The Science Behind Zombies: Fact or Fiction?

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So this man showed us that zombies might actually exist, with a scientific explanation behind them. Back in 1980, he walked into a small village in Haiti and approached a woman in the marketplace. He claimed to be her brother, Clervius, and proved it with all sorts of facts that only he would know. The catch? She had watched him die in an American-run hospital 18 years prior. He was pronounced dead by two doctors. The body was placed in cold storage for 20 hours. Then she watched as he was placed in a cellarrow. sealed coffin and buried in a cemetery just north of their village. Ten days later, a heavy concrete memorial slab was placed over the grave by the family. So this caught the attention of a local psychiatrist Lamarck Diyon, who'd been researching tales of zombies for decades, but this was the first verifiable case. He worked with the locals to design a series of detailed questions about his childhood that only Narcisse would be able to answer. He passed. When the BBC got wind, they verified the details with the hospital and checked the death certificate. But what about his story? In Haiti, All land gets divided equally amongst male offspring. When his father died, Narcisse refused to sell his peace to his brother, who then may have contracted with a sorcerer, called a Bokor, to have him zombified. Nercise tells of being conscious the entire time. He heard his sister weeping as he was pronounced dead and remembers the spike being driven through the coffin into his cheek during the funeral. After his funeral, he describes being dug up by the sorcerer and then taken to work other zombies for the next two years, at which point the zombie master was killed, the slaves were freed, and he spent the next 16 years wandering the countryside, waiting for the death of his vengeful brother before coming home. So this all happened. But how? Welcome back to What the Science! Spooky Time! When this story got out, some folks raised money and sent a young Harvard ethnobotanist named Wade Davis down to Haiti to investigate. His mission? To discover a pharmacological basis or zombie poison that was a zombie poison that was a young Harvard ethnobotanist was responsible for the phenomena, and get samples that could maybe be turned into a new surgical anesthetic. At one point, even NASA was interested to develop artificial hibernation for astronauts. Davis' initial research pointed to a local plant, appropriately named a zombie cucumber. Do not make a zombie cucumber salad. It contains psychoactive compounds known to cause delirium, amnesia, and a stuporous state. But when he got there, Davis realized he could not simply walk into, I mean, ask for the poison. Godon culture, gaining the trust of the Hungans, the priests, and Bokor's, the sorcerers. This involved participating in complex and sometimes dangerous rituals, once even being forced to hold a burning coal in his bare hand. This initiated him into a secret society called the Banzango. And finally convinced a sorcerer named Marcel Pierre to show him the zombie poisons preparation. Although the convincing still involved a complex negotiation process, and a bluff by Davis, where he used sleight of hand to pretend to poison himself to prove his own strength. zombie poison ingredient? The ground-up bones of a baby human girl that Davis helped them dig up from the grave. Next, some freshly killed blue lizards, a toad, a sea snake, many local plants, and a pufferfish, which contains tetrototoxin, a poison 1,000 times more potent than cyanide. It blocks voltage-gated sodium channels, disrupts the nervous system, and, at just the right dose, can induce paralysis. There are multiple case reports from Japan, where they eat pufferfish, where people declared dead from poisoning later woke up. One did as his body was being removed from the cart in the crematorium. Talk about just in the nick of time. In some parts of Japan, a person declared dead from eating pufferfish is customarily allowed to lie alongside his or her coffin for three days before burial. But back to Haiti. This 2024 study theorized that tetrototoxin survivors might have permanent vocal damage that makes their voice more nasal. And it plus some oxygen deprivation. might affect muscle coordination. And the zombie cucumber? It was used in the antidote given after digging the zombie out of the grave. But it doesn't actually cure to trototoxin, because nothing does. But Davis theorized that it alongside the native Haitian beliefs would act in a way that convinced the people who get dug up that they were actually the walking dead. Davis sent samples to the lab where they used it to paralyze animals. But some follow-up studies tried to get new full-up. versions of the poison and could not find enough active toototoxin in them to produce their reported effects. They called out Davis for bad science, but perhaps their Bocor sources did what they first did to Davis and gave these uninitiated researchers fake versions of the powder. I, for one, would like to believe that the poison is real, and maybe even that some of those ingredients might modify the effect of the poison in some way. Hopefully not the human bones, but we may never know. So what do you think? Have I convinced you that zombies are real? Send this to a friend who doesn't believe...

Additional notes

Taylor Swift actually first started on this topic based on research I was doing for a video about her recent song "Venom." I maaay have gone down a few rabbit holes. Normally I would spend more time on the critical scientific evaluation of it. But sometimes it's nice to just have fun and dig into the story. Know that there is quite a bit of critique of a lot of what is mentioned in this video. And I can go into it, if you guys want, in a longer piece. I started off by reading all the studies listed below, but then I went and got Wade Davis's full book, "The Serpent and the Rainbow," which added some nice color. I also pulled a bit of footage from the 2012 VICE documentary on the topic (where the poison sample they got also ended up being inert. That's not surprising given that they filmed the whole thing, which might have raised a few red flags with the locals. ) 📚 Studies Used DOI: 10.1016/0378-8741(83)90029-6 DOI: 10.1007/s00405-024-08861-0 DOI: 10.1016/0041-0101(89)90210-9 DOI: 10.1016/0041-0101(90)90330-a DOI: 10.1126/science.335372 #science #zombies #halloween #TikTokHalloweenContest

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