Zombie Science...

OK... so this has got to be one of my more outlandish blog topics, and here is how I got here.

So I was looking up videos on using smartphones to record video for projects on Rob Nelson's YouTube channel and this video (Biology of Zombies) popped up. It was on the side mixed in with all of the other videos YouTube thought I should check out. It turns out it was about the biology of zombies and their origins and I had to check it out.  It was about how the stories of Zombies popped up in Haiti as a result of stories that told of witch doctors using certain chemicals to create near death and trance states. The real power though, was in the fact that the people in Haiti believed so strongly in these tales of zombies.

That video, led me to this one by a scientist named Dr. Stephen Schlozman who has always loved the old Zombie movies and stories. This led him to write a book, called The Zombie Autopsies,  about what he thought he might find if he autopsied the brain of one. The book is meant for entertainment purposes, but does tie in sceince to the zombie legend. This book has made Dr. Schlozman a sort of expert in the zombie fan community, which he has used to introduce science into this genre of scary stories. Here is a video of some of his use of brain science to break down Zombie behavior: The Zombie Brain.

The thing I thought was interesting was that he broke down the behavior of zombies on most of the movies and shows people love, and pinpointed what part of the brain must be damaged or affected to result in the behaviors we see.

I thought it might capture the interest of students that are fans of The Walking Dead and Zombie

genre that seems to be so popular now, and apparently I was not alone. From Dr, Schotman's video I found a link to a video from Texas Instruments that showed an overview to a lesson they used to tie in science to what we see in Hollywood. There site STEM - Behind Hollywood has a number of lessons using their technology to create lessons to engage students using the topics made popular in movies.  I am just thankful this teenage vampire romance stuff seems to be on the way out!

One of these lesson was on Zombie movies and how the virus spreads. The Zombie Activity goes over models of how contagions spread and use math to graph and show rates of infection. Though the topic is fictional, the science is the same as what is used today to predict the spread of infections. Here is a video outlining the lesson: 

The goal of this post and sharing these resources is not to convince anyone that the whole Zombie Apocalypse is real or anything. It is to merely point out there are some educational resources out there to capitalize on the interest many people have in this fictional topic, that can be used to introduce some science topics that are useful in the real world.

Now I am a Shawn of the Dead and Walking Dead fan, and enjoy this particular genre of scary movies as much as the next person, but we all know zombies are make believe, of course that is what they believe at the beginning of every movie right before someone gets eaten...