Solanum is fiction, solanum is not real, solanum does not cause zombies.
Many readers [Holden, mikac, Michael] have mentioned Solanum or written that they have researched zombies, finding Solanum to be the cause. FAIL. Solanum is a large, variable genus of annual plants and perennial plants. They often have attractive fruit and flowers. They are poisonous to humans (though not necessarily to other animals), but many bear edible fruits, leaves, or tubers. In case you don’t get the joke, one form of Solanum fruit is the tomato, Solanum lycopersicum. Potatoes, Tomatoes and Eggplants. Not zombies.
I’m not trying to deny or belittle those with concerns about zombies, it’s just that the zombie creating Solanum virus is fake, and the record needs to be set straight. Focus your research efforts elsewhere. The Undead Report has focused at length about other possible zombie causes, including aggressive rabies strains, toxoplasma gondii, organ and cellular reanimative efforts and Helacyton gartleri. These are legitimate concerns, Solanum is not.
Max Brooks fails to fact-check a section of his own book. About page 130, he states “…hunters have come up against walking dead who only hours before were members of their own party!”, when it is declared throughout the book that death and reanimation take approximately a day “Hour 23: Reanimation” (page 7). This is a pretty glaring mistake and should make clear that the ZSG is a work of excellent (and often humourous) fiction.
More information on the fallacy of zombie Solanum can be read at Above Top Secret, or Wikipedia which states “‘Solanum’, [is] the fictional virus that creates a zombie”. If you have any information similar to actual viruses, bacteria or symbiotes which cause a zombie-like in mammals, please let me know.
The post Zombie Solanum is fiction. first appeared at The Undead Report.
17 million infected
What about mutated solanum smuggled out of the Chernobyl site?
all it would do is kill you and no more
Pyro: You’re probably right. I’d stay away from eating radioactive, mutated mushrooms, plants, fruits and veggies from the zone.
Connor: My research indicates a plant-born pathogen would be highly unlikely. But you do raise an interesting topic. The Chernobyl Zone is massive, and nature has taken it back. Mutations do exist in the flora and fauna there, but most of these are mild. No one has observed virii or bacteria in the zone however, and that’s the scary thing. An overly aggressive, perhaps mutated parasite could take over the motor funcitons of an animal, changing its behavior entirely. Radioactive dead flesh may prohibit decomposition by killing the bacteria, leaving tons of dead, undecaying bodies laying around. But I can talk about that in an upcoming article.
Lol thanks for helping set that straight seems like many got confused and believe everything they read ;).
go check out quarentine, its main mode of infection is a new strain of rabies ,very cool movie, just ignore the overly scared main charecter
Max Brooks fails to fact-check a section of his own book. About page 130, he states “…hunters have come up against walking dead who only hours before were members of their own party!”,
well i know your point, but, it reads as well, “Those who die after the virus was in their body they will reanimate on the 5th hour of reanimation.
but still, he did not muck up there, the rest is fine!
at least that puts one fake virus out of the list :D
if you liked quarentine you should check out Rant by Chuck Palahniuk. Its about the spread of a rabies strain told as a biography of the carrier.
Also, you guys should check out the site http://guerrillajournal.com they got a pretty awesome zombie series up there called How Me, Mikey, Xander and Some Stoners From the Suburbs Saved the World.
I could have sworn that I read something in the book about how Solanum is “not to be confused with the plant genus ” and that they only shared the same name.
solanum isn’t found in nature but yes there are plants and whatnot whos scientific name is solanum but just read the zombie survival guide and other scientific reports just narrow down the search idiot…also google a guy named jacob tailor read everything about him
Cordyceps, a type of fungus that attacks insects might be a viable candidate for zombie creation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps
dude 23 hours isnt exact. it all depends on where the infection started. how close or far away fro the brain and how fast it gets there. nothing is exact when it comes to stuff like this.
“Max Brooks fails to fact-check a section of his own book. About page 130, he states “…hunters have come up against walking dead who only hours before were members of their own party!”, when it is declared throughout the book that death and reanimation take approximately a day “Hour 23: Reanimation” (page 7). This is a pretty glaring mistake and should make clear that the ZSG is a work of excellent (and often humourous) fiction.”
yes it apparently takes 23 hours for reanimation but that is once they are infected. they can still be apart of the party for the next 20 so hours before they die. then it only takes a few hours from death until they reanimate. so max brooks did not make a mistake with his above statement. be sure to read and understand better next time ok? k thx bai
@Iron Knight
Nice find! I tip my hat to you…this makes about 11th on my possible-infection-types list out of…say…50.
Actually there *are* fungal infections that cause bizzare behavior in various organisms, one of the more famous ones is Ophiocordyceps unilateralis infection in tropical carpenter ants. The fungus takes over sections of the ant’s central nervous system, ants stagger around in ‘zombie walking’, then fall or go to the ground, climb a plant to a specific height and clamp on to the plant until they die. 2-3 days later, the fungus fruiting body cracks through the top of the ant’s head and releases spores into the wind to infect more ants.
Obviously this is not a virus, and not in mammals, but does show interesting behavior changes helping the infectious tranmission. For mamallian viruses, look to rabies and other viral infections directly affecting the brain, but nothing zombie-like out there.
Yet.
Nature is sometimes…scary.
not-too-technical-linkie:
http://earthsky.org/biodiversity/fungus-turns-tropical-carpenter-ants-into-the-walking-dead
The term zombie or the “living dead” , is most likely as old as the world its self. Just because it doesn’t exist at this point in time in our life/world, doesn’t mean that its has not at one point. I am not talking about the voodoo type of zombie, but actual zombies.
As for viruses hmmm, well maybe some cross strain of many things like rabies, the aids viruses, or any other type of viruses you can think of. Fungal infection might cause adverse affects to a person.
It just might be man made to we don’t know. All we can do is keep on doing what we are doing my conversing, bloging, and talking about them.
Wheater they are real or not, maybe one day we will find out.
There is one plant in this family who actually can produce so-called zombies. Datura Inoxia, or Datura Stramonium, populary called the devils trumpet, contains several alkaloids who produce delirium and vivid halluciniations, so strong that it often black out the consumer for days. It is said that it was the toxins of this plant that some voodoo priest used to make zombies (it doesn’t exactly kill you and reanimate you, but it causes the user to act extremly weird and often very voilent)
How can you be so sure? what if zombies
are real? the government has the power to stop posts that say it is real. Plus, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and that guy could be some old Vulcan butt who thinks it’s illogical