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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Geek Time advanced. Let's continue with Zombie Apocalypse talk.

Sounds very good.

Thank you for humoring me, by the way.

Don’t worry, I love zombies.

Yeah. But one thing I want to put it out there, because last time you were mentioning that how zombie virus is spreading is following the theoretical base of how some of the contagious viruses are spreading.

Yes.

So that's probably why zombie is always connected to this whole world. It's almost like a pandemic situation if you think about it.

Yeah.

Hopefully in our lifetime, there's not going to be pandemics that fatal.

Right.

I mean pandemic obviously is very serious. It's not something you can joke about.

Uh.

In the early days of this pandemic that has been going on for more than a year now. In the early days, what I found out is that people are trying to avoid probably watching or producing these types of shows or movies because it's too close to home.

Yeah.

It's too close to reality. They don't want to cause people to feel depressed, anxious. But now because it has been going on for so long, I think some creative artists are going to the other end of this spectrum, they start to produce like the ultimate zombie films and stuff because you can see them like a lot of these apocalyptical works.

Yeah, like if you watch we mentioned Train to Busan earlier, there's a Japanese TV show, I think it's like Alice in Borderland.

Oh, I have watched that.

Like there's all these shows that have to do with the apocalypse coming out now.

Also the Korean one, Sweet Home.

OH. Yeah, yeah, that's really crazy, all the monsters. That's actually part of that one TV show or the one YouTube video that I was talking about where how to survive the Sweet Home.

Oh. Can you survive actually?

Yeah. Basically, like one of the things that was saying is like you should make friends with one of the people who have the curse.

I see. So to me, I think this sounds like another way to cope with what is going on. Some people they like to watch things like comedy or like romcom because everything is so dreamy. So that they can fantasize about that world. But for me, I just love watch the opposite, I love watch horror films like zombie apocalypse. Because then when you get back to reality, you feel like it's not that bad.

Yeah. It's… one of those things that's escapism, you realize our life hasn't gone quite that bad yet.

Yeah, exactly. But we did say that we're going to talk about some of these survival guidebooks, and you are also talking about these YouTube series about how to survive different horror films or zombie apocalypse. What are some of the things that you have learned?

There's the actual zombie survival guide book. If you go into a bookstore, you can find it. But for some reason, the bookstores always put it under “Comedy” and not “How to”, which is kind of strange but…

It needs to be in “How to” self-help book section.

It is serious, but actually it talks about the different weapons you can use why some weapons would be better than others, how to get society back going after you kill a bunch of the zombies. It does talk about the more traditional zombies, but it also talks about how to make traps and things so that you can get the zombies and then maybe make it easier to kill them. But also how to create a place to live where the zombies can't really get to you.

It's kind of like survival guide in the wild, but plus the zombie.

Yeah.

Like the zombie prevention

Yeah, exactly.

So are there any specific tips that you've learned from these books or guides?

One of the things that they suggested was, find a house that's more than one story, but then remove any way for the zombies to get to the second story, and have like a ladder that you use to get up and down. So you can remove the ladder so they can't follow you up.

Kind of like building your own fortress.

Basically.

And you also mentioned last time going to somewhere, probably in the North Pole.

Going somewhere…You could go to like an island, but the zombies can go in the water and so eventually they might show up there. So it's not necessarily the safest, but going somewhere where it's extremely cold, where the zombies would freeze outdoors would be a good one, but then you can't really grow things as easily. So that's the one difficulty. Now the one thing that the zombie survival guidebook did state is that since they're no longer living, that eventually they will decay and that process could take a few years, 2 or 3 years at maximum.

Okay.

And so…

You just have to outlive them.

So as long as you can outlive them, then things could go back to normal, provided that is not a virus that everyone has, provided it just something that spread by the bite.

Yeah, we have been talking about all these zombies is caused by a virus that can be passed on from people to people with bites and wounds. But there… I've heard of other I don't know if it's urban legend or so, it seems like they are also drug induced.

Yeah. So this is actually something that has happened, right?

Oh. Really.

This is legit like there are drugs that make people basically go into a catatonic state where they appear to be dead.

They're locked inside their mind.

Yeah. Now people wake up from these drugs, but oftentimes what happened is kind of someone would be given one of these drugs. And people think they were dead. They would have a funeral, bury the person, but then later on they might hear like screams and people are like… what's going on? And then people would dig up the body or dig up the person, dig up their grave find that the person was alive on the inside trying to like dig out of their grave and they thought…

So they didn't really die.

They didn't die because the drug made them appear to be dead.

Oh.

And that’s the whole zombie probably came from like these people who came back to life after death.

I think that is a medical reality. It's almost like they're really dead, so there's no heartbeat and there's no whatnot, but they are not actually dead.

What it is is their heartbeat is so slow that no one knows it's beating; and because their body is in such a low state of …of use that their body still survives, they're still alive. But certain drugs can induce this.

Yeah. You know what, actually in Chinese culture, you know we have all these Wuxia, like martial arts sort of stories. And then a few guys who actually know specific martial arts that can put you in that state.

Okay.

So I think that idea has always been there, that either drugs or some sort of techniques can induce that sort of zombie-like state.

Yeah. Then there's also another drug that was used. This was used in like Voodoo type rituals, but the drug would actually put someone into a state where they are really susceptible to anyone's like suggestions, and so like they really don't have a mind of their own and they just follow orders and so they look like they’re a zombie. Their brain is there, but they just have no control of their body anymore.

I have heard of that and then they have been used in forced labor basically or even to fight in a battle, that sort of thing. That is scary.

Yeah.

That thought is really scary that there might be a drug out there that can do that or people malicious enough to do that sort of manipulation.

Yeah, and basically like people use these drugs to be… to like hurt someone or to force someone to do labor.

But are only humans capable of turning into zombies. What about animals?

There's insects that are becoming zombies. There's a fungus. Actually, the fungus is, I think it's called Cordyceps. That's a fungus that's actually used for a different type of medicines. But this fungus attaches itself to an insect and then basically takes control of the insect, turning the insect into a zombie.

How would you even tell if an insect is a zombie.

Well, you can see the fungus growing on the insect.

But the insect is still somewhat alive or…

The insect is alive, but once the fungus grows into it and starts controlling it, the insect doesn't do what it normally does. It goes to like a particular place so that like a predator can eat it and then the fungus can go through its metamorphosis or…

Oh. Wow. That sounds like what nightmares are made of.

There is actually new… like new video games and things that are using this fungus spread to humans.

Yeah, I bet. I bet that will make very good horror films, horror stories. Either way, that is really freaky.

Yeah, that's really freaky.

Actually, I think there is a very rare psychological disorder. In that order without any external drugs, people who are suffering from the psychological disorder, they actually believe that they’re zombies, that their bodies are decayed. They are undead or they are dead.

Yeah.

I don't know if you heard about it? But it sounds pretty creepy. Anyway, I think the world is a fascinating and somewhat bizarre place.

It is.

And really, so many things are still out there for us to find out. And this is exactly why we're doing this type of really random talks.

That's a good thing to be prepared in just in case.

Yeah, so if you have read any zombie books or zombie apocalypse survival guide, or you want to share some of these scenarios. Leave us a comment in the comment section. Or if you're into all these weird topics, you can also request what we're going to talk about next.

Thanks everyone.

Looking forward to our next talk.

See you soon.

See you