Samita Andreasky, a University of Miami virologist, met with National Geographic to discuss the progress of her work called "The Truth About Zombies." The doctor says that while it is extremely difficult to produce a zombie virus, it could happen.
The zombie virus would be a combination of rabies virus with others such as the flu and Ebola, among many others. The first two would allow the disease to pass through the air, if the rabies is mixed with that of measles can produce changes in the personality, with that of encephalitis would produce aggressiveness and very high fevers, and if we add the Ebola we would have infected that Bleed gushing, as shown in the series and movies.
Getting all these combinations together at the same time goes against nature, and such a virus would generally become something simply lethal. Also, once we die, we can not get back to life, so if there was this virus, we would behave like zombies because of the virus, but not really dead.
Would we become in a matter of minutes? The truth is, no. The rabies virus, for example, shows its symptoms within ten days to a year; Anxiety, hallucinations and confusion appear after the virus has been incubated in the body, of course this time can become significantly lower; As little as a few hours, since viruses can mutate in an impressive way to bypass the body's defenses.
Another factor to take into account, according to Andreasky, is the form of contagion, since the rabies virus is transmitted by the bite of an animal, and stops at who has been bitten, so a faster contagion could be by The air, as is the case with the flu.
Elankumaran Subbiah, another virologist who did not participate in the documentary, said that in a virus, its forms and strains can exchange fragments of genetic code, through resettlement or recombination processes, but it does not work with unrelated viruses. Linking two different viruses is almost impossible.
There are many viral mutations that can be done, for example copying errors during the replication of the genes, or causing damage through ultraviolet light, but this on a virus class.
So theoretically, if we modify the rabies virus, we might think that a zombie apocalypse is not too unrealistic an idea, at least that's what Andreasky thinks.