Zombies—A Pop Culture Resource for Public Health Awareness

History of Zombies in the Media

Zombies and Parallels with Other Public Health Issues

Zombie Psychology

Discussion

Conclusions

Acknowledgment

References

Figure

Table

Suggested Citation

Melissa Nasiruddin, Monique Halabi, Alexander Dao, Kyle Chen, and Brandon Brown

Author affiliations: Author affiliation: University of California, Irvine, California, USA

Abstract

Sitting at his laboratory bench, a scientist adds mutation after mutation to a strand of rabies virus RNA, unaware that in a few short days, an outbreak of this very mutation would destroy society as we know it. It could be called “Zombie Rabies,” a moniker befitting of the next Hollywood blockbuster—or, in this case, a representation of the debate over whether a zombie apocalypse, manufactured by genetically modifying one or more diseases like rabies, could be more than just fiction. Fear of the unknown has long been a psychological driving force for curiosity, and the concept of a zombie apocalypse has become popular in modern society. This article explores the utility of zombies to capitalize on the benefits of spreading public health awareness through the use of relatable popular culture tools and scientific explanations for fictional phenomena.
Although zombies are currently an integral part of our popular culture, our morbid fascination with the walking dead spans several centuries. Historians and anthropologists trace the origin of zombies to the folklore of several tribes in western Africa, from Ghana to Nigeria (1,2). During the slave trade of the late 1500s through the 1800s, persons from these regions were spirited away from their homes to till the plantations of the Caribbean and the European colonies, bringing with them the voodoo culture of magic and spells. Among some academics, zombies in the New World were thought to be wretched, half-dead creatures that reflected the bondage African-born and Caribbean slaves suffered at the hands of their masters, working to the point of exhaustion in the plantation fields while having little to no agency (2). To this day, voodoo is prominent in western Africa, Haiti, New Orleans, and parts of the Caribbean Islands (1).
Haitian voodoo folklore recognizes a dual identity of zombis: one form of zombi is an ambulatory body without a living soul, and the other, lesser-known form is a soul wandering without a body (2). This severance of a body and its soul, known as zombification, is thought to occur when a sorcerer, or boko, performs a combination of dark magic spells on a person to kill, enslave, or inflict illness upon him (3). Bokos may also use poisonous powders in which frog or toad venom and tetrodotoxin, a powerful neurotoxin secreted by puffer fish that can trigger paralysis or death-like symptoms, could be primary ingredients. Which toxins are used in the zombie powders specifically, however, is still a matter of contention among academics (4). Once the sorcerer has split the body and soul, he stores the ti-bon anj, the manifestation of awareness and memory, in a special bottle. Inside the container, that part of the soul is known as the zombi astral. With the zombi astral in his possession, the sorcerer retains complete control of the victim’s spiritually dead body, now known as the zombi cadavre. The zombi cadavre remains a slave to the will of the sorcerer through continued poisoning or spell work (1). In fact, the only way a zombi can be freed from its slavery is if the spell jar containing its ti-bon anj is broken, or if it ingests salt or meat. The latter would usually cause the zombi to hunt down and kill its master before finally returning to its family or its final rest as a corpse (1,2).
Although most cultures would consider the zombie to be a fictional creature, zombiism (i.e., being a zombie) is rather common in Haiti, with instances of people being reported dead by loved ones, only to be spotted fully reanimated and wandering around town several weeks to several years later. In Haitian and African culture, zombification is a punishable offense on the same order of severity as murder (1). A person who has been zombified, or transformed into a zombie, can have a blunt affect, dull gaze, and almost stuporous behavior, characterized by a lumbering gait and simple, repetitive vocalizations and movements. Most medical evaluations would characterize victims of zombification as having mental disorders such as catatonic schizophrenia (1). The aforementioned traits have been incorporated into the current interpretation of zombies found in modern film and media.