(Chapter 13) Appendix 7 - Viral Outbreak

(Z-Day, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies)

Not fully documented, sometime during 2030, further records destroyed

Yes, zombies. The undead. Brain-eaters. Flesh-rippers. Walkers. Whatever highly un-original name you wish to call them by, they are, or at least were, unfortunately very real threat for humanity to face. Fitting really, as it was humanity who caused them in the first place.

Now, that might not be entirely fair, just as it would be unfair to say humanity was responsible for the development of cancerous cells in the body or pollution on a global scale. Maybe not every hand on the planet was involved with the creation of this virus, but everyone is guilty of turning a blind eye to the problems that very clearly plagued their lives at the time. The correlation between certain activities and these issues is clear and can tell us many things, but that does not mean all of humanity lies at fault to be judged for these problems. Just a few, short-sighted individuals.

Again, this may be unfair of me so I will try my hardest to elaborate. This is a hypothesis I put together from what information I could find, newspaper articles, personal diaries, video discs and so on. But I am firm in my belief that a virus was unleashed on an international scale, with intent but not with malice-of-forethought, as an act of desperation. I may have already referenced this in my previous appendix, but before its end, the world was suffering a great deal. Regardless of what humanity can and cannot be held directly responsible for, or how you classify responsibility, that much is obvious.

The oceans were greatly laden with materials that would have to be physically destroyed or recycled before they could be cleaned. The atmosphere was beginning to reach toxic levels, with the great emissions of burning fossil fuels, which I find morbidly amusing for reasons you will never be able to understand. Holes in the planetary ozone layer were beginning to expand and appear more often. Research called for changes to be made to save the planet, but world leaders were deaf to their pleas, often turning their attention to profit shares instead. I find it fascinating that entire populations were able to, again, willfully turn a blind eye to the scathing corruption that wracked their ruling class, but that's a different conversation.

Needless to say, scientists and activists around the world were ignored or shunned in favour of an easier way of like that would very soon bite humanity in the arse, so-to-speak. Around this time, nature had decided it was time to take back what was hers and try to undo some of the damage humanity had done to her planet. Earthquakes became more frequent and a lot more intense, which led to increasingly violent tsunamis, aided by hurricanes and tornadoes that wreaked havoc across the planet's surface and began to sink entire coastlines. Humanity became desperate and, instead of accepting their mistakes and uniting to work toward a solution, they turned on one another. Countries were pointing fingers at each other, at least those that were considered global superpowers, while the smaller countries attempted to pool their resources and find a solution.

Ideas ranged from raising buildings with natural countermeasures to leaving the planet entirely. To this point, several rockets were launched, but they were never heard from again, their construction being too poor to survive in space, or maybe the astronauts simply started their colony on the moon, this I will probably never know. Needless to say, nothing was slowing humanity's inevitable slide toward extinction. That is until the superpowers finally began working on a solution. Not together mind you, I highly doubt cooperation was at the forefront of their thoughts, more than likely it was to be portrayed as the 'hero' of their little story while making the others look bad.

You know about the start of the war, the satellites, the orbital super-weapons and all that from Appendix 1 so I will not repeat myself. The satellites were launched, carrying the settling chemical compound and they released their payloads gradually around the planet. But, as is probably obvious, the chemical did not have the desired effect alone.

In their limited testing phases, the scientists and engineers had neglected to test the chemical on any human subjects. Presumably, because the formula consisted of entirely non-harmful chemicals and substances and was presumed safe for human inhalation to save time. They were very, catastrophically mistaken. As a wise man once said, if you mix several chemicals you create a brand new chemical and this one was capable of turning regular humans into a 'zombie'. At least in a literary sense.

From what I can tell, the virus took hold of the brain, manipulating certain parts of the hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdala, ignoring the body's need to rest, and over-stimulating the need for hunger and uncontrollable rage. Though, again, this is conjecture as there were no specimens left to analyse and I made sure all notes and studies on this topic were destroyed.

If you've ever seen a film or TV show with a zombie plague as the main premise, you have a general idea of how this went for humanity at the time. The outbreak was immediate and catastrophic, but please see my diary entry regarding 'Subject 221A' for further details. I cannot bear to speak of it twice.