to the plausibility of panspermia.”
It also demonstrates that when we head into outer space, we may bring back something terrifying, something viral, something that may lead to a real-life dawning of the dead. Or, a case of: one small step for man, one giant leap for zombiekind.
Congo Conspiracies
In August 1964, a very strange yet fascinating document was secretly prepared for senior personnel in the U.S. Army and the Pentagon. A copy even reached none other than the White House. Its title was Witchcraft, Sorcery, Magic, and Other Psychological Phenomena and Their Implications on Military and Paramilitary Operations in the Congo. It was a document written by James Price and Paul Juredini, both of whom worked for the Special Operations Research Office, SORO, which was an agency that undertook top secret contract work for the military.
The document, now in the public domain under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, is a fascinating one, in the sense that it focuses on how beliefs in paranormal phenomena can be successfully used and manipulated to defeat a potential enemy. The bigger the belief in the world of the supernatural, note Price and Jure-dini, the greater the chance that a particularly superstitious foe could be terrorized and manipulated by spreading faked stories of paranormal creatures on the loose, of demons in their midst, and of ghostly, terrible things with violent slaughter on their monstrous minds.
Interestingly, one portion of the document deals with a classic aspect of the zombie of the modern era: its terrifying ability to keep on coming, even when its body is riddled with bullet upon bullet. In the example, the authors reported that: “Rebel tribesmen are said to have been persuaded that they can be made magically impervious to Congolese army firepower. Their fear of the government has thus been diminished and, conversely, fear of the rebels has grown within army ranks.”
That was not all: rumors quickly spread within the army to the effect that the reason why the rebels were allegedly so immune to bullets was because they had been definitively zombified. Not in Romero-style, but by good old, tried and tested Voodoo techniques. The rebels, entire swathes of army personnel came to fully believe—and very quickly, too—had literally been rendered indestructible as a result of dark and malignant spells and incantations. On top of that, the minds of the rebels, controlled by a Voodoo master, had been magically distilled, to the point where they were driven by a need to kill and nothing else. Or so it was widely accepted by the Congolese military.
It transpired, as one might guess, that the stories were actually wholly fictional ones. They were ingeniously created and spread by none other than the rebels themselves, and with just one purpose in mind: to have the army utterly convinced that the rebels were unbeatable and indestructible. Such was the ingrained fear that infected the army, the brilliant piece of disinformation was accepted as full-blown fact—as was the belief that fearless, and fear-inducing, zombies were roaming the landscape and who were impervious to bullets. The result: the rebels delivered the army a powerful blow of a terrifyingly psychological kind. While the bullet-proof zombies of the Congo never really existed, for all of the stark fear and mayhem they provoked, they just might as well have been the real thing.
The Crazies
When you think of George A. Romero, several things immediately, and inevitably, spring to mind: death, chaos, a deadly virus, societal collapse, people running for their lives, and—last, but most assuredly not least—zombies. Well, in Romero’s 1973 film, The Crazies, you have all of those ingredients, except for one: the shambling dead. A Romero film, but one specifically without walking corpses: can it be true? Yes, it is true. But, instead of the dead, the cast of The Crazies are forced to do battle with something just as fearsome; hordes of living people who have been driven to homicidal levels of madness after being exposed to a military-created biological weapon.
Like most of Romero’s zombie movies, The Crazies—also released under the far less fearsome title of Code Name: Trixie—makes the viewer ponder deeply on how fragile society really is, and the speed with which it can fragment and collapse when death, disaster, and terror become overwhelming. It’s also a film from which the production teams of the likes of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later likely took a great deal of inspiration.
The scary humans in 1973’s The Crazies are not zombified undead, but rather people ill with a disease that turns them into homicidal maniacs.
Evans City, Pennsylvania is where all of the carnage and homicidal behavior occurs. As it does so, we follow the plight of a trio of people trying to comprehend, and survive, the anarchy exploding all around them. They are David and Judy—a fireman and a nurse who also happen to be boyfriend and girlfriend—and Clank, also a fireman. When violent behavior quickly turns Evans City into a living hell, a large military contingent quickly arrives to take control of the alarming situation. Each and every one of them is decked out in protective gear of the type generally seen in chemical- and biological-warfare outbreaks, and are led by a Major Ryder.
Taking control basically means killing anyone and everyone who is living—whether they are infected or not. So, as is often the case when Romero is behind the lens, the stars of The Crazies are not just in danger of losing their lives to those with the virus, but to their normal, fellow people, too. As the film progresses, the death rate rises, the deranged infected become even more deranged, two of the characters fail to survive the onslaught, and the military starts to lose control of the situation. Zombie fans that have not seen The Crazies will be satisfied by its bleak ending: the Army is forced to retreat from what is now, for all intents and purposes, a city transformed into an outdoor asylum. Word reaches Major Ryder that another city is showing signs of infection. The end is becoming ever more nigh.
The Crazies was not a big hit with cinema-goers in 1973 or, indeed, ever since. In fact, it wasn’t even a small hit. In short, it bombed, big time. It has, however, and quite rightly, become a cult-classic among those that have a love for the crazed, the infected, and Romero. It also inspired a remake, in 2010, starring Timothy Olyphant of such movies as Hitman and Live Free or Die Hard. The budget was a big one, and the profits were impressive. Audience reactions, however, were mixed. Even though Romero himself acted as the executive producer and the co-writer on the new incarnation, many preferred the 1973 original to the special-effects-driven version of nearly forty years later. In short, not everyone was, ahem, crazy about bringing back The Crazies.
Cremation
See also: Burial Traditions, Cemeteries and Tombs, Funerals, Mummies
Because early humankind so feared the evil spirits that caused death and believed that these entities continued to dwell in the corpse of their beloved, awaiting new victims, it is not surprising that cremation, the burning of the body, became one of the earliest methods of disposing of the dead. Cremation appears to have been practiced widely in the ancient world, except
