Space Zombies part 4

Now this space creature is a little closer to home. In the setting of one of the most iconic enemies in video games. Half-life, in the near future mankind of experimenting with alien technology and well, all goes wrong. Enter the aliens and the aliens food, the headcrabs.

The headcrabs are a small parasite, roughly the size of a pumpkin which is all mouth and legs. It latches onto a host and starts to mutate it. Causing the host to grow a large mouth and claws itself. And then to search out food. Oddly enough for such an iconic character in such an important game to the industry there isn't a lot on the way headcrabs work. What is known is that they do not kill the infected host and thus must feed so both the host and headcrab can continue to survive in this strange relationship. A rather inefficent process compared to many other parasites. The headcrabs take control of the body while leaving the host's mind conscious and in control of unimportant functions such as speach. This may be a strategy of the headcrab to induce fear in further victims but sinse the headcrabs show no other signs of higher intelligence (even in their methods of attacking, using claws to beat instead of stab or tear) I feel safe in assuming this is not the case.

Cause: Parasite
Undead: No
Body: Humanoid (mutated)
Freewill: Somewhat
Infecious: No
Fear: No

While Half-Life was called by many people one of the scariest games ever I am glad and slightly disturbed to say headcrabs are infact nothing like a zombie besides being a parasite. Infact the biggest difference and the part that would make them scary were they real is the fact the human infected is still alive. Which also thus makes Gordon a murderer of countless innocents in addition to unleaching the alien hordes on humanity.
Stay vigilant, may the necrotics never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.

Space Zombies part 3

Now here is a setting that needs no introduction but for the people who haven't been around for the last ten years and at risk of upsetting the elitists I will offer one. Humanity has expanded, colonies stretching across the galaxy, nothing stands in our way. Except for the Covenant, an alliance of alien species unhappy with humans continued growth and virus-like expansion. Also the fact humanity itself grows too large and hates being controlled so the colonies verge on civil war. Thus a new kind of soldier is made, a race of super soldiers called Spartans is engineered from young children to face the threats against humanity both from without and from within. Wars have come and gone, eventually mankind has been reduced to much less then it once was and only a single Spartan remains. And if things weren't bad enough suddenly a new menace resurfaces. A parasite that once wiped the galaxy of all life, was contained and has now found new hosts a plenty in the wake of the human/Covenant war.

This is the setting of the Halo universe. Very science fictiony and super-hero, standard first-person shooter fair really. Until suddenly The Flood arrive; a race of parasites from another galaxy which were treated as a virus instead of as an enemy in a war and thus they grew to destroy most of our galaxy. The parasite attaches to the body of a dead, sentient creature and reanimates and mutates the body into a killing machine. With the sole purpose of killing more to create more corpses for other Flood to infect. Called Inferi redivivus (the dead incarnate in Latin, a name also given to vampires in other lore) the Flood works by reanimating dead hosts.

The Flood take the memories and intelligence of the creature they infected and assimilate it into itself and eventually the Gravemind, a powerful being which simultaneously controls all of the Flood in the area it has access to. The Flood use combat tactics, weapons and stratiges, becoming ever more dangerous as they infect more intelligent beings.

The Flood can infect a living being by connecting directly into the nervous system via tentacles all of the combat forms develop. It is possible to be immune to the Flood or to cure someone who has been infected but not yet killed. ORION genetically altered soldiers are immune as well as it is possible to kill the infection with electric charges without harming the host.

The Flood are an extremely complex race from another galaxy which has evolved at incredible speeds and continues to evolve to survive in whatever circumstances it is in or to assimilate whatever species it can find. The Flood can also reproduce among themselves but this is viewed as a last ditch effort if all other avenues of infecting fresh hosts are gone.

Cause: Parasite
Undead: Yes
Body: Humanoid (mutated)
Freewill: Yes
Infectious: Yes (tentacles)
Fear: No

Flood while at first glance appear to be standard zombie fair are in fact very far from being zombies it would seem. While a parasite they are extremely intelligent, causing the first major reason they are not zombies. Add in the way infection works and the fact it can be cured are nothing like a zombie virus. Not to mention being able to reproduce without new hosts to infect. All in all a terrifying enemy but not a zombie horde as much as it may feel like one running through dark tunnels gunning them down in scores.

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.

Space Zombies part 2

In another section of space we find humanity has once again conquered everything in its path. Now we have tools capable of "cracking" open entire planets and harvesting the resources within. Except on one planet we find something much older then humanity. And discover that while humans knew they weren't completely alone, whatever is out there, does want us all dead.

The video game which has spawned an plethora of content for it's expanding universe is Dead Space. And in Dead Space we find something that has been missing in video games sinse the old Resident Evil and Silent Hill games, true horror. A game that you play at 3 A.M. with the lights turned off knowing that it will make the maniliest of men jump and have nightmares. The reason for this scare factor? A large part of it lies with the unknown. The enemies are complete unknowns, Necromorphs they are called, mutated bodies of dead humans. But the Necromorphs mutate in many unpredicted ways.

While the humans gone crazies are one thing to generate fear in and of itself (also crazy humans never equals zombies) the Necromorphs are the true terror of space. Once the alien parasite has latched onto a corpse it takes ten seconds for the body to mutate and rise. The Necromorphs have no real need for any of the host body's functions so they are virtually impervious to damage and the most useful way of fighting them is to simply disable them by removing all limbs. Once a Necromorph has been created it's sole goal can vary depending on the type of Necromorph created but in general, is to kill more creatures so other parasites can find hosts.

The Necromorphs have proven to be predators who hunt in packs and set ambushes, often waiting in vents or playing dead, until a victim is close enough to kill in a single strike. Beyond this they also have a sort of Hive Mind and will listen to "leaders," more advanced Necromorphs, which sometimes are composed of multiple host bodies merged together. This base intelligence makes the Necromorphs a threat humans in todays culture often refer to as the end of mankind, that is to say, intellegent undead.

So to break it down:

Cause: Parasite
Undead: Yes
Body: Humanoid (mutated)
Freewill: Yes
Infectious: No
Fear: No

In the end I have to say Necromorphs, while more dangerous then any zombie are not infact zombies. They are intelligent predators, which zombies are not, and they are not directly infectious. While they are a parasite which infects and reanimates the dead this alone does not a zombie make.

Stay vigilant, may Marker 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.