Would a prion be the most likely cause of zombies?

Question

I am wondering what would be the most likely cause of zombies. The movie Night of the Living Dead suggested that radiation may have been the cause for the zombies. But plenty of incidents on Earth have exposed people to varying degrees of radiation, and none of them have turned people into zombies.

Perhaps an infectious agent (such as a bacterium, virus, fungus, prion, or parasite) would be more likely to turn people into zombies. The novel World War Z used a virus as the cause for the zombies, but I'm not aware of any virus on Earth that comes close to turning people into zombies.

Would a prion be the most likely cause of zombies? It seems all known prion diseases attack the brain. Mad cow disease, a prion disease, results in the following symptoms:

Cows affected by BSE are usually apart from the herd and will show progressively deteriorating behavioural and neurological signs. One notable sign is an increase in aggression. Cattle will react excessively to noise or touch and will slowly become ataxic.

Deteriorating behavioral and neurological signs, increase in aggression, reacting to noise, and becoming ataxic are all exhibited by zombies.

Answer 1

Here’s the definitive paper: The Etiology of Romero-Fulci Disease: The Case for Prions

In particular,

Besides the evident histological similarities, there are some striking parallels between the modes of transmission and symptomology of TSEs and those of Romero-Fulci disease. Here perhaps the most compelling example is kuru, an endogenous disorder unique to the Fore-speaking peoples of the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. Kuru, which means “trembling with fear” in the Fore tongue, reached epidemic proportions in Papua New Guinea prior to 1971, when the practice of ritual funerary endocannibalism responsible for its transmission was abolished by law. Traditionally among the Fore people the cooking and consumption of the corpse—particularly the brain—of a recently-deceased loved one was considered a gesture of respect for the departed and an integral part of the mourning process. Because kuru’s incubation period can be as long as three decades, some older Fore who participated in cannibalistic rites are still dying of the disease. However, no young person has exhibited symptoms of kuru since the practice of endocannibalism was discontinued (14). Although the incubation period of RFD is radically shorter, the similarities between it and kuru are difficult to ignore: Both are fatal neurodegenerative diseases transmitted orally by an act of cannibalism focused particularly upon the brain matter. Kuru is known to be caused by prions; it therefore seems not unreasonable to propose—especially in light of the striking histological similarities exhibited in Figure 1 and Figure 2—that the causal agent in RFD is also a prion, albeit of a hitherto unknown fast-acting variety.

The main problem is that the speed of infection (or activation?) Is orders of magnitude more rapid than would be expected. The article speculates

The prion hypothesis is a strong contender, either as an alternative first cause or as a cofactor.

There may be a complex mixture of agents involved including other biological agents, poisons, and ionizing radiation. Prions are involved and behind the zombie effect, but not the sole cause. Even if prion conversion is the actual mechanism for the zombie state, other mechanisms are needed to disperse them through the tissue and catalize the needed changes.

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Here’s my remix: Nanites are invented to fix tissue. They are to the point of mostly working. But unexpected prion foldings act like a bug in the system, just as they do naturally: the nanites try to “fix” things using the misfold as the exemplar! Meanwhile the body is kept working by any means the nanites can manage without caring that the brain is messed up. Rather than a persistent vegitative state though the misfolding affects the nanites themselves, making them (further) malfunction and create a Romero-style zombie.

Answer 2

Classical "Zombies" - undead being which feed on flesh, and can only be killed by destroying the brain - cannot exist.

Basic biology forbids this.

Muscles

When you die the normal processes which power your body end. Your heart stomps pumping blood. You stop breathing. Without blood distributing energy and oxygen to your muscles, they can't function. If they can't function, you can't move.

It doesn't matter if a Zombie eats brains, or anything else. If that food is not broken down, and the energy not transported to the muscles then you can't operate the body. The whole system needs to be functioning, not just convenient bits and pieces.

The Brain

Within minutes of the brain being deprived of oxygen our neural pathways begin to deteriorate. There is a very real risk that if you reanimate someone after they were deprived of oxygen for a long time they may suffer from severe and completely unforeseen brain injuries.

Maybe they will have lost their memories, maybe they will be "alive", but never wake up from the coma they're in, etc.

The brain also "runs the whole show" as far as operating the body goes. There is no way that a dead body could rise after months of undergoing decomposition. Even after days of decomposition. There would be nothing left to "think" about eating or anything else.

More Likely

Rabies

A virus which makes people go crazy and attack others is not that far fetched. Watch the movie "28 days later" for a pretty chilling view of what could easily happen if the right animal activist breaks into the wrong lab.

These are not zombies, however, in that they will die of the same things we do: malnutrition, injury, poison, disease, viruses and bacteria - even the common cold could do them in.

A bullet to the chest would be just as effective as one to the brain (in the grand scheme of things).

They would still need to go to the bathroom, except they wouldn't remember how to take their trousers off, or how to wipe their asses. How long would it take for some severe and utterly nasty infections to set in?

Nano-Plague

If you're dead set on setting the undead loose on the world, then nanotechnology might level the playing field for you.

Nanobots wielding the bodies of dead humans and animals in order to fight their creators (us), could sound somewhat plausible in a sci-fi setting. I say this because you can claim that rather than having the body move under the power of its own muscles, nanobots would actually be facilitating the movement, not living cells.

All you'd have to do is explain why those nanobots did not simply choke the life from every human in the first place, or why they don't build robots to murder us all in our sleep, rather than shambling about in rotting corpses.

Answer 3

There's a fungus that turns insects into zombies. I don't know how viable that is for larger animals, like us fleshy humans, but it does exist. I have a vague recollection that a TV show did this once for people as well (as Monster of the Week), but I can't think of what series.

I also happen to be reading EX-Heros right now and the vector in that book is a virus that as it turns out (spoiler!) was created on accident by a superhero with regenerative powers trying to resurrect his dead wife. So the virus being semi-magical having the described behaviour is plausible within the setting.

Edit:

Now that I think about it, Invasion of the Body Snatchers could be seen as zombie-like: the "infected" are actually aliens and will abduct people, make a copy of them (that's actually an alien) and reinsert them into the population. With the right behaviours and attributes, these aliens could be considered zombies.

Answer 4

I read a book a while by Brandon Mull, and in the series Beyonders, they have a zombie plague. It is cause by little worms with hive minds. These worms knit together wounds, and somehow work together to move the body, like a second set of muscles. They feed off of the blood of their victims, and take their bodies.

I find this scenario the most realistic, otherwise, how would a zombie stay in one piece, or get anywhere at all? Why would it feed on flesh, like in the walking dead? The food is irrelevant to their survival, and they don't think or breathe, so their brain would be dead and they'd have no reason to go eat people. But man, do these nasty little worms crave blood.

I don't think prions are realistic, because once the body becomes significantly damaged, then you have brain death, which mains you cannot move. Besides, what purpose would prions have with eating people? Unless these prions somehow supplied the brain with oxygen, and made sure the body was not damaged, they wouldn't be very intimidating. Break its leg and it can only drag itself very slowly, or crawl.

I recommend using some kind of parasite, because then there is an actual purpose to the madness of their violence. Also, some people might have a smidgeon of reason, maybe enough to barely keep a hold on themselves, or enough to strategize how to catch people. This might make your zombie apocalypse more dangerous and interesting.

Answer 5

Would a prion be the most likely cause of zombies? It seems all known prion diseases attack the brain.

That's true, but prions are backwards for zombie purposes. How do you get a prion disease? By eating infected brains. But why would you start eating the brains in the first place? The zombie story (ignoring science) is that a zombie bites you and infects you, then zombies eat brains. That's not how prions work.

Someone will likely point out that it is possible to get a prion disease without eating brains. The infectious agent can also show up in blood and other places. This is true, but its normal transmission method remains ingestion (as seen in your links). So the zombies would be created by food, not by zombie to human transmission.

Rabies is probably a much better basis. It transmits via bite and affects the brain. There is some speculation that rabid humans were the origin of the zombie stories.

Answer 6

Just a quick input - the rabies virus has a similar effect to zombiism - victim becomes irrational, reverts to animal-like and extremely aggressive behavior, bites victims.

I think that the best counterargument to the virus idea is the fact that viruses must invade cells, one by one, and the cells must then produce more viruses. All this takes time - enough time for a victim to be quarantined before further transmission. Generally speaking, viruses are not sufficiently rapid acting to create a zombie pandemic.

It is for this reason that I would favor the prion as a hypothetical pathogen to create zombies. Of course, death would follow soon after (as is seen in BSE or other prionic diseases), but there would be a sufficient period of severe cognitive impairment and irrational behavior to allow transmission before the victim finally succumbs to the disease.

Answer 7

I think prions may be one part of the way, but it's not enough. Prions themselves exist in our body and would be turned into to a so-called 'zombie virus' for an unknown reason. Therefore,there must be some mechanics that turn the prion in our body to dangerous one, such as some kind of virus or genetic mutation. Anyway, prions don't have high infection rate but the prion in our body may be detonated and turn us to zombie.

P.S Don't be afraid.Just avoid eating infected meat and you are 70% safe.

Answer 8

Wasps. It's wasps you need to worry about. (Or some other means of injecting suitable neurotoxins into key areas of the brain.)

No, they aren't traditional undead beings fresh from the grave and roaming in search of brains to eat, but they are beings entirely under the motor control of another. Perhaps some mad scientist has figured out a way to achieve similar results with humans.