How to create a zombie apocalypse for KREATOR. Step-by-step instructions from the artist
Zombie brand. Zombies in pop culture are a construct that the industry needs as a money-making dynamo. This image expresses a person’s deepest fear: what is invincible, aggressive, stupid and ominous, what one can encounter or what one is in danger of turning into if one loses oneself. And there are those who are ready to make money from it: they turned the handle, and money flowed from the zombie machine to the film corporation. This image was recently used in a commercial for phones that are better at photographing human faces in the dark. The language includes stable expressions and memes: for example, “I am a zombie” or “Man is a wolf to man, and zombies are zombies.” Films with such a plot reflect classic pop culture consumption: we know it’s harmful, but we buy it again. This strange image is the quintessence of civilizational self-irony and collective anxiety.
The image of zombies is reflected in its own way in different areas of world culture.
Movie. The first zombie film was released in 1932 by Victor Halperin's production company. It was called "White Zombie". The main role was played by Bela Lugosi. George Romero, who created the canon of this genre, said that he was inspired by Richard Mattson's novel I Am Legend, although the novel was about vampires. Literature. Two contemporary works are of greatest interest. In 2003, the American writer Max Brooks published a book, “The Zombie Survival Guide.” The script for the movie World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, is based on it. In 2009, American screenwriter, producer and novelist Seth Grahame-Smith released the mashup novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Games. Based on this novel, a video game was created where English ladies and gentlemen use martial arts to fight zombies. And the tower defense game Plants vs Zombies earned its first million dollars within nine days of release. Mythology. The idea of zombies also existed in Japanese mythology in the form of buso spirits. And in German-Scandinavian mythology there are two similar images - Draugr and Nachzerer. Philosophical zombie. This is what they call a thought experiment in the philosophy of mind. This is a hypothetical being, indistinguishable from a normal person, but lacking conscious experience or the ability to sense. (Have you noticed this: thinking that you hit yourself, you automatically scream, and then you realize that it doesn’t hurt? It’s about the same thing.) Programming. A zombie process is a child process on a Unix system that has completed execution but is still listed in the operating system so that the exit code is counted. Education. Zombies as a cultural phenomenon are studied in several universities and colleges around the world. For example, at Columbia College Chicago there is a course on “Zombies in Popular Media”: students try to understand why so many films are made about zombies, and what interests people about this creepy idea. The image of zombies in sociology and psychology. Since 2001, the Zombie Walk, a mass procession of people dressed as zombies, has been taking place in different places around the world. This phenomenon is also studied by sociologists and psychologists.
The phenomenon of the good zombie. Recently, several films have appeared about kind, humane or simply kind zombies:
. “Warm Bodies” is about a handsome zombie whose love for a girl (although, probably, the devoured brain of her boyfriend) makes him human again.
. "Fido" (Fido is a traditional dog name in the USA) is a satire on the topic of "Who should really be classified as a zombie?"
. “A Zombie named Shaun” (the official translation of the title is incorrect, since “Shaun of the Dead” is a play on the title of the film “Dawn of the Dead.” The main character’s name is Shaun, but his friend turns into a zombie. However, after that he remains a harmless slacker with a games console, this smart and biting parody film from director Edgar Wright stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and is practically a zombie variation of Hot Fuzz.
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What does the good zombie phenomenon mean? The movie zombie is experiencing a crisis of identitylessness.
Dead end branch of cultural evolution. Zombie as a pop culture character is a “dead-end branch of evolution”: cinema cannot develop him as a personality character. In the life of a movie zombie, there will be no dramatic turns (well, except for the summary bullet to the brain), new love, career changes, weddings and the birth of children. He simply has nothing to do. This cultural construct has two interests: to eat and to destroy - not enough for cinematic collisions.
A satire on this topic is present in the film “The Warmth of Our Bodies”: in a city abandoned by people, zombies, having nothing to do, return to routine life-long duties and even try to communicate with sounds.
Even if we assume that “the zombies have won” in the movie: what will they do when they destroy everything? In the sense of the cinematic plot and script, they can either quietly decompose under a bush, or grow kinder, wiser and become human again.
The cinema has painted itself into a corner and is forced to turn back time: bring the zombie back to life (for example, through love, as in “Warm Bodies”) or at least make him a tolerable sofa member of society (as happened with Ed, Shaun’s friend in “Shaun of the Dead").
Another option is to think about people who, when confronted with zombies, show the full spectrum of humanity and truly become human.
In general, the most interesting thing is not the zombie theme itself, but the phenomenon of turning naive, and then “meat” zombie films into a poetic reflection on man, about the illusions we live in. In essence, we are so caught up in the game that civilization (and almost each of us as a part of it) is constructing that we do not see “the world as it is.” And the series “The Walking Dead”, now in its fifth season, has been giving us an anatomical theater of our illusions.
The roads in big cities are empty, but no one is happy about this anymore. There are expensive cars everywhere, but you can go further on a horse. The main character, police officer Rick Grimes, tries his best to maintain reason and nobility, but the more stress, the more violently he reacts to the cruelty of those who are still alive, but have lost their humanity - have become essentially the “walking dead”. After the zombie apocalypse, the absurdity of racism and hostility becomes clearer. Groups of able-bodied survivors of this hell are howling among themselves for safety and food. And it turns out that we are talking not only about canned food from the supermarket, but also about the people themselves, whom cannibals perceive in the same way as we now perceive animals on farms. An alcoholic is ready to risk himself and his comrades in order to snatch a bag with a bottle from a zombie. A farmer keeps his zombie family in a barn, hoping for a cure for the dead, and insists that the walkers be treated humanely. A once peaceful, law-abiding man, faced with terrible things, becomes a psychopath who stores zombie heads in an aquarium, sets up a torture room and a zombie coliseum. But there remains something humane in him - he takes care of his zombie daughter and later takes care of several living ones. Powerful ambitions and sadistic tendencies come to the surface in the context of a collapsed civilization and public morality. People count the days without deaths and rejoice at the “30 days without incident” sign. A person adapts to everything: a woman with a katana cuts off zombies’ arms and jaws so that they cannot harm her, and leads her along on chains - their smell makes her “invisible” to crowds of the dead. The captured walkers are also used as troops against a hostile group, filling a truck with them. In essence, “The Walking Dead” is a reflection on what a person is capable of in extreme conditions, what the price of our civilization is, why we don’t value anything and are so bored while everything is good with us.
One of the most popular doomsday scenarios today is the zombie apocalypse - an invasion of the dead whose goal is to eat or infect a living person.
In 2012, when many expected the death of civilization, the most popular and even expected scenario was zombies.
Zombies appeared in popular culture in 1968 with the release of George Romero's film Night of the Living Dead. Since then, bloodthirsty corpses have captured the minds of many people. Thus, parades of the “rising dead” are held all over the world, and in the USA, even at the university level, games “people against zombies” are held.
The phenomenon of zombies at the beginning of this century interested academic science - it has been studied by cultural scientists, sociologists, philosophers and even political scientists since the beginning of this century. Physicists and mathematicians are calculating how quickly a zombie epidemic will destroy humanity.One such study was recently published in the Journal of Physics Special Topics. Scientists have come to the conclusion that approximately the hundredth day after the start of the zombie apocalypse, the number of people will decrease to levels at which repopulation of the planet will be almost impossible.
How will different schools of international relations react to zombies?
Zombie Development
Zombies first appeared on screens in the 1930s. The creators of the film “White Zombie”, the plot of which takes place in Haiti, were inspired by the magic of voodoo.
But Romero rethought this idea and moved the zombies to the mainland. In the film “Night of the Living Dead” he touches on the issues of racism. The film achieved the status of a cult classic and remains one of the most important American films to this day.
Since then, zombies have become what we know them today - aggressive living dead or people infected with an unknown virus, whose main goal is to eat or infect people who are still alive or uninfected.
It is noteworthy that Romero himself, who is responsible for the development of this genre, does not call his creatures zombies and uses them as a metaphor for complex socio-political problems.
Several key films were released in the 80s, after which zombies became firmly entrenched in popular culture. These are “Evil Dead”, “Day of the Dead”, “Return of the Living Dead”, “Re-Animator”.
At the end of the last century, the zombie phenomenon found its way into comics, computer games and even music. Among the key games that also influenced the development of the genre were Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead.
The popular philosopher Slavoj Zizek's “Looking Awry” comes out, in which he tries to answer the question of why the dead come back. In his opinion, zombies will worry us until the victims of the Holocaust and the Gulag are integrated into historical memory.
The 2000s marked a new stage with the release of the film “28 Days Later” directed by Danny Boyle. Zombies have evolved - they have accelerated, and infection occurs instantly.
Also notable is the film “Shaun of the Living Dead” (Shaun of the Dead). This parodic comedy is largely intertwined with the works of George Romero, in particular touching on the problem of consumer society and modern capitalism, which is raised in “Dawn of the Dead”.
After this, many philosophers and mathematicians paid attention to the “zombie problem”. American religious scholar Kim Paffenroth published the book “The Gospel of the Living Dead” at the university publishing house. How George Romero Sees Hell on Earth.”There are five theories about the origin of zombies
- a virus created by underground corporations, side effects from the experiments of large companies;
- military experiments to create biological weapons or animated soldiers;
- get to Earth with the help of aliens;
- mystical source of origin;
- The most popular theory is that zombies are a given.
Man is a wolf to man, and a zombie is a zombie
Scientists' calculations
A Canadian scientist who models the spread of diseases such as HIV, malaria, West Nile virus and others, developed a model of the capture of humanity by the living dead and described it in the book “Mathematical Modeling of Zombies.”
The formula derived by the mathematician that describes the zombie apocalypse looks like this: (bN)(S/N)Z = bSZ, where N is the number of people in the population, S is the proportion of people susceptible to the virus, Z is the number of zombies and b is the infectivity zombie.
Scientists used these methods to model the spread of human papillomavirus, where additional variables reflect transmission of the virus through homosexual and heterosexual contacts.
100 days later
Let's take a closer look at the latest research by physicists led by James Moore.
The speed of development of the zombie apocalypse, according to him, depends on two main parameters - with what probability and how quickly the process of becoming a zombie occurs after infection and the life expectancy of the new creature.
Moore and his team decided to create a model based on these two indicators for the worst epidemic in human history - the outbreak of plague, the “Black Death” in Medieval Europe.
In their scenario, infection from a zombie bite occurred with a 90 percent probability, and the “individuals” themselves lived for about 20 days, dying of thirst and hunger. The total population of the Earth was taken from actual modern figures - about 7.5 billion people.
The zombie spread model takes into account the existence of borders between countries and the fact that people are distributed extremely unevenly across the Earth.
For example, one of the rules in this model was that zombies could not cross the border unless they accumulated at least 10 thousand in the territory of the country where they originally “lived”. If zombies could not reach such a population, they would “die out” like local epidemics.
As these calculations showed, even just one infected person in a fairly densely populated area is, in principle, enough to cause a large-scale epidemic approximately 20 days after his infection.
In 100 days, according to researchers' calculations, only 181 people and approximately 190 million zombies will live on Earth.
This is below the level required to “restart” civilization and re-colonize the planet.
Accordingly, if the “zombie epidemic” lasts longer than 100 days, humanity will be doomed to extinction, the study authors conclude.
How will states behave?
Professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and author of the authoritative publication Foreign Policy, Daniel Drezner wrote the book “Theories of International Politics and Zombies.”
In it, he conducts a thought experiment about how different schools of international relations would behave.
“An analysis of the cultural zeitgeist is striking how an unnatural problem has become one of the most alarming concerns in international relations and one of the most natural fears of humanity. Today, humanity faces a truly serious problem - the problem of zombies,” Drezner begins his text.
Realism
There are many varieties of realism, but all realists start from a common premise: anarchy is the greatest threat to world politics. Anarchy does not necessarily imply chaos or disorder, but rather the absence of centralized legitimate authority.
In a world of anarchy, the only currency that has value is power, that is, the material ability to block pressure or violence while remaining able to influence others.
The global anarchic structure also does not allow the authorities to fully trust each other and forces states to be guided only by their own interests.
In short, realism has a rather dark view of the world. In other words, he's completely comfortable in the zombie universe.
How could the emergence of zombies affect world politics? The realistic answer is surprisingly simple: international relations will suffer little or no damage. While some will see the zombie outbreak as a new existential threat, realists will not be surprised by the claim that the arrival of zombies will lead to radical changes in human behavior.
Realists also predict balance-of-power politics. So will the spectrum of the living dead create an unstable coalition of people against zombies? This possibility cannot be excluded. If zombies emerge from central Eurasia, for example, their ability to spread rapidly could trigger the emergence of an alliance formed to stop the zombie hordes from conquering the continent.
Still from the movie Train to Busan
But it may also be that states will refrain from taking a proactive stance towards zombies in the hope that other countries will do the dirty work of banding together to suppress the walking dead.
In addition, states can take advantage of this threat to seize new territory, destroy Irredinista movements, settle old scores, or suppress long-standing rivals.
“China could use the zombie threat to justify occupying Taiwan. Russia may use the threat to justify its intervention in its near abroad. The US will also be vulnerable to the temptation to use the zombie threat as a strategic opportunity,” the author writes.
But in the end, realists, especially American ones, will undoubtedly remember the warning of US President John Quincy Adams, who called not to go beyond borders “in search of monsters to destroy.”
Liberalism
As with realism, liberalism also has many varieties. However, liberals believe that in a world of anarchy, cooperation is still possible. Liberals view world politics as a non-zero-sum game.
Cooperation—be it international trade, nuclear nonproliferation, disease prevention—can yield a global harvest of public goods on a large scale.
Key players in global politics have an incentive to realize the benefits of long-term cooperative cooperation and avoid the costs that would follow mutual defections.
At first glance, the liberal paradigm seems rather incompatible with the zombie canon, which leans more toward a living-dead apocalypse.
Indeed, the tragedy of liberalism in a zombie universe is that some of its core principles are likely to fuel the rise of zombieism. For example, open borders will likely facilitate the spread of both the living dead and infected human vectors across those borders.
If we look at the situation from the other side, it turns out that the liberal paradigm offers some analytical zest. Romantic zombie comedies contain both explicit and implicit elements of liberalism.
At the climax of Shaun of the Dead, the protagonist rallies his friends in a paean to liberalism: “As Bertrand Russell once said, “The only thing that will save humanity is cooperation.” I think we can verify this today.”
Still from the film Shaun of the Dead
What will liberals do after the zombie invasion? Provided the initial wave of zombies does not completely wipe out governments, liberals will suggest that an international anti-zombie regime could make a significant difference to the problem.
Given the significant public benefit of wiping out the living dead from the face of the earth, a thoughtful policy of coordination is a likely response.
The liberal model will predict an outcome that will not be perfect and will be subject to political criticism over time - much like the EU. That is, the system for preventing a total zombie apocalypse can also work quite well. There will undoubtedly be outbreaks of zombie activity.
Quasi-stationary anti-zombie humanitarian missions - perhaps under UN auspices - are likely to be deployed to failed states. Liberals acknowledge that wiping out the flesh-eating ghouls forever is unlikely. However, compressing the zombie problem into easily manageable threats is entirely possible. Most countries will kill the most zombies most of the time.
Neoconservatism
Neoconservative reaction
The policy for the rise of the living dead will be simple and clear. To paraphrase the famous statement of Robert Kagan, we can say: people are from Earth, and zombies are from hell. Neither trying to adapt nor trying to understand them will help.
“Neocons,” on the contrary, will advocate an aggressive and military response to maintain human hegemony. Instead of waiting for the zombies to come to them, they will use the attack policy, which involves fighting the living dead. A preemptive strike against zombies will certainly turn into a war against evil itself.
It is neoconservatism that makes this doctrine comparable to extant work on how best to respond to the zombie threat.
In fact, modeling conducted by researchers at Carleton University in Canada and the University of Ottawa suggests this: “An outbreak of zombies infecting humans could be catastrophic unless extremely aggressive tactics are used against the living dead... A zombie outbreak would likely result in destruction civilization, if it is not dealt with immediately.”
Still from the film World War Z
However, other elements of neoconservatism may undermine the long-term viability of the original political advocacy statements. For example, neoconservatives often recognize that all rivals are part of a single axis or alliance of evil enemies.
Of course, this assumption works if it is tied to zombies, but the neocons are unlikely to stop there. They will inevitably lump the corpses together with other threats to humanity, as part of a larger World War III against authoritarian despots and zombies—the “Evil Dead Axis.”
A real zombie, like a real UFO, is not so easy to come across. We have long dreamed of such an acquaintance - and we couldn’t think of a better occasion than the eve of Halloween. Realist found a zombie specialist - and learned from him the whole truth about the living dead and the places where they can be found.
Alexander Goliusov— Candidate of Medical Sciences, writer. As part of the program to combat malaria in Africa, he worked in Nigeria and Ghana. Engaged in research into the zombie phenomenon.
Where do zombies come from?
Legends are made up about zombies and mysterious stories are made up. In cinema alone, there are three main versions of the origin of zombies. The first is that zombies appeared as a result of a radiation anomaly. The second is that the zombie state is influenced by microorganisms. But the third version corresponds to reality. And according to it, classic zombies are people whom the sorcerers-shamans of the voodoo cult plunge into an unconscious state, and then into a state of drug intoxication.
Are there real zombies?
It is impossible to answer this question negatively. Even our interaction with you, an interview, is an attempt to influence me, and leading me to the desired or “correct” answer is an attempt to zombify me. People generally “zombify” each other every minute through manipulation. But to find out if classic zombies still exist, you need to go to Haiti.
Is it possible to revive a dead person using a virus?
Such cases are unknown to science and, by and large, it is impossible. Firstly, after biological death, irreversible cell death occurs in organs and tissues, starting with the nervous one. Secondly, the virus reproduces only in a living cell. And thirdly, the microorganism must be so universal that it can simultaneously perform the functions of all systems of the dead macroorganism: it will have to replace blood cells in order to carry oxygen, conduct impulses instead of dead cells, and so on. The virus cannot do this. It has a fairly simple structure - as a rule, it is DNA and RNA molecules protected by a shell.
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.
