We found out recently that if you try to leave a little kid in a graveyard late at night, he\u2019ll freak out. Even if you\u00a0offer\u00a0to leave him a gun to protect himself. Why? It\u2019s because on some instinctual level, all humans know it\u2019s just a matter of time until the zombies show up.<\/p>\n
Our culture is full of tales of the undead walking the Earth, from our religions to our comic books. But, some sort of\u00a0zombie apocalypse\u00a0isn\u2019t actually possible, right?<\/p>\n
Right<\/em>?<\/p>\n Guys?<\/p>\n Actually, yes. It\u2019s quite possible. Here\u2019s five ways it could happen, according to science.<\/p>\n As seen in \u2026 What are they? This bug infects rats, but can only breed inside the intestines of a cat. The parasite knows it needs to get the rat inside the cat (yes, we realize this sounds like the beginning of the most fucked-up Dr. Seuss poem ever) so the parasite\u00a0takes over the rat\u2019s freaking brain<\/em>, and intentionally makes it scurry\u00a0toward<\/em>\u00a0where the cats hang out. The rat is being programmed to get itself eaten, and it doesn\u2019t even know.<\/p>\n Of course, those are just rats, right?<\/p>\n How it can result in zombies: Oh, also, they\u2019ve done studies and shown that\u00a0the infected see a change in their personality and have a higher chance of going batshit insane.<\/p>\n Chances this could cause a zombie apocalypse: If you\u2019re comforting yourself with the thought that it may take forever for such a parasite to evolve, you\u2019re forgetting about all the biological weapons\u00a0programs\u00a0around the world, intentionally weaponizing such bugs. You\u2019ve got to wonder if the lab workers don\u2019t carry out their work under the unwitting command of the toxoplasmosa gondii already in their brains. If you don\u2019t want to sleep at night, that is.<\/p>\n You may be protesting that technically these people have never been dead and thus don\u2019t fit the dictionary definition of \u201czombies,\u201d but we can assure you that the distinction won\u2019t matter a whole lot once these groaning hordes are clawing their way through your\u00a0windows.<\/p>\n Read more:\u00a05 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen | Cracked.com\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We found out recently that if you try to leave a little kid in a graveyard late at night, he\u2019ll freak out. Even if you\u00a0offer\u00a0to leave him a gun to protect himself. Why? It\u2019s because on some instinctual level, all humans know it\u2019s just a matter of time until the zombies show up. Our culture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[443],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-world-war-z-zombies-attack-driver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/stphn5cole\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nResident Evil IV<\/em><\/p>\n
\nParasites\u00a0that turn victims into mindless, zombie-like slaves are fairly common in nature. There\u2019s one called\u00a0toxoplasmosa gondii\u00a0that seems to devote its entire existence to being terrifying.<\/p>\n
\nHey, did we mention that\u00a0half the human population on Earth is infected with toxoplasmosa, and don\u2019t know it? Hey, maybe you\u2019re one of them. Flip a coin.<\/p>\n
\nHumans and rats aren\u2019t all that different; thats why they use them to\u00a0test\u00a0our drugs. All it takes is a more evolved version of toxoplasmosa, one that could to do us what it does to the rats. So, imagine if half the world suddenly had no instinct for self-preservation or rational thought. Even less than they do now, we mean.<\/p>\n