Though dead humans can't come back to life, certain viruses
can induce such aggressive, zombie-like behavior, scientists say in the new
National Geographic Channel documentary The Truth Behind Zombies. (National
Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society, which part-owns the
National Geographic Channel.)
Rabies (a viral disease that infects the central nervous system)
can cause people to act erratically in a sort of trance, according to Samita
Andreansky, a virologist at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine
in Florida who also appears in the documentary. Combine rabies with the ability
of a flu virus to spread quickly through the air, and you might have the
makings of a zombie apocalypse. Unlike movie zombies, which become reanimated
almost immediately after infection and attack everyone around them, the first signs a human has rabies—such as
anxiety, confusion, hallucinations, and paralysis—don't typically appear for
ten days to a year, as the virus incubates inside the body. Once rabies sets
in, though, it's fatal within a week if left untreated.
If the genetic code of the rabies virus experienced enough
changes, or mutations, its incubation time could be reduced dramatically,
scientists say. Many viruses have naturally high mutation rates and constantly
change as a means of evading or bypassing the defenses of their hosts.
There are various ways viral mutations can occur, for
example through copying mistakes during gene replication or damage from
ultraviolet light.
"If a rabies virus can mutate fast enough, it could
cause infection within an hour or a few hours. That's entirely plausible,"
Andreansky said.
However, rabies does not induce humans to bite or cannibalize
other humans. In fact, it does the opposite, inducing them to lose their appetite
and avoid others until they quickly die. So even if rabies were to mutate to
become more deadly, at least it would still be difficult to catch and you
wouldn't have to worry about your infected classmate biting your arm off.
Here's a short video about rabies and its connect to a "zombie virus"
Link
Final Questions
1. What was your favorite part of the topic you chose?
Probably just researching and analyzing different information from different sources and finding similarities that different scientists and researchers all agree on. I'm also a huge geek and I like zombie stuff, so it's pretty cool (and also terrifying) to find some truth in something everyone thinks is completely fictional.
2. What was your least favorite part of the topic you chose?
Having to sort through bad information and find good resources. A lot of other sources I looked through had a lot of fallacies and misinformation, so I head to spend a lot of time finding good resources.
3. What do you like best about Genius Hour research?
The fact that I get to choose what I research so that I actually enjoy and am interested in what I'm researching.
4. What do you like least about Genius Hour research?
What's there to dislike? I'm getting a grade for doing something I enjoy. That gives me the motivation to do it, and I enjoy doing it. I'd say the only thing I don't really like is having time frames to complete the work, but that's how most things are in life and this is sort of practice for it.
5. What was the most important thing you learned about yourself, how you learn, or research in general as a result of this work?
I learned that I do research best in a certain environment. I can't seem to focus in places with lots of noise and other people, because I get easily distracted. I also learned that there are a lot of stupid people on the Internet that post wrong information, and when researching, one must be extremely careful of this incorrect information.
