Preparing for the Arthropocalypse

Abstract

In May, 2011, the normally staid Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued detailed instructions for surviving a zombie apocalypse: http://tinyurl. com/66ojena. The post, written by Assistant Surgeon General Ali Khan, outlined the steps to be taken in the event of an outbreak of “flesh-eating zombies,” which included, among other things, assembling an emergency preparedness kit that includes first aid supplies, a battery-powered radio, and, of course, duct tape. The instructions were part of a tongue-in-cheek campaign inspired by inquiries to the agency about whether radiation in the wake of the Fukushima tsunami and nuclear reactor disaster might spawn a zombie outbreak (inasmuch as radiation is supposed to cause zombification, along with viruses, black magic, “zombie powder,” bath salts, and many other things). The CDC officials took advantage of the situation to promote general rules of preparedness for the American public; spokesperson Dave Daigle explained to Fox News that “People are really dialed in on zombies” (http:// tinyurl.com/669tkdj). There’s no denying the zombie Zeitgeist; pop culture seems to be saturated with brain-eating undead. This cultural phenomenon is most conspicuously manifested at the local movie multiplex. An examination of zombie movies through time, made conveniently easy to calculate thanks to the Web site Zombie Zone News (http://tinyurl.com/ cmcjjh4), reveals an unsettling trend. In the two decades between 1932 (the release of White Zombie) and 1952 (when Zombies of the Stratosphere was the only zombierelated release), there were only 15 zombie movies. From 1952 to 1972, that number had risen to 47, and between 1972 and 1992, the number ballooned to 193. Between 1992 and 2010, the number skyrocketed to 473 (in fact, there were 45 in 2010 alone). It’s amazing that there’s room at any multiplex these days for non-zombie movies. Why was I visiting the Zombie Zone News Web site? Because the site offers a link for people to invest in zombie research, (“How much would YOU pay for the information that could save your life when the zombies come? Is a wooden baseball bat really better for skull cracking than aluminum? How effective is a bear trap, a katana, or an axe?”). I stumbled across the site while attempting to document what I perceived to be a conspicuous increase in references to zombies in the scientific literature. I was induced to delve into zombie science by a recent spate of stories about the discovery of an apparent host switch by Apocephalus borealis, a parasitic phorid fly associated primarily with bumble bees, to Apis mellifera, the western honey bee (Core et al. 2012). It’s no surprise to entomologists that phorid fly parasitoids eat brains, but this lifestyle and host shift proved irresistible to science journalists, who gleefully picked up the story, reporting details such as the fact that after infestation, “...the bee starts exhibiting strange behavior and acts, well, like a zombie. It moves in increasingly erratic circles and becomes drawn to bright lights” (http://tinyurl.com/ d2c3236). The scientists who had reported the finding capitalized on zombie-philia by recruiting citizen-scientist “zombie bee hunters” to report incidences of phorid parasitism of honey bees through a Web site called (naturally) zombeewatch.org. Actually, as far as I can tell, the word “zombie” appears only once in Core et al. (2012): in the bibliography, in the title of an article about Pseudacteon tricuspis, a phorid parasite of fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) (Henne and Johnson 2007). But make no mistake—zombie references are increasing exponentially in the scientific literature. From 1973, when Legaultd (1973) published a paper titled “Zombie bacteria,” the annual count of papers with “zombie” in the title climbed to 38 in 2011, and the trend does not seem to be abating. The most frequently cited zombie science paper (n = 39) belongs to Foster et al. (2000) and is titled “Do hornets have zombie workers?” The authors describe the absence of worker oviposition despite the lack of queen aggression or oophagy (raising the possibility that Vespa crabro queens “exert indirect pheromonal control to cause the worker’s acquiescent zombie-like behaviour”). Although the authors reported “workers mauling each other,” no brain-eating (a seemingly defining zombie characteristic) was observed. Zombies are not the only undead capturing attention of late; vampires have gained a lot of traction in recent years. Yes, there’s a Web site, Vampire Rave (http://tinyurl. com/6hl7mba), that indexes 682 vampire movies (including, most recently, the wildly successful Twilight franchise). A cursory review of the site reveals that pop culture today is awash in bloodsucking creatures of the night (particularly primetime hours, The Zom-bees Survival Kit