried it’ll spread to people!

Yaaaaaaaaay. 🫠

It's caused by prions, which are definitely able to infect humans.

Prions are absolutely terrifying

I agree. I knew nothing about them until I went down a kuru rabbit hole the other night. Extremely freaky.

It’s bonkers. It’s resistant to everything, persists after being burned, etc.

It's wild. Even after a deer with it dies it can remain in the soil for a couple of years. Burning and chemicals doesn't affect it. The prion is just there, hanging out, waiting in the soil and water until another deer comes along and gets it doing normal deer things.

I mean, those fungi are crazy.

But my money is either on a rabies or toxoplasmosis mutation for the zombie apocalypse.

They wouldn't be the living dead, and I dont think there'd be anything to stop them from attacking each other, but that's be pretty close to zombies.

Just feral humans without higher brain function trying to attack and eat anything they can.