Scientists say possible.

[FaceBawx]

Scientist says zombie outbreak possible
By Robert Lee
Edited by Paul Kerry
2010-11-04 17:28
http://www.koreaherald.com/englishcafe/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20101104000567

The possibility of a virus turning people deranged and furious is out there, according to a report by National Geographic News.

These are not dead-humans-come-back-to-life zombies. Think less “Dawn of the Dead,” more “28 Days Later,” in which a virus turns you into a rage-filled human.

Samita Andreansky, a virologist at the University of Miami, told National Geographic that rabies -- a viral disease that infects the central nervous system -- can make people violently mad.

Rabies can cause hallucination, excitation, agitation and hyper salivation and once the onset of symptoms show death usually follows within days.

Sounds like a zombie.

Rabies, being a virus, can also mutate to become a more deadly strain.

“If a rabies virus can mutate fast enough, it could cause infection within an hour or a few hours. That’s entirely plausible,” said Andreansky.

But for it to lead to an unstoppable zombie plague, it has to be more contagious.

It would need to become airborne like influenza, giving it the spreading power of H1N1.

How likely is it that some evil scientist is cooking this up right now?

According to Andreansky, it’s theoretically possible but extremely difficult.

“Sure I could imagine a scenario where you mix rabies with a flu virus to get airborne transmission, a measles virus to get personality changes, the encephalitis virus to cook your brain with fever and throw in the ebola virus to cause you to bleed from your guts. Combine all these things and you’ll get something like a zombie virus,” she said.