Zombies come in a variety of forms these days; fast ones, slow ones, flesh-eating ones, scary ones and funny ones but whatever the type of zombie, they remain one of the most scary and successful “monsters” in popular culture. The model zombie is thought to originate long ago in the voodoo cultures of Haiti and West Africa, where the dead were said to have been ‘raised’ by sorcerers or witches using voodoo magic. Prior to that, they get a mention in the Mesopotamian poem from about the 18th century BC, “Epic of Gilgamesh” in which a goddess proclaims she will “let the dead go up and eat the living, and the dead will outnumber the living”. Bearing in mind that the dead do actually outnumber the living by some 107 billion to 7 billion, this is some good science!

read more:  The Microbiology of Zombies – Scouse Science Alliance.