Wednesday, June 19, 2013

"World War Z" and rabies

Readers heading to see the new Brad Pitt film, World War Z, will catch allusions to rabies.  Zombies are not rabid.  Rabies kills.  Zombies are forever.

The film is terrifying, by the way, so see it even if it isn't about rabies.

Here is some background about the relationship between Zombies and rabies.  

Connecting zombies to rabies isn’t a stretch, it turns out. Rabies is a real and terrifying neurological disease that, when contracted in humans, can make the victim appear zombie-like (fatigue, vision disturbances, slurred speech, loss of coordination) and, if the infection reaches the brain, it is one of the few diseases that is 100 percent fatal and for which there is still no known cure. Once bitten by an infected animal, the human victim begins showing symptoms much like the flu, becoming weak, feverish, and plagued by headaches for several days.
Spanish physician Juan Gomez-Alonso explains four connections between rabies and vampire myths in a 1998Neurology journal article, the most obvious being infection through the blood via bites. Rabies victims also often suffer from facial spasms, lending them an animalistic appearance. The third connection is the time frame: vampire lore had them living for forty days before being turned, the same amount of time it usually takes for the victim of a rabies attack to die after their initial bite. 
Here is an excerpt from Monica Murphy and Bill Wasik's excellent and thorough Rabid:  

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