This Just In: Zombies are Real.

Over the past few weeks news stories having been breaking across the country that account events that eerily resemble the signs of a zombie apocalypse. On May 26^th 65 year old Ronald Poppo was brutally attacked and had his face chewed off by Rudy Eugene, 31. Eugene growled in response to the police’s pleas to stop eating the man’s face and was only stopped when shot and killed. Disturbing and illogical, everyone is compelled to associate the surreal event with zombies. Zombies are largely defined as dead people seemingly brought back to life as diseased or possessed beings obsessively set on eating the healthy living population.

But what is especially compellingly terrifying about the zombie apocalypse concept? Zombies were once normal people, our friends and neighbors, and now they want to eat us. There is no talking them down because their former selves have vanished and only irrational violence and a lack of comprehension of pain or remorse remain. Additionally they are growing in numbers and gathering on the horizon.

It is suspected that Bath Salts, a new designer drug, are the cause of Eugene’s psychotic behavior. So then everyone says: proof that he was not a zombie and therefore not scary. Really? If someone is eating your face off, is it any less alarming whether he has no pulse or a needle in his hand? What if Bath Salts are the zombie apocalypse?

Eugene is not the only Bath Salt user to have this type of reaction. Bath Salts can cause paranoia, delusions of super human strength, inability to feel pain, violent behavior, and hallucinations. On June 5^th, 21-year-old Brandon DeLeon prevented people from entering or exiting a Miami Boston Market with erratic behavior including growling, barking, attempting to bite the hand of an officer, and yelling “I’m going to eat you.” On June 14^th, a woman in upstate New York stripped off her clothes, publicly beat her 3-year-old son, choked her dog, and was unaffected by falling from a flight of stairs onto concrete or being sprayed with maize.

Approximately 1 in 50 people who use the drug will have one of these extreme psychotic episodes. What does that number mean? Well, in 2009 there were no calls to poison control about Bath Salts. In 2010, there were a little over 300 and by 2011 the number jumped to over 6,000. So no, this zombie breed is not contagious by a bite to the shoulder, but the appeal of recreational drug use appears to be enough. When the number of Bath Salt users is jumping into the thousands at an exponential rate, it doesn’t take long for 1 in 50 to become a very large number.

So whether you believe these growling, super strong, face-eating beings can be called zombies or not, I would recommend preparing for the apocalypse in a similar fashion. Oh yeah, don’t use Bath Salts and look out for September 2012 when their temporary emergency illegality may be lifted.

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