Zombies in film: The Crazies

"Fear thy neighbor."



Film: The Crazies
Directed by Breck Eisner
Written by Scott Kosar and Ray Wright
Produced by Overture Films, Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ
Year: 2010

Story: Town sheriff, Dave, shoots the town drunk after he pulls out a shotgun during a high school baseball game. Suddenly people start to go crazy all over and kill one another, all hell really breaks loose once the military shows up and starts quarantining everyone. In the chaos, Dave's wife gets taken away for further observation while Dave is led away with the uninfected. In the chaos he manages to get back to her and a small group begin to try to escape the insanity. As the group is whittled away the truth is slowly revealed about bio-weapon that caused the whole event. Finally the military prove their relentless pursuit of mankind's safety in the final scene of the film.

Zombies: Sorry to all the people who told me to watch this film. These are not zombies. Zombies are most often undead. But even getting around that; zombies cannot speak, think, fight, shoot guns, lay traps or make any decisions. These people are more likely fallen pray to something removing their emotional controls, making them prone to obeying their impulses and desires. They also probably have increased hormone and anger-inducing chemicals which puts them into a rage and leads them to murder. Whatever reason, these are not in anyway zombies besides the fact the are led by a virus to kill. The film itself makes no claims to be a zombie film or that the infected are in anyway undead (as many zombie films don't.) I almost want to start a category of "not zombie" movies.

Survival Lessons:

• If the whole town blame you for shooting someone who points a gun at you, something is wrong.
• Kill the psychos now so you don't have to deal with them later.
• Having someone to fight for isn't always a bad thing.
• Marry a bad ass.
• The military will go to any lengths to contain the infection.
• Grunt soldiers know nothing as they will be expendable and expected to be ruthless.
• Car washes are scary places.
• Warned you about those psychos...

Warnings: Below are spoilers.




In the end I enjoyed this movie about as much as I thought I would before people told me it was a zombie movie. I'm pretty good at picking out zombie movies, even from vague trailers or references and I didn't think this was from the start. But once told it was I decided to check it out with a whole different mindset. There are some similar elements and over all it was an enjoyable movie, but not a zombie movie. More then anything though it made me want to see the original by Romero to see if that one was a zombie movie or was similar to this one. This film did not seem to have much of Romero's style to it, too much of a "happy ending" feel to the whole thing.

This will be the first time I really go on about a movie like this but I would like to point out how the heroes of this film are not the sheriff and his wife. The heroes are actually the relentless military. If the military was not to brutal and efficient in it's moves to quickly shut down the infection it would spread across the whole globe very quickly. We can only hope that the military of the real world moves so quickly to contain any threats like this and keep them to a class 3 outbreak or smaller. This movie is one example of many where the bad guys are actually the good guys and the heroes are simply people who managed to survive and gain empathy. Now Dave and Judi as it turns out were not infected. I also disagree with the way the military handled the uninfected at the truck stop. Disagree is even fairly light terms, but on the flip side would I rather the smallest chance the infection get out? Perhaps more tests, bigger surveillance centres, quarantine camps: there are many other ways to deal with the situation then to simply kill everyone who might have come in contact with the virus. Then of course, the nuclear explosion which of course all writer's like to throw in as the military's last resort. At that point have they gone too far over the top? Maybe, perhaps teams of specialists could have swept the area. Or just tried to keep the area locked down until the infection died off. But if the team got infected, or if some nosey kid slipped through the lock down, or a local bad ass sheriff and his wife turn out to not be infected but carriers of the virus? Sometimes as the situation may merit, extremes must be taken for the safety of us all.


Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.

Weapons research: it's for our protection

Looking as this cause is one of the scariest things to research and the rabbit hole is one of the deepest to be found anywhere. Even finding place to start is hard as the shroud around weapons research is thick and heavy.

Let us start where I started, by looking at if bioweapon research even happens? As I found, it does. It does not take far to look to see the number of level 3 and 4 bio-research labs growing at an ever increasing rate. Funding being put into countless new corporations raising up to build new and ever more dangerous chemicals and viruses. All in the name of "countermeasures." A word that is loosely thrown around to barely cover what lies beyond. Very little searching is needed to see the talk of "permitting emergency use of unapproved countermeasures." A quote coming from Project Bioshield, a project fully backed by the U.S. government and with legal-loopholes to take full advantages and funding without having to answer to anyone. Obama gives more money to programs like Bioshield in fear of an attack by the end of 2013 Programs who have no governing body to stop them from unsafe practises. The most that stands against these private corporations is groups which receive no support and are left to fade away or possibly be looked at as foolish.

How foolish however when looking at the opposition? Research on prolonging life through DNA modification. Not quite weapons research but simply another part of the winding trail such research has taken me on.

Going back to the trail of weapons research there is so much to say but it would all be simply repeating. The endless lines of labs in which safety is put to the wayside and viruses are constantly being accidentally released in one way or another. The theories of anthrax being created and set loose from one of these biolabs are not strange or unheard tales. Heads of security have admitted that the labs are far from secure and hinting that viruses being constructed in these labs are constantly being released, lost and insecure.

Flus are constantly being combined, entirely new viruses being synthetically created, and these are only the horrors we know about in level 3 labs. What lies behind the unsecured doors of the level 4 labs? The labs that are designed to handle bioweapons capable of destroying entire populations. Tens of thousands of these bioweapons exist and with only a word Project Bioshield can use any of them as an "unapproved countermeasure."

How easy it is for scientists to combine different strains like flu and HIV. How easy they change the DNA structure of viruses and parasites. Is it really that hard to imagine one of the viruses, proteins or parasites I've discussed being created in a lab somewhere to be used in an "emergency" as a countermeasure against "terrorists?" Military commanders hold strong that the easiest way to defeat a nation is simply to make it unable to fight. Sicken the civilians, weaken the populace and cause strain to the economy, these are old lessons taught by Sun Tzu. Teaching which now lead to development of weapons capable of destroying entire nations, and possibly spreading further. Possibly spreading beyond death. Possibly turning humans into weapons themselves.

Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.

Zombie Parasite

Hello fellow survivors,

Warning: if you are scared of bugs, or have a phobia of parasites or germs, or if you are just squeamish in general, or often feel like something is happening to you if you read about it, this may be a hard read.

I was recently studying parasites, the reason for this is actually quite simple, I am always looking for possibilities of how or why zombies exist. I leave it to others to argue the "if" they exist. We already know the answer to that.

I had heard about ants who actually attack and eat other ants because they are being controlled by parasites. So I began reading more into it and while I didn't find this specific parasitic relationship I did find a lot of scary information.

For instance, parasites cause many ants to make choices which lead to their deaths. This is only one of many examples in which the parasite does not kill the host directly but instead influences the host to make decisions which directly cause it to die. Such as a parasite which makes grasshoppers drown themselves or a parasite which not only grows in caterpillars but after the parasites grow too big and burst out of the caterpillar's body the caterpillar will spend it's dying days protecting the parasites as they continue to grow.

So parasites can do this to bugs, what can they do to humans? Parasites could potentially already be effecting human decisions. More on this later.

So take a step back and look at what a parasite is. A parasite is anything that lives off of a host causing harm to the host. Not all parasites kill the host and some even benefits the host more then they do harm but that is what a parasite is. So parasites can be a large number of things but most parasites are very small bugs. Some are even microscopic, viruses are in fact parasites, they insert their DNA into the host's DNA and change or kill it in that way. So some of the traits that apply to parasites could apply to a virus that evolves past it's simply destructive and reproductive nature into something that could actually effect the brain of it's host like many other parasites do. Here is a theory on multihost evolution of a parasite. It is just a theory but it's based on evolutionary facts and mathematics. The jist of the theory in case you don't want to read the math/jargon filled 15 pages is that a parasite evolves in a host, say a bug, until it reaches it's full potential in that host. Then it finds a way to transfer into a more complex host, say a rat. It further evolves until it can fully control the rat and can evolve no further so it transfers to another type of host. And so on and so on. In this way the parasite grows as a species and is the popular theory on how parasites get to the point where they can actually affect human moods and actions.

The real T-Virus - Toxoplasma gondii
Toxoplasma Gondii is one such parasite. The main host creature is a cat, domestic or wild. Cats show no particular symptoms so it is impossible to tell if a cat has been infected. Even your household cat could be infected and is constantly at risk of being infected. A cat picks up the parasite by eating an infected mouse. The parasite starts in cysts, these cysts grow inside the mouse; the parasite makes a mouse fearless and actually attracted to the smell of cat urine, therefore seeking out the urine, with the cat probably nearby. The now fearless, but not immortal mouse is killed and eaten by the cat and thus the parasite transfers to the next level of host. Now the T-virus has has not evolved (as far as science knows) to the point where it can control the cat and needs to move to another host but it can effect humans and is often transferred by accident. The parasite actually sexually reproduce inside the cat’s stomach than can be passed to other creatures through its waste. And thus can easily get into humans who contact Kitty Liter. Now this is the big part. Infected people show changes in personalities after being infected, males which were infected showed signs of aggression, jealously and suspicion, while interestingly, women seem to be more calm, relaxed and also have a raised IQ. Not to mention that Oxford Scientists believe roughly half of the human population is currently infected. The parasite does not seem to have much effect on the cats besides using them as a breeding ground but it can fully control rats and cause changes in humans. And the human and rat brains are very similar, thus why tests are done on rats. The issue is that toxoplasma gondii attacks the cells protecting neurons in the human brain and the failure of these cells is a known cause of schizophrenia. So it is not that much of a stretch to think the parasite could evolve to cause other changes in the human body and possibly cause even more severe actions, like potentially attacking other people. Especially considering the point of parasites is to evolve to spread and reproduce. Considering the T-virus is already effecting humans it would not be a stretch for it to continue to evolve in such a way. This is not the only parasite or disease to cause violence in humans: besides parasites, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Kratos disease and rabies can all cause a human to go mad and violently attack other humans with no seeming cause. Many crimes and violent acts may well have been committed by an otherwise normal person under the influence of toxoplasma gondii or another parasite or disease.

And maybe these diseases, viruses and parasites may take hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years to evolve that far. But maybe they already have? The small isolated outbreaks could in fact be specific instances of the parasite learning to control the human and spread itself through bites and infection. And it is only a matter of time until the entire species evolves this far.

Also consider how many bioweapons are created every year. Stories of viruses that could wipe out entire continents in mere days. What is to say these weapons scientists are not already pushing parasites toward this sort of behavior. It is already well known that many bioweapons have been created by making parasites, viruses and bacteria even more deadly. Combine the idea of figuring out how to make the parasite control the brain and spread it's infection with the ability to revive the dead. Sounds like a perfect sleeper, or "lost" madman to unleash on an enemies country or corporation, with no connection to the people who released this parasite spreading zombie.

It is only a matter of time before a parasite gets to the point at which it's human host can be completely controlled, perhaps by killing the host and controlling the brain through impulses, and the infection needs to reproduce and pass to new hosts, the easiest way to pass would be through direct contact, openings in both bodies, like mouths and wounds, like a bite. This is of course if the parasite has not already gone this far and the human race is still playing catch up.

Stay ever vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate,
Mike D.