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The difference with the zombie virus is that it prevents cellular dissolution to a point. The body stops, yes, and even starts to decay like some kind of rabid sepsis, but I mentioned that there seems to be some kind of bond over the whole organism that can force action. It's like there is an EM field or something similar generating enough cohesion between cells to be able to prompt movement and propel it around. I make the case for nothing in the body being truly functional any more, even though we see zombies eating, looking around, and responding with intention. Since these are all automatic basic actions of the human body, the viral reprogramming makes it look like the zombies are still alive somehow when it's really a new program overriding another program that went defunct (zombie virus 'activates' upon death).
This dead/alive state got me to thinking about all the new rage of quantum processing, the next generation in computer function and speed. Quantum theory posits that matter can exist in more than one state simultaneously as wave forms. I'm not saying zombies are pan dimensional (boy, wouldn't that be cool), but maybe the zombie virus is, or at least functions in more than one state at a time, which would make us unable to pin it down to medical description without voiding some of the data. I'm not a big zombie fan and have no idea if anyone has thought about it like this before, even thought maybe I should keep it to myself and write a zombie book, but I'm already way too busy and my publishing rep mildly cajoled me last night to produce marketable content. So I'm throwing this out there now because we all know it would sit around and never get written otherwise.
Moving on. Brains. Humans are able to survive some pretty incredible brain injuries and some even turn into geniuses from the healing process, so it's interesting that it doesn't take much to 'kill' a zombie by interrupting the brain. You'd think that something already in decay wouldn't have a problem with another injury, especially one that makes no sense. Let's boil it down to real simple- 'killing' a zombie means simply making the programming stop. The EM or whatever field around the still intact organism apparently falls apart when a zombie's brain is injured after original death. Technically, a guy who survived being spiked with a railroad tie through the brain could be easily stopped as a zombie with less spectacular force. Why?
Brains are nerve central and built to send and receive chemically induced electric impulses so it makes sense that brains and their nervous system networks are useful for a zombie virus that uses electromagnetic energy to function. I'm steering clear of electromagnetic theories of consciousness but thinking along these lines come in really handy when we're talking about inert brains that have been repurposed. If someone were wanting to create doomsday tech, or even just accidentally created it working on quantum computer processing, all it would take is one brain with a runaway unstoppable program to initiate the apocalypse. In the Walking Dead they discovered that the still living population is already infected, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of immunity kicking in since the immune system can only function before death, and the virus doesn't initialize until death triggers it.
This is long enough for now. Notation- yes, I'm writing this before 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning. This is how I de-stress, believe it or not.
Happy turkey bird!By the way, yes, there is more coming. Kinda left you guys hanging there.