Well, it took a team of scientists from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University (lead by Robert Smith?, question mark intentional) to codify and scientifically prove what any horror movie buff has known since 1968:  a zombie outbreak would probably doom civilization as we known it.  The study, actually chapter 4 of the book Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress, says that unless humanity fights back in a quick and decisive manner, civilization would collapse.  You can read it for yourself.

Allow me to be the first to say, “Duh.”

Humans can’t even handle flooding and hurricanes without mass panic, riots and looting, and generalized anarchy.  While authorities say they’d tell the public about a zombie attack, I don’t believe that the word would get out quickly enough to prevent the cities from being overrun, or at least severely endangered.  After all, the thing about zombies isn’t their toughness or guile or ability to fight.

Zombies are dangerous due to sheer numbers and ability to blend in with people until it is too late, as well as their ease of virus transmission/people conversion.  By the time anyone even notices them there would be hundreds.  By the time government officials realized what it was, there would be thousands (assuming they were in a population center).  The hunt for the creatures would be house-to-house, and cost many lives.  If every dead person comes back zombified, well… that means there’s trouble.

Tags: zombies, the science of zombies, zombie outbreak, University of Ottawa, Carleton University, Robert Smith?, zombie research, Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress

Margaret O’Callaghan had a need for a new type of kitchen utensil.  The round-bottomed ladle and the spatula are just not good enough when you’re dealing with things like crock pots and serving dishes.  That’s why she invented the scrudle, a combination ladle and spatula designed to scrape the deliciousness from any sort of cooking […]

Every day, Tom Baker deals with the issue of traffic.  Given Southern California’s massive concentration of cars, it’s no wonder that Baker would get frustrated dealing with the daily traffic routine.  That inspiration resulted in these great images of Los Angeles without the cars.   Here’s the full image gallery, and it’s awesome.
I love the […]

Have you ever wondered where salt comes from?  I mean, salt is in everything from fertilizers (potassium chloride) to the dinner table (sodium chloride), but where does it actually come from?  Why, salt mines, of course!  They’re not just for horrible industrial accidents or mad scientist lairs anymore.  English Russia has a great look inside […]

For some reason, the kids these days love the Twilight saga.  Believe me, it pains me to call it the Twilight saga, because to me a saga is a great, sweeping work of masterful literature, not a teenage vampire romance novel.  Either way, the latest movie based on the Twilight books, New Moon (officially The […]

People worry about all kinds of crises as the world ends, but as the movie Zombieland taught us, sometimes it’s our snack foods that are most important to our happiness.  For Tallahassee, it was his beloved Hostess Twinkies.  If your favorite food is the humble Eggo waffle from General Mills, then you’d best head to […]

I love goofy little websites like this.  From the Wal-Martians to quality engineering, I love a nice, odd corner of the Internet to investigate.  If it’s something that can result in some comedy thanks to random word generation, even better.   That’s why when Mysterio offered to predict my holiday gifts, I jumped at the […]

Linguist d’Armond Speers is an odd bird.  How else could you explain someone that taught his son Klingon as his first language? For the first three years of his son’s life, Speers spoke to his son only in the fictional alien language Klingon from the Star Trek universe.  His reasoning?  It was an experiment to […]