Abstract for an Essay on Zombies

Can zombies run? For if their flesh is rotten, rapid motion would be impossible. This essay will focus on the nature of zombies and how they operate and for what purpose. The rumour tells us that there is a particular plant in Africa that zombifies people. The way in which this happens is that when one ingest this plant in the form of herbal remedies, it will cause him a temporal ‘apparent’ death, only to come back to life again in short a while. However the organs would be severely damaged, having stopped operating for however time it has taken them to revive. This, they say, is the cause of the disfiguration in their face and body. A problem persists, however, that how can someone after a long pause from life get resuccitated? For this to happen, the blood must stop circulating (thereby causing death) and again start circulating after a while. What then causes the blood to set into motion again? What exactly suppresses the blood circulation during this apparent death?

The story gets complicated as scientists say that the chemical component found in blowfish, called, tetradotoxin has a lot to do with turning people into zombies, yet in the country where they occasionally eat blowfish, i.e., Japan, there seems to be no evidence that zombies ever existed. In fact, zombies are a Haitian (also African) Voodoo concept that involves a sorceror bringing up the dead from the grave in order to use them as slaves. According to this tradition, a sorceror must call a dead person by his original name (the name he had when he was alive) before the grave, and the dead rises only to follow the orders from the ‘master’, i.e. the sorceror. Then, the sorceror usually gives an order to kill someone or command the undead to work for him. These undead zombies obey whatever the master tells them to do as long as they live, that is, until either they come to a natural death or they ingest salt. Aside from the incomprehensibility of their coming to a natural death – as they already are somewhat dead – the ingestion of salt may be the major cause of their death. Why salt? It is not clear. Further, an enquiry needs to be made about the claim that zombies are always at home at their graveyard between 3 am and 3:30 am.

Another curious, yet disturbing claim is that there seems to be a correlation between zombies and cannibalism. This, obviously, causes a problem for us, since if we are to acccept the previous claim that zombies will die upon ingestion of salt, what does it say about its alleged cannibalistic activities? For one to be a cannibal, one must eat the flesh of the same species; accepting the view that eating a living human being counts as an act of cannibalism for zombies, it would be impossible for us to accept the previous claim that zombies avoid salt, for living human beings possess salt in them. Then it must be that zombies eat other zombies in order to be classified as cannibals. Still, a problem persists, for eating is an activity done for the sake of nutrition; what sort of nutrition can zombies provide us? Also, if zombies are able to eat other zombies, zombies themselves must have no salt in them. This would mean that they have lost salt sometime between the time of their death and their zombification. But how is it possible? Again, there are only two causes of death for zombies: natural death and ingestion of salt. Does being eaten count as a natural death, for the other option is impossible since they have no salt in them? Or can they endure even after they’ve been eaten? How is cannibalism among zombies even conceptually possible? These are the questions I will be dealing with in this essay, and finally discuss if they can indeed run, hence whether we need to be alert of the fact of their movement.