Before we go into detail about the walking dead, some clarification needs to be made. While we all typically associate the word "zombie" with reanimated corpses that hunger for brains, the origin of the word comes from the religion of voudoun. A form of black magic, known as hoodoo, has several purported abilities over the mind and body of victims, including what is known as "zombie powder". This concoction of poisons mixed with bones brings the victim into a near-death state, shutting down most of the brain's consious activity and turning them into mindless pawns that will do the bidding of the first person it comes into contact with.
The problem with using the term "zombie" for both these hapless souls and the undead can cause a lot of confusion and possibly end in needless death. There are several difference between the two, but the key factors that need to be kept in mind are that hoodoo zombies are still living people, and moreover that there are (albeit only a handful) cases of a hoodoo zombie being cured. Whereas what most people refer to as zombies are for all intents and purposes biologically dead, and only destruction of the brain can 'cure' such a zombie. So for the purposes of this blog, the term "zombie" will not be used for the undead as it is in effect a misnomer.
So what to call them then? "Ghoul" is a workable substitute; the term comes from Arabic folklore, and fits what we are dealing with: undead creatures who feast on human flesh. The government's official name for them is "Revanants", which is a folkloric catch-all for all of the mythical undead, which also fits our needs.
Moreover, revanants are NOT to be confused with vampires. Vampires fall into one of two categories: People with a psychological fixation with consuming blood (animal or human), and phantasms that feed off the life energy of humans (parapsychologists are divided on their existence, for more on this phenomenon I reccommend the book Vampires: An Occult Truth by Konstantinos which also goes into the other kind of vampire as well as creatures of folklore)
Now, thanks largely to movies, television shows, and other forms of fiction as well as folklore, there are some myths that need to be dispelled. For organizational means, these will be discussed in detail in the next upcoming post.
One thing that should be pointed out is that, while ghouls ARE a serious threat to all humanity, the origin of their being is unknown (though believed to be a viral disease). According to Gellar DHS researchers have concluded that an extinction-level infestation has a one in eight thousand chance of ever occurring, and such an infestation would take no less than seventy-eight days to spread into a global epidemic.
This doesn't mean that you're safe, however. A rural city can (and have been) completely infested overnight spawning all from one man who was bitten by a ghoul and didn't know it until it was far too late. If left unchecked, even a small infestation can overrun the entire city of New York in a week. The first person to encounter what is known as the "Alpha Revanant" (the government codeword for the first victim in the infestation) is either killed or turned 97% of the time. Only the armed, alert have any hope of survival in the initial encounter without a massive amount of good luck.
NEXT: Facts and Myths about the undead.
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