What r zombies?

Question

r they ghosts...

Answer 1

Ghosts are the spirits/souls of people which live on the earth. They are of a spiritual plane. But zombies, also known as "the living dead" or "the walking dead", are dead people reanimated - and by that I mean that they are not brought back to life, but they are simply corpses that walk about. They are physical beings, unlike ghosts. This is the primary definition of a zombie, and zombies in different cultures and contexts have different traits which I shall explain here.

Before we get to the zombies as monsters, "zombies" in philosophy have a different meaning (from Wikipedia):

"In philosophy of mind, zombies are hypothetical persons who lack full consciousness but have the biology or behavior of a normal human being; they are often used in thought experiments which make arguments against the identity of the mind and the brain. The term was coined by philosopher of mind David Chalmers. They are referred to as philosophical zombies or "p-zombies". "

Anyway, onto the monsters!

In Voodoo, there were reports of a slave called Felicity who was seen after her death working for someone. In some voodoo rituals they administer poison which can revive the dead in the right amounts.

Wikipedia can explain the voodoo part better than me:

"According to the tenets of Voodoo, a dead person can be revived by a bokor or Voodoo sorcerer. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the Voodoo snake god Damballah Wedo, of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kongo word nzambi, which means "god". There also exists within the voudon tradition the zombi astral which is a human soul that is captured by a bokor and used to enhance the bokor's power.

In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of Felicia Felix-Mentor, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. Hurston pursued rumors that the affected persons were given powerful drugs, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote:

“ What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony.[4] ”

Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being entered into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike'), induced a 'death-like' state because of tetrodotoxin (TTX), its key ingredient. Tetrodotoxin is the same lethal toxin found in the Japanese delicacy fugu, or pufferfish. At near-lethal doses (LD50= 5-8µg/kg)[5], it can leave a person in a state of near-death for several days. The second powder, composed of dissociatives like datura, put the person in a zombie-like state where they seem to have no will of their own. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. There is wide belief among the Haitian people of the existence of the "zombie drug". The Voodoon religion being somewhat secretive in its practices and codes, it can be very difficult for a foreign scientist to validate or invalidate such claims.

The scientific community dismisses tetrodotoxin as the cause of this state. Terence Hines, writing in the May/June 2008 Skeptical Inquirer, points out that TTX poisoning can be classified by four levels, or grades, with grade one characterized by numbness and nausea, grade two marked by greater numbness and motor difficulty, grade three signified by severe flaccid paralysis, respiratory failure, and aphonia, and grade four characterized by serious respiratory problems, hypotension, cardiac difficulties, brain hypoxia, unconsciousness and death. Hines points out that these symptoms are not consistent with the descriptions of voodoo zombies by Davis, which include the ability to walk and lurch forward with stiff limbs, rather than flaccid ones that render one completely immobile, and it is for this reason that Davis' claims were dismissed by the scientific community in the 1980's. Hines believes that Davis was too credulous in his acceptance of information provided to him by Haitians, whom Hines believes took advantage of Davis, much as Margaret Mead's Samoan subjects had with her in the 1920's.[6]

Others have discussed the contribution of the victim's own belief system, possibly leading to compliance with the attacker's will, causing psychogenic ("quasi-hysterical") amnesia, catatonia, or other psychological disorders, which are later misinterpreted as a return from the dead. Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing further highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification."

Also, Wikipedia explains zombies in the Middle Ages:

"In the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed that the souls of the dead could return to earth and haunt the living. The belief in revenants (someone who has returned from the dead) is well documented by contemporary European writers of the time, such as William of Newburgh and Walter Map. According to the Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were[7], particularly in France during the Middle Ages, the revenant rises from the dead usually to avenge some crime committed against the entity, most likely a murder. The revenant usually took on the form of an emaciated corpse or skeletal human figure, and wandered around graveyards at night. The "draugr" of medieval Norse mythology were also believed to be the corpses of warriors returned from the dead to attack the living. The zombie appears in several other cultures worldwide, including China, Japan, the Pacific, India, and the Native Americans.

The Epic of Gilgamesh of ancient Sumer includes a mention of zombies. Ishtar, in the fury of vengeance says:

    Father give me the Bull of Heaven,

    So he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.

    If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,

    I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,

    I will smash the doorposts, and leave the doors flat down,

    and will let the dead go up to eat the living!

    And the dead will outnumber the living![8]"

But the most common type of zombie to you or I is the zombie of our popular culture. It began seriously with George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" film from the late sixties, spouting the idea that zombies wanted to eat our flesh. Since then, the zombie monster has had its very own subgenre and created a number of zombie films, including the rest of the Romero series ("Dawn of the Dead", "Day of the Dead", "Land of the Dead" and "Diary of the Dead") as well as spoofs such as "Fido" and "Shaun of the Dead". Most zombie films use the idea of apocalypse.

Videogames such as "Resident Evil" (which introduces the idea that the zombie virus isn't just limited to humans - there are zombie dogs and ravens in the game as well) and "Stubbs the Zombie" and novels such as the "Resident Evil" series also follow the zombie genre. They have become a big part of modern pop culture.

The usual causes for zombie infestations in the movies are viruses infecting the public, the heat of the moon or a freak occurance e.g. meteorite.

This pop culture also provides basis for the "zombie walks" of activism, like George A. Romero's films use zombies as a political or social statement.

Films such as "28 Days Later" provide more realistic approaches to the zombie idea - the film is dubbed as part of the zombie subgenre but technically the creatures in the film are not zombies, since they are still alive. They are infected with "Rage", which makes them very fast and angry (most likely adrenaline in it). They just want to kill but not for food. They can die of starvation, as proved at the end and in the second film when they wait out the virus before reintroducing humans into England.

There is also a name for fear of zombies: kinemortophobia ("moving dead" - this can also refer to vampires, but usually applied to zombies).

Answer 2

check out the movie "The Serpent and the Rainbow" it will give you a good ideal

also

kids around this area play a real life game in which walk around tulsa and wear either a green bandana for zombie or black or red for human and they find each other and beat one another up or tackle each other then the zombie turns to human and vice versa .....turns into huge groups walking around with melee equipment (pvc pipe wrapped in cloth and duct tape)

Answer 3

zombies are dead people that come back to life from out of their graves and eat the brains of people, making them turn into zombies aswell

Answer 4

No.

They are unfortunate beings that have been unwillingly drugged by voo-doo witch doctors.

Answer 5

REAL ZOMBIES ARE PEOPLE WHO LOOK JUST LIKE YOU AND ME EXCEPT WHEN THEY DIE THEYRE IS SOME KIND OF SORCERER WHO BRINGS THEM BACK TO LIFE TO WORK AS SLAVES THIS IS 100 % TRUE FACTS FROM STORIEES I HEARD FROM AFRICA

Answer 6

reanimated dead caused usually by a chemical or virus that spreads through the blood, normally through biting or injection sometimes spread through air. They crave flesh and brains.

Usually slow moving, there are fast running zombies. Also they are usually slow wits and relay on instinct but some have been known to wield  tools and become organized. very few are highly intelligent

Zombification is not limited to just humans. Small animals have also been infected from dogs to birds pick at the flesh of dead zombies