Gaming's Burning Questions!

QUESTION: Do zombies exist? If so, is the zombie thing contagious?

ANSWER: This one was so hot, our expert called an expert. Dr. Kelley consulted with Steven Hatch, M.D., of the infectious-disease department at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center, and they came back with “a qualified yes. There is one disease in particular that the whole zombie thing might have been based on.” African Sleeping Sickness, spread by tsetse flies, has a range of unnerving symptoms, including “a change in personality, slurred speech, irritability, and difficulty walking. People with the disease tend to sleep all day and have insomnia at night.” Professor Sanjeev Krishna of St George’s, University of London, and the Wellcome Trust, put it this way: “This infection carries nightmarish qualities, reducing many of its victims to a zombie-like state before they go into a coma and die.”

But wait! Dr. Kelley has more good news. There are also prion diseases, in which a misfolded protein in the brain messes up neighboring proteins. “People with such diseases could conceivably reach a zombie-like state — i.e., becoming extremely lethargic and having blank expressions,” he says. Sure enough, a prion disease called kuru showed up in the late 1950s, due to the funeral practices of the Fore tribe in Papua, New Guinea — which involved some cannibalism as a way to reclaim the deceased’s lifeforce. “As it turns out,” Dr. Kelley reports, “eating the brains and marrow of people who die from this disease is a good way to get it yourself.”

Okay, so we’ll eat healthier. But what about that classic Romero breaking-out-of-coffins thing? Do those zombies exist? Dr. Chen has that one covered: “No, thank goodness.” (We’re still hoarding ammo just in case.)

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