Tuesday, November 10, 2020

It's the Zombie Apocalypse!

 Remember, I post most of my stuff these days on the AIER blog but every now and again ... I have to feed my roots with a jooooocy one:
 

This year has witnessed so many strange happenings that it remains difficult to keep track of them all: 

botched elections (predicted to be so to boot!), corporate donations to BLM, CHOP/CHAZ 

(Seattle autonomous zone), “murder” hornets, peaceful protests that destroyed lives and property, 

wildfires gone wild, and, of course, the Covid pandemic and incredible attempts to stop it via 

socioeconicide.


Viewed separately, each phenomenon appears bizarre. Viewed holistically, we are clearly in the midst

 of the zombie apocalypse. I don’t mean some Hollywood concoction like The Dawn of the Walking Dead 

28 Weeks Later (that’s a mashup of three different franchises for the uninitiated), I mean the original, 

authentic zombie, a person whose mind has been taken over by another.


Mind control sounds all sci- fi but it need not be. In fact, even fungi can do it. Scientists have discovered

 new types of fungus that infect ant brains, forcing the ants to anchor themselves to leaves and other 

stable places where the spores develop, kill the ant, feed on it, and then use it as a platform to spread to

 other ants.


Other examples abound: A type of wasp larvae infects a spider, inducing it to build a nice cocoon in 

which the larvae lives after it kills and eats the spider. Another type of wasp partially paralyzes a 

cockroach, leads it by its antennae to her underground lair, then feeds the roach to its youngin’. 


A type of flatworm lives in live cow liver. It places its eggs in the cow’s GI tract, where the inevitable 

happens. Cow dung-eating snails then consume the flatworm eggs, which the snail turns into slime 

balls that ants eat. The flatworm larvae then infect the ants’ brains, inducing the ants to sit motionless

 on the tips of grass leaves where, you guessed it, a cow is likely to chomp ‘em down.


Another type of fluke produces larvae in a type of ocean snail, inducing it to attach to the gills of a type

 of small fish, from whence the larvae can infect the fish’s brain, inducing it into spasms that attract

 the attention of sea birds. Once in the sea bird, the flukes mature and reproduce. Their eggs land on 

someone’s head or, more likely, the ocean, where ocean snails eat them and repeat the cycle anew.


Hairworms infect crickets, driving them toward lights, which in nature often means moonlight dancing on 

water. The crickets then drown, allowing the hairworms to reproduce in the wet cricket corpse.


You might think that your brain is too sophisticated to be as easily controlled as that of an insect or other

 creepy crawler. That’s true but the defining characteristic of zombies is that they don’t realize they are

 being controlled. If they realized their plight, they could resist.


A leading candidate for causing zombie-like behavior in humans is a cervid (deer) affliction called

 Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). The CDC has worried about CWD jumping the species barrier for 

years and in Fall 2019 the popular media was awash in stories of “zombie deer.” I don’t mean fringe 

sites, I mean the most trusted sources of news, including the almost infallible CNN. Like the ants 

awaiting certain death by cow, zombie deer easily fall victim to predators, including orange-vested 

ones and ones that go vroom vroom, allowing the nasties to spread to scavengers and humans.


While few people consume the flesh of wild cervids where CWD is endemic, it could have crossed into

 domestic species via captive cervids and from there into humans. Unlike Mad Cow Disease, which

 resided in bovine brains (and few eat such organs any more), CWD resides in the muscle 

(meat) too and is not destroyed by cooking.


Consider the symptoms of people who have died of mysterious prion (brain) ailments in recent years,  

as reported by the CDC (so it must be true because they are “the” scientists!):


“One of the patients died after an illness lasting 5–6 months that was characterized by progressive  

aphasia [inability to understand language], memory loss, social withdrawal, vision disturbances, and 

seizure activity leading to status epilepticus and induced coma.”


“The second patient died from an illness lasting ≈16 months. The patient’s illness began with behavioral

 changes, including unusual outbursts of anger and depression. Confusion, memory loss, gait 

disturbances, incontinence, headaches, and photophobia also developed.”


It is possible that further mutations have rendered the ailment less deadly and more contagious, 

spreading perhaps through human saliva or a common blood vector like mosquitoes, as that is the most

 successful reproductive “strategy” and hence the path of most pathogens. If zombification weren’t 

plausible, why would the CDC maintain a zombie preparedness page?


Before you grab your shotgun and start hunting human zombies, I should explain how manipulative 

the above narrative is. It cites authorities like CNN and the CDC and combines plausible but unproven 

speculation about mutation with half-truths (if you actually follow the link, it turns out that the CDC’s

 zombie page is a publicity hook) with real evidence of symptoms. I did everything but call it “novel” 

because that would have made it too obvious that I was deliberately trying to mirror the tactics used to gin up fear over the coronavirus.


Were I an epidemiologist (or physicist), I daresay I could publish a model with Neil Ferguson, 

funded by the Gates Foundation, showing that in a year 100 billion people will be zombified unless 

[insert favorite policy here: stop hunting and trapping; release all captive animals “back” into the wild; 

beg Gaia’s forgiveness through mass human sacrifice, etc.]. 


I am not joking about publication: a 2017 peer-reviewed study predicted that zombies would wipe out 

humanity in 100 days. And it was published by physicists (like Ferguson) employing a standard

 epidemiological model. Like an infamous Covid model, it was rooted in a student project and 

somehow published even though the students involved were smart enough to realize that the

 model’s assumptions drove the outcome: un-zombified people would not change their behaviors 

and could not kill the zombies. Truth is (a) stranger!


The real zombie apocalypse occurring now didn’t start with Mother Nature. Humans caused it, but not 

in a conspiratorial plot. According to impeccable sources like the New York Times, the Atlantic, and 

 NPR, zombification is slavery is zombification. New World enslavers, they show, sought to turn their 

human chattels into biological machines who (that?) did as they were bid and nothing more. While 

some slaves resisted zombified enslavement, many others succumbed and became the mindless 

“tools” of their masters.


Slavery is now rightly eschewed as immoral and uneconomic (if profitable for enslavers) but 

governments remained interested in zombification, in the creation of passive workers and citizens 

easily tricked by mindless mantras like “Your vote is your voice” and “Flatten the curve.” It’s not that 

any individual or state controls the thoughts of everyone all the time, it is that people are kept vulnerable 

to manipulation by means of an educational system that encourages rote memorization and focuses 

students on external rewards, like grades and awards, instead of the intrinsic joy of learning.


Unfortunately, modern zombies are more difficult to detect than the drooling, brain-hungry figments 

of Hollywood’s imagination. Analogous to some alcoholics, they are “high- functioning” zombies, q

uite capable of serving as a specialized cog in some bureaucratic machine or running heavy machinery. 

But they are not entirely free people either and hence horrible citizens in a Republic that requires 

eternal vigilance for its success. But there is a tell: try explaining Public Choice theory to suspected 

zombies. If they still don’t get it after the third attempt, definitely stay at least six Congressional 

districts away.


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