Day of the Dead

Warning: this video includes some fascinating but gag-inducing (gag-tastic?) brain dissection.

Harvard’s Dr. Steven Schlozman (author of the novel The Zombie Autopsies) helpfully breaks down classic zombie behavior into medical cause and effect in the above video. Stumbling gait? Chronic hunger? The answer lies in a zombie’s braaaaaaaainz:

The zombies have got an amygdala that’s telling them they’re angry, a ventromedial hypothalamus telling them they’re hungry…they’ve got no frontal lobe to get in the way (of making poor decisions) and a cerebellum that can’t help them to walk that well.

Rather than shooting, pithing, or dismembering the infected, Dr. Schlozman suggests:

What I would hope would happen is the zombies would be brought into the emergency room and the doctors would take a look at them and we would try to make some sense of whatever horrible plague they’ve caught and try to find a way to cure it.

However, if you don’t want to linger in the now-eerily-silent halls of your local medical center (once your zombie is settled and comfortable),  you may face more pragmatic concerns–for instance:

• Should I stay or should I head for the hills?
• If I’m leaving, should I travel by car, by foot, by bike?
• Assuming I’m in Manhattan and all of the bridges and tunnels are blocked by zombie hordes and mountains of wrecked Hummers, which river should I swim across?

This is why, once you’ve helped your zombie friend fill out his insurance paperwork (note: Broca and Wernicke areas of the brain also possibly affected), this New York Magazine article could be very helpful…