• Question: are zombies real?

    Asked by page6 to Anouk, Chris, Judith, Leisha, Seyyed on 19 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Judith Sleeman

      Judith Sleeman answered on 19 Jun 2012:

      Not the ones you see on TV, no, fortunately not! The legend stems, I think, mostly from religious beliefs in Haiti. It’s possible that ‘zombies’ in Haiti are people in a drugged state but it’s not something I’ve ever read much about (despite “Shaun of the dead” being one of may favourite films ever!).

      There again, if you’d ever seen me before 8am at the weekend, you’d probably believe in zombies!

    • Photo: Chris Kettle

      Chris Kettle answered on 19 Jun 2012:

      We all secretly want a zombie apocalypse!

      It would be interesting to think they could be but as Judith says, its usually a drugged up state.

      Resident evil and 28 days later like zombies are the most likely, those that are human but “mutated” by bioengineering, in these cases the T-virus etc.

      I love zombie films so much that I am going on the zombie shopping mall experience in Reading- getting chanse by zombies around an abandoned shopping centre.

    • Photo: Anouk Gouvras

      Anouk Gouvras answered on 19 Jun 2012:

      If you mean Zombies as in the walking dead, no.
      But there are lots of other definitions:

      philosophical Zombies – these are hypothetical beings that philosophers use in ‘thought experiments’ to explore aspects of human consciousness. They are physically identical to a human but lack conscious experience. Check out this wiki explanation which I still don’t quite follow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

      Another definition which sadly you may have heard a lot lately is a ‘Zombie bank’ a term coined by Edward Kane (perhaps another name you may have heard a lot lately). This is a bank or financial institution with a negative net worth, but continue to operate by being supported by government backings or bailouts. Unfortunately these are pretty common right now.
      For more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_bank

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