WEBVTT - Do zombies really exist? 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.800 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:07.440 It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:16.880 from House Stuff Works dot Com? Chief, Chief McLellan, how's 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:19.800 everything going? Things aren't going to bad? Men are taking 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:22.000 them pretty good. Chief. Do you think we'll be able 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:24.800 to defeat these things? Well, we killed nineteen of them 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:26.680 today right in this area. And it was the last 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:28.560 three we caught trying to claw their way into an 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:31.160 abandoned ship. They must have thought somebody was in there. 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:33.200 We heard him making all kinds of noise. We came 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:36.080 over and beat them off, blasted them down. Chief. If 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:38.160 I were surrounded by sixth raight of these things, would 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:40.400 I stand a chance with him? Well, there's no problem. 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:42.000 If you had a gun, shoot him in the head. 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:43.800 That's a sure way to kill him. If you don't 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:46.360 get yourself a club, retorch beat him or burn them, 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.319 they go up pretty easy. Well, Chief McLelland how long 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:50.800 do you think it will take you until you get 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:53.920 the situation under control? Well that's pretty hard to say. 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:55.520 We don't know how many of them are. Are we 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:57.279 know when we find them we can kill them. Are 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:07.480 they slow moving? Chief? Yeah? They're dead up and with that, 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:11.520 Mr George A. Romero pretty much set the scene for 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:15.000 all zombie movies to follow. Thanks for tuning in. This 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.319 is stuff you should know. I'm Josh Clark. This is 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:24.479 Charles W. Brain Eater, brilliant, Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks, Chuck. 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:26.840 Somebody had to say it, right, yes, So how are 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:28.600 you doing? Try to get one of the zombies to 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.440 say it, that'd be pretty cool. I'm still wet. It's 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.039 still raining in Atlanta. Good lord, I feel like we 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:36.160 have remember that picture of the super cell I printed 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:38.160 out for the webcast, I feel like one of those 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:42.319 hovering picture in your wallet with you and show it 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:45.520 to people like kid, did you know that? In I 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:50.160 believe Ecuador, um once a year there's a heavy storm 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.480 and after about two hours of storm subsides and everybody 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:57.160 goes out and there's fish, dead fish laying everywhere, well 0:01:57.280 --> 0:01:59.800 some still alive. The rain of fishes. The weird thing 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:03.720 is that they aren't found in any surrounding body of water, 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:09.840 nor are they saltwater fish. They are blind, underground dwellers 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:14.239 zombie fish. Well, yeah, let's use that as their segue. Cool, Chuck, 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:18.360 let's talk zombies. Alrighty, let's let's go with the real 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:22.440 stuff first. Did you know that there maybe such a 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:25.320 thing as real zombie? Yeah? I didn't know till I 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:27.080 read this. And where are you gonna go? If you 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:29.160 want to find a real zombie? You go to the source, man, 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.000 you go to the horse's mouth, you go to Haiti? Yes? 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.200 Is that that was Serpent the Rainbow? Right? Yeah? It 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:39.000 was West Craven Flick mid High School for me, very 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:42.120 scary Bill Pullman. Yeah. And the weird thing is is 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.640 you know Wes Craven is not known for making um 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.120 movies based on true stories, but that one was. So 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:52.560 it's one of my heroes. The ethnobotanist and anthropologist Dr 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.280 Wade Davis, who is Harvard grad. I think he has 0:02:56.320 --> 0:03:01.359 a doctorate and two uh bachelor's from Harvard to more 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:05.400 than me. Yeah, and um he went down to Haiti 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:07.840 in the early nineteen eighties for what was called the 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:13.280 Zombie Project. Yes, because of a certain certain man drew 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:18.040 his attention. Right, how do you pronounce that, Claire Clarvius Narcies, Yeah, 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:21.480 that's how I pronounced it. Yeah. He started poking his 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:25.360 head around in nineteen eighty in a Haitian village and said, hey, 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:30.120 I died eighteen years ago. Yep, and uh. Apparently his 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:37.040 the similarity to UM his his original self. Uh, and 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:40.560 the facts that he knew about his former life passed 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.800 a battery of test questions. Yeah, that was enough to 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.760 make the make his friends family. I guess the estimates 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:51.400 about two people who saw him say that guy's a 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.040 zombie and I claimed a bocor brought him back to 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.760 life or brought him back to the undead state. Right, 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.000 Chuck so Clarvie shows up in night he had been. 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:05.960 The thing that makes him significant is that he had 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.520 been pronounced dead by American doctors, who apparently carry more 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.480 weight in the field of medicine and science. It was 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:16.080 documented that yeah, they documented his death. Um. So when 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:18.960 he showed up in nineteen eighty, he presented a substantial 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:23.440 case for the existence of zombies UM and a guy 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:30.080 named Dr Lamarck du Wan, who's a Haitian psychiatrist, interviewed him, 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:35.040 started interviewing boucour Um and got his hands on some 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:41.159 zombie powders right, and then entered Dr Wade Davis. Right. Now, 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:42.800 he wasn't the guy the originally said to go get 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:46.440 these powders, right now, That was Nathan Klein, right. He 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:48.560 wanted some of these powders to see if they could 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:50.839 be used as anesthetics and surgery. Yeah, which I don't 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:54.479 get that. Why not just use anesthetic unless I guess 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:58.320 he found some like cheaper, safer maybe anesthetics. Well, I mean, 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:00.560 if you come up with your own anesthetic, can imagine 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.400 there's some dollar amount attached to that. So let's talk 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:08.040 about this. He sends Dr Davis down to Haiti, and 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:11.000 Dr Davis kind of takes up where Dr do wan 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:15.120 Um left off, or maybe kind of takes over his research. 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:19.600 And uh, he himself interviews Boucore, which are again those 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.800 voodoo priests, and uh, interviews some of the zombies, some 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:27.960 of these undead people, right, so they said yeah, um, 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:32.520 and he uh, he comes to find that he concludes 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:36.000 that there is in fact such a thing as zombies. 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:40.280 They're specific to Haiti though as far as he can tell. 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.720 And it's it's a two step process, chuck. Uh. And 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:46.919 how to make someone a zombie, Well, first to have 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.400 to die, I would think, no, or is that a 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:53.040 three step process? I thought zombies had to be dead. First, 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:57.920 we're talking Haitian zombies. We'll get to the Hollywood zombie soon. Okay, Well, 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:00.920 the bocar has to capture their their soul with that 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:05.680 tibon age. Is that I suppose it's French? Right, Yeah, 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:09.840 that's apparently part of the soul directly connected to the individual, 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:14.560 and once he steal captures that, they are a zombie. Right. 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:19.360 That's that's Haitian folklore. Dr Davis, being a scientist, tried 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:23.520 to get beyond that. He found that most Haitians, most 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:27.080 educated Haitians, we should say, uh in those who live 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:30.159 in the city don't tend to believe in zombieism, even 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:33.640 those part of law it is. There's interesting what back 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.680 to eight thirty five, right yeah, Audicle two full six 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:40.640 of the Haitian Penal Code basically says that you can't 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:43.919 make someone a zombie, right that you'll be charged with 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:48.000 attempted murder or murder if the person actually manages to 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.000 get buried, even if they're not dead yet. For all 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.760 intents and purposes, it's still considered murder under Haitian law, 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:57.279 thank god. So okay, so Dr Davis gets past this 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:02.800 um this belief that's mainly held by rural, uneducated, poor 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:08.760 Haitians that the Bocore are um capable of sorcery and 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:11.120 can steal your soul. What do they get out of this? 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:13.040 That's what I could never pay because it is there 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:15.400 some money on the back end or something. No, no, 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:19.480 there's precisely no money involved, and it's not for any 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.880 personal gain their status. No. What it is is there 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.640 is a secret Haitian society called Bizango the Freemasons. No, 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.520 they're not the Freemasons, but they might as well be. Basically, 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:33.800 this is the group that de facto runs the country. 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:37.360 Um supposedly, but I mean this is this is a 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:42.640 documented this is from Davis's research. Um so the Bizango, Uh, 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:45.600 there are are not necessarily voodoo priests, but there are 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.680 voodoo priests who are part of the Bizango. And zombification 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:53.640 is only used in cases of punishment where a member 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:57.560 of the Bizango, say a family member, has gone against 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.640 the will of his or her family or the will 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:04.240 of the Bizango community as a whole. It's just a 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:08.160 severe punishment. So you would have been zombified in our house, stuff, 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:12.240 work works culture over and over and over again. And 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:18.000 actually um uh Clarius. Clarius Narcis said that he was 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:24.440 zombified because he at the behest of his brothers because 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:28.320 he wouldn't go along and selling uh the family land 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:32.959 with them. Another documented zombie named TM she's a woman. 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:36.120 She said that she was zombified by her at the 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:39.080 by the will of her family because she refused to 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:41.160 marry the man they wanted her to marry and she 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.880 had a baby by another man. So generally it's retaliation. 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:50.760 It's punishment for transgressions against Bizango Society or a person's 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:52.640 family who is a member that is a member of 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:54.760 Bizango Society. It's gotta be a little money on the 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:56.880 back end for the you would think so, But Davis 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.920 was adamant and his research that that's not the case, 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.480 right right, So okay, so let's get to how you 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.240 make somebody a zombie. Well, you've got the powder, right, 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:09.040 you have the powder and magic powder. What what Davis 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.200 found was that this powder he took I think eight 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:17.520 samples and found that seven of them had some ingredients 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.000 in common, right chuck, Yeah, I let me go with those. Yeah. 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:24.000 You found the puffer fish, which contains a deadly neurotoxin 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:29.360 called tetro dotoxin found a marine toad, which also has 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:31.880 a bunch of toxins, numerous toxins. You don't want to 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:33.679 lick this, I don't want to look that one. A 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:39.400 highla tree frog, which secretes an irritating but not deadly substance. Uh, 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:43.360 some human remains. We're in all of these. Those are 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.000 the common ingredients. And then things like skin irritants. They 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:50.040 figured like spiders and lizards ground up in there would 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:54.040 irritate your skin, same with the highlight tree frog. So 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:55.720 basically the reason you would want to have a skin 0:09:55.800 --> 0:10:00.360 irritant is because the zombie powder is traditionally apply on 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:05.079 the skin, right exactly. So, so what happens is it's 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:07.679 applied to the skin and it creates cracks and and 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.760 breaks in the skin, and then it seeps in through 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:16.960 there right um, and then it produces this zombified person. Basically, 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:20.720 you you start to have trouble breathing, UM, don't respond 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.400 to stimuli. Know, you become paralyzed. You have a glassy 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:29.000 eyed stare, but you're you're you're still maintaining your normal 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:31.360 mental state. You're still aware of what's going on. You 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:33.120 just can't do anything right you start put in the 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:35.559 rainbow exactly. You know, you're getting buried alive and having 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.040 the sheet pulled over you. Right, That's actually what Narcis said. 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:42.200 He said that he remembered um and saw the doctors 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:44.520 pulling the sheet over his head after they pronounced him dead. 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:47.480 That's what that felt like. How was that for you? He? 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:53.000 I imagine it probably wasn't very good? Right, right? So yeah, 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:55.120 so you you know what's going on, you just can't 0:10:55.720 --> 0:10:58.880 you can't do anything about it. And this struck Davis 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:02.280 um as particular, really interested because what is it? Check 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:06.200 the tetro to toxin. Davis started researching and he found 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:09.600 that in Japan, there's this stuff called fugu, right, which 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:12.719 is a kind of sushi delicacy that's made from the 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:15.880 puffer fish. It's very dangerous, but it apparently tastes like 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:22.040 a twinkie, right yeah, um, a raw twinkie. Um. But 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:24.760 if you if you make the cut wrong and too 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:26.880 much of this tetro to toxin ends up in it, 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:30.160 you get your poison. And the symptoms were virtually the 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:36.040 same as what people who are zombified reported. Right, that's awesome. 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:40.080 Should we trust our sushi chef? And I guess I 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:42.280 imagine that with Fugu you get what you pay for. 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:44.079 You don't want to cheap out with fo you want 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:46.480 to go dollar sushi on the food. So that's step one. 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:50.559 You administer the zombie powder and then the person uh 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:54.840 is pronounced dead to bury them, then you go get them. Well, 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:58.840 that's that's that's the the revelation moment. That's what makes 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:02.360 the bokor look like they done their thing. Nice reference 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:06.679 to our brainwatching podcast, thank you Yeah, and I love 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:08.920 the back door there for the boc or if it 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:12.920 doesn't work, there's a little loophole where he says that, um, 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:16.120 if the procedure doesn't work, that divine intervention can always 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:19.319 prevent this from happening, right, So anytime it doesn't work, 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.760 that's his go to. Or if um, if the powder 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.640 is prepared to kill too strongly. Right, so you've got 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.360 somebody right exactly, it's like, well, hey, it didn't work 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.400 this time. Uh. And Plus anyway, if once you've administering 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:35.120 the zombie powder, I guess under a Haitian law, you're 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:38.480 in for a penny, in for a pound anyway, right, Um, 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.840 So that's step one, right, Chuck, You've zombified the person. 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:44.440 Step two is to get to their grave within about 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.880 eight hours and you exhume them. And when you do, 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.200 you feed them something called a zombie cucumber. Was that 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:53.640 the salt, No, you don't want to feed them salt 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:57.360 that restores their senses. Right. The zombie cucumber is a 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:03.760 combination of sweet potato and uma. That sounds nice, jimsum weed, 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:07.640 which is one of the more hallucinogenic plants available to man. 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.200 That sounds real nice. Yeah. So when you've got somebody 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:13.520 who's already like half paralyzed and has been buried, that's 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:16.320 a pretty traumatic experience, right, Chuck, I would imagine. Yeah, 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.120 So the next step is to feed them a highly 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:25.880 hallucinogenic concoction and watch them go. So that's step two 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:28.960 of creating a zombie. What Davis came up with was 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:33.480 that none of this would work, Chuck, unless you were 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:37.720 in Haiti, because all of it had the social support 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:41.640 for a belief that zombies can exist. So once once 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:44.760 you've gone through this process, you're you're you know, you're 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:48.880 not an American thinking about I'm a zombie. As Tracy 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.400 Wilson put it in her how zombies work article that 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:54.280 we're basing this on. She said, Um, you know, in 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:58.839 another culture, if you have tetrated tetra to doxin, tetra 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:04.679 to toxin poisoning, you're just a toxin poisoning victim. But 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:09.040 in Haiti, because of this uh belief among some people 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:11.720 that there is such things as zombies that supports the experience, 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.520 and all of a sudden, this person is spending X 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:18.000 number of years is basically a zombie slave like snake handlers. 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:20.760 Most people would think you're just a redneck that got 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:23.680 picked by snake and they think that, you know, it 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:27.200 was all divine, right. Yeah, that's actually very much the same. 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:29.080 Nice one, Chuck, I just pulled that one out of 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:33.800 my Ea. That was great, smells delicious. So a lot 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:35.520 of people. Do you want to get to where people 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.800 think Davis wasn't exactly on the level on all levels? Yeah, 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.080 because it all sounded good until the article turned a 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:44.520 little bit and said no, not quite. Well, yeah, it 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.080 definitely depends on where you're coming from. But there's a 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:51.800 tremendous amount of criticism for somebody like Davis who's saying, yeah, 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:54.840 zombies exist, right, because one thing he did what you 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.480 mentioned was dig up bodies or supervised the digging up 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:01.720 what he was there at least there, and um, a 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.160 lot of scientists didn't like that. No, I thought that 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:06.720 kind of goes against the code of ethics somewhere across 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:09.920 the boundary, and I think I might agree with that. Um. 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:13.200 They also questioned the initial experiments with the powder and 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:17.000 if they were scientific enough, because he practices on like 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:19.080 monkeys and rats when he got back to the States, right, Yeah, 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:22.480 he made zombie rats. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So they 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:26.520 questioned the initial experiments. Um, they didn't know, like, you know, 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:28.840 if he had added anything else to the powder. I 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:31.000 guess he says he didn't, but they weren't there to 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:36.560 witness that, so they questioned that what else. Um, Oh yeah, 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:41.800 this one I found odd. They found samples contained no tetradotoxin. Yeah, 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:43.760 and he said that you guys, are you putting it 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:45.960 in some sort of solvent to to carry out these 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:49.440 tests or you may have destroyed it? Um if he 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:53.400 though maybe the I think one of the big Um. 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:56.040 The big points about this in Davis's defense is that 0:15:56.160 --> 0:16:01.800 his reputation academically still very much attacked years after this. Yeah, 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.120 I mean he he published two books on it. Uh. 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:07.720 The Serpent in the Rainbow came out and he survived that. 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:11.160 I can't imagine that made him look you know, really 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.480 good among his academic peers. And this guy is still, 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:15.840 you know, um doing more and more research. Is a 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:19.080 National Geographic Explorer and residence, which, as you know, I 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:22.320 think is one of the coolest things ever. Um. So 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:26.000 his reputation still intact, and he's still a respected ethnobotanist 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:30.320 and anthropologist. Um. Another point that people made their chuck 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.200 was that a lot of these people, um, who were 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:38.320 supposedly zombies, uh, were chalked up to mistaken identity cases 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.320 of mental illness, kind of like Jerusalem syndrome. If you 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:44.119 live in Jerusalem, you're gonna have a much higher tendency 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:47.960 of believing that you're, you know, a reincarnated saint or 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:54.320 profit in Detroit? Exactly, what are you gonna say, Denver? Okay, yeah, 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:56.160 I'm glad you said Detroit. Though, are we moving on 0:16:56.200 --> 0:17:00.640 to Denver now? Maybe A yeah? Um Man, So, Chuck, 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:04.919 that's the Haitian zombie, the real quote unquote real zombie. 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.199 We should say, as far as I could turn up, 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:14.560 there's no one who um satisfactorily debunked uh Clervius Narces' story. 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:18.280 And also I should also say that, um, at no 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:21.040 point did Davis say that these people were dead in 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:24.960 any way, shape or form, or they were strictly poisoned 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:28.520 by the specific toxin that brought them that lowered their 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:30.480 vital signs. They were pronounced dead and then they were 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:36.320 revived by uter and then believed that they were zombies, 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:38.840 but that they were not dead and brought back to life. 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:43.240 So those are real zombies. Let's do fake zombies. That started, 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:47.520 not started, but very much kick started with George Romero's 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:50.680 classic that we played earlier, Night of the Living Dead. 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:57.320 Oh did you hear that? That was our That was 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:01.960 our colleague Chris Palette. Did you the brains? I was 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:04.120 going to do that, but I didn't. Apparently Jerry said 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:08.880 Christ and nails it. So yeah, he does brains right, 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:12.400 That's that's pretty good too, Chuck. Uh. Yeah, So Romero 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.960 starts the whole thing off. Basically, he comes up with 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:17.720 all the rules of the game, like we heard at 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.640 the beginning of this podcast, right, Actually, Tracy did say 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.880 that movies as early as nineteen nineteen had zombies, So 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:27.960 save your fingers on the keyboard from typing in. No no, no. 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.640 He wasn't the first, but he definitely brought it into 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:34.840 the mainstream. Like and zombie movies forever after. We're based on, 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.680 like you said, his world and his rules. Like for example, 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:42.240 he was the one that said if you can get 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:45.800 if you can destroy a zombie's brain or detach its 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.280 brain from the rest of its body, that's it for 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:51.200 the zombie. Everybody knows if you want to kill the zombie, 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:53.320 you got to cut their head off basically, that's rome 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:56.400 or blow their head off with you know, a gun. 0:18:56.840 --> 0:19:00.560 I should tell you that our colleague and sometimes standing 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:04.160 producer Matt Frederick, got really excited when he found out 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.080 we were doing a podcast on zomb He thinks that 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:11.320 a Remington pump action shotgun is the best weapon to 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.760 have against a zombie. I would say that in one 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:18.119 hand in a Samurai sword and another would be pretty cool. 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.159 You'd be doing well for yourself. I'm more a battle 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:24.200 axe man myself. Although that we're gonna talk about the 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:28.879 Canadian mathematician study. Eventually, we don't stand a chance if 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.280 there's a real zombie attack. Dude, Well, it depends on 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:36.600 what we do. Let's talk about that someone with Robert Smith. Oh, yeah, 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:39.359 with a question mark name. That's right, Yeah, guy has 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:41.680 a question mark at the end of his name. Robert 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:45.280 Smith and one of his colleagues, both mathematicians at the 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:50.400 University of Ottawa. They used um contagious disease models, yeah, 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.399 pandemic models to study out the math of whether or 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.880 not we could actually survive a zombie attack. Slow moving Yes. 0:19:56.920 --> 0:20:00.600 They specifically picked the classic slow moving zombie and they 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:06.040 still found that unless humans strike fast, strike off, and 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:10.959 and strike increasingly escalatingly. Um, we're in big trouble, right, 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:14.480 so that you can't do the Oh geez, we gotta 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:17.520 learn a humanitarian way to put these zombies down, Like 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:19.320 District nine. You can't do it. You gotta go in. 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:23.199 Don't even bother trying to figure out how to how 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:26.359 to cure it. You just have to kill everybody you find. Um. 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:29.119 And that that was another thing that Romero established with 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:32.640 Nine of the Living Dead was that zombies beget zombies. Right. 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:36.960 In his version, what happened was the zombie was somebody 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:39.000 who was killed by zombie was brought back because of 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:42.359 this radiation UH from a satellite that it returned to 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:44.560 Earth that was causing the dead to rise in the 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:47.800 first place. So if you were killed while that radiation 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:51.200 was still around, you were inevitably going to come back. 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.280 And also, did you know that George Romero got his 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:58.000 start shooting segments for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. I think I 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:02.399 didn't know that. Yeah, he also established some other rules 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:07.080 about their strength. They're very strong, but typically slow moving, 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:09.720 although there have been a movie off shoots with the 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:13.600 fast moving zombie. Of course it depends well for their 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:16.879 faster slow well, it's like twenty eight days later. It's 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:20.119 technically not a zombie movie because no one who is 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:23.600 zombie is a zombie is actually dead. Now they're infected 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:28.040 by that whatever that was, that disease. The infection. Yeah, 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:29.719 I don't remember what it's called. But there were some 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.280 other fast moving zombies I've seen in other movies. Resident 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:36.200 Evil the game, they had some herky jerky, fast moving zombies. 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:41.880 Right again, Matt Frederick thinks is the perfect zombie um motion. 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:45.760 What herky jerky herky jerky whatever is in Resident Evil 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:48.880 He's hip with because he said, that's where uh, the 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:53.600 pump shotgun is the slow movers. Yeah, there are a 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:56.600 lot more. They're more comforting. Yeah, but it was always 0:21:56.600 --> 0:21:59.120 funny to me to watch those movies and I think 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:02.520 you're all faster than the zombies. How can you ever 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:05.879 get criss but you get surrounded. That's what happened. Surrounded 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:08.719 is the big problem. Are we going to get into that. 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:11.639 How to avoid getting eaten by a zombie? Yeah? Okay, 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:14.960 well we should. We should wrap up the rules first. 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:17.919 They're not they're in pervious to pain. Yeah, Like you 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:19.440 can hit him in the face of the baseball bat 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:23.160 and they'll just keep lumbering forward. Um, so you really 0:22:23.280 --> 0:22:26.280 have to um cut their head off. You can cut 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:28.760 their arm off and they'll walk with two one arm. 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:30.440 They'll cut a leg off and they'll hop at you. 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:34.000 Oh yeah, their arm will come at you all. Um. 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:37.960 Return to the living dead, yeah or evil dead? Yes, 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:41.720 to dead by dawn by dawn, will be by dawn, 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:45.679 and they are driven to eat, relentlessly driven to eat. 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.359 They're afraid of fire and light, so they'll come out 0:22:48.400 --> 0:22:51.640 at night. They want to eat your brain. That actually 0:22:52.040 --> 0:22:57.639 came later that largely Return to the Living Dead from 0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:00.160 where they actually have a zombie pinned down and it's 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.919 just this woman's torso and arms and head and um 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:08.520 this medical examiner, doctor um says, why do you eat humans? 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:12.560 She goes, not humans brains. That's a clip you sent 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:18.920 me today. Let's hear Pullett do it again. Nice? Thank 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:22.200 you Pullette, so good. Um? Yeah, that was that clip 0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:27.160 I sent you. That isn't it? Yeah? Um? And what else, Chuck? 0:23:27.160 --> 0:23:33.200 Are there anymore? How are zombies created? In uh Romero's version, 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:36.520 it was radiation from a sad over returning satellite and 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:39.240