I may be a fan of the whole zombie genre, but this really creeped me out. The next bits will be a little graphic.
So I saw a couple of news clips from all over the net about this guy in Miami EATING a homeless guy's face. The news said literally eating. Not just biting the poor guy's face, but really eating the flesh - biting, chewing, and swallowing - really consuming and acting like the zombies we know on film and videogames.
The news further reported that the man ignored the police when they tried to stop him, and even growled like an animal at them, and continued with his, well, eating. And he was naked the whole time. And when the cops were forced to shoot him, he didn't go down and it took more bullets to stop him. And his victim - the poor man - was still alive, despite having his whole face ripped and bitten from his skull. I believe the victim even lost his eyes, his nose and... God, that's horrible. You can search it on YouTube. There's a ton of videos of the news clip there. The clip contains surveillance footage and partially shows this naked man on top of another man, and you can just imagine the horror as his movements suggest that he was continuing his eating despite the presence of police officers and in broad daylight.
The police described this "zombie" further as having superhuman strength, immunity to pain, and animal-like behavior. Textbook zombie characteristics and even anyone who has little knowledge of zombies will instantly recognize the description as made famous by numerous films and other media. They also believed that some sort of powerful drug induced this behavior and as of now as I typed this entry, this was the fourth incident of cannibalistic attacks in Florida. So far, the cannibal was identified and lived in the Miami South Beach area, while his victim, the homeless man, is currently in critical condition and in a hospital, struggling to survive.
Allegedly, these incidents are blamed on the taking of a new kind of drug called bad LSD. Other sources state that Bath Salts (at this point I will admit I don't know the practical uses for this, but I believe as the name suggests, it's some sort of toiletry item I may have seen on drugstores but fail to recognize, therefore I don't know it's uses), over-the-counter item that contains several substances found in cocaine, LSD, speed, ecstasy, amphetamine and some other stuff I can't pronounce properly, so I'll post a link below so you can read more about this new kind of drug. It induces paranoia, hallucinations, and even seizures.
Here's the link from the Herald Sun website:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/true-crime-scene/bath-salts-may-have-driven-rudy-eugene-to-brutal-cannibal-attack/story-fnat7jnn-1226376597046
A witness described the effects on bath salts that it can cause severe hallucinations and causes your body temperature to rise drastically that it makes you wan't to tear your clothes off. Alarming, really, and this new wave of drug abuse that causes attacks like these is more likely to spawn theories that zombies may be more a reality than some sort of thing that comes out of George Romero's mind. As far as I am concerned, as long as there is no news or evidence that the effects of this is transmittable, I can say that the Zombiepocalypse (which some of you fanboys and rambo-types secretly wish to become reality), is not an immediate or severe threat as popularized, but is a possibility. Imagine a scenario like that happening in a club where drugs are circulated and when they kick in, and the users go on a rampage like what this man did... I'm preparing my survival kit. Just in case the collapse of society element in the sub-genre comes into play, but like I said, it seems unlikely. For now.
Drugs have been a popular component in the Zombie genre. And there's quite a large field of study in this, and it stems from fact. It has it's roots in Voodoo, where the witch doctor uses intense psychoactive drugs on his intended victim, induces a fake death, and later digs up the body and reanimates the corpse, in order to turn in into a slave and do all of his bidding. Reports of these are prolific in Haiti and some parts of Africa, from zombies working the crops belonging to a powerful voodoo shaman, to some very nasty stories of these "living dead" attacking the enemies of such shaman, or of those people who hired his services.
One particularly famous story that stemmed from actual research was that of Clairvius Narcisse, as reported by ethnobotanist Wade Davis. The same story that inspired the book, The Serpent and the Rainbow, which in turn, inspired a film about Haitian zombification. The component drugs, when mixed together (the toxins are found in pufferfish - an exotic delicacy in Japanese sushi restaurants), is introduced to the intended zombie and puts them in a state of suspended animation, and can be woken up as a mindless, corpse-like husk of the former man he was by the use of another drug, and renders the victim usually in a psychotic state. However, some psychologists and scientists believe this account of Davis to be overly credulous, but a large number of documentation and eyewitnesses still make this a rather good source.
We can speculate all day whether these accounts are credible or not, and whether there is a link between drugs and the zombiepocalypse sub-genre becoming a reality. But as these accounts and news reports roll in, and if there will be more of these attacks depicting textbook zombie characteristics, well, I'd say the guys writing for Cracked.com will never be without material.
