Large Fierce Mammal

Yes, there’s even a video game.

“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

~ Albert Einstein ~

Apocalyptic events come in many flavours. For example, back in the 50’s and 60’s it was nuclear war that held the spotlight, and thus was born an entire genre of science fiction, horror, and fantasy literature and films that regularly feature the latest in a hit parade of causal events. No matter what starts it all – doomsday bomb, sudden onset ice age, rogue asteroid, plague – there’s always one common thread: modern technological society as we know it has melted down with a resulting removal of anything resembling law and order so that small groups of people now exist as isolated scavengers, fighting for their daily survival against the horrors of their new reality.

The latest favourite is the zombie apocalypse, a concept that first reared its undead head in 1954 with the publication of Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend, and so far has gone on to spawn three films – The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and I Am Legend (2007). In this case, a man who believes himself to be the last healthy human on earth has become so because he is immune to the ravages of a pandemic that has turned the rest of the population into vampiric zombies.

The zombie apocalypse continues to enjoy success as a never ending source of entertainment, and the genre has now spread to encompass everything from the horrifically serious to the completely hilarious. There are “Zombiewalks” organized in cities all over that encourage people to tart it up in their finest gore and come out to be undead for a day. Here’s some YouTube footage from the one in Halifax, Nova Scotia that happened this past August:

Notorious humour website Cracked.com has also made a contribution with its 29 October 2007 article 5 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen in which they did a creditable job of trotting out all the documented ways zombies happen, at least as far as they’re known in that thing called popular culture. All tom foolery aside though, like most things that haunt our nightmares, zombies have a basis in fact, albeit the reverse of what you might think. In a culture that knows how to create them, people don’t fear the zombie, they fear becoming one.

Voodoo is a recognized official religion on the island nation of Haiti, where it coexists with Christianity. While it undeniably has its dark side, Voodoo has all the characteristics of the kind of spirit and life energy based spirituality that thrived long before Christianity made its appearance, and that continues to do so in assorted forms all over the world. Voodoo practitioners on the dark path may list among their abilities the secret of turning a human being into a zombie through the administering of psychoactive drugs referred to commonly as “zombie powder” containing, among other things, a powerful hallucinogen made from toad venom, and  Tetrodotoxin (TTX). Normally harvested from fish, TTX has also been found in some mollusks as well as one species of amphibian, and is actually produced by a symbiotic bacteria that has colonized the animal. In humans, TTX is approximately 10 times more toxic than potassium cyanide. Administered in an appropriate dosage, TTX blocks the firing of nerve cells and in cases of severe exposure can result in death from respiratory arrest.

Wade Davis is a Harvard educated anthropologist and ethnobotanist who has researched and written extensively on Haitian Voodoo, including the creation of zombies. In his capacity as a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, Davis was interviewed in January 2010  on the subject of Voodoo practices and their role in recovering from the tragic earthquake in Haiti. In that interview, he gives some insights into how Voodoo and black magic became synonymous in popular culture.

Davis has written two books dealing extensively with zombies and the making of them – a process called called “zombification” – Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988), which resulted from the findings of his 1982 expedition to Haiti to investigate a medically verified report of zombification and attempt to obtain samples of zombie powder for analysis; and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986) which was a best seller, and in 1988 was made into a movie directed by Wes Craven. The latter tells the story of Haitian Clairvius Narcisse who “died” on 2 May 1962 and reappeared at is home village 18 years later to tell of his zombification as a punishment followed by 2 years as a zombie.

In addition to the many links embedded in this article, I’ll leave you with three more treats. First, the trailer for Wes Craven’s production of The Serpent and the Rainbow. Put your drink down before you hit play.

Follow that with this 1986 CBC interview with the late Peter Gzowski in which Davis discusses the book. Click here.