Plight of the living dead : what real-life zombies reveal about our world -- and ourselves

A brain-bending exploration of real-life zombies and mind controllers, and what they reveal to us about nature—and ourselves Zombieism isn’t just the stuff of movies and TV shows like The Walking Dead . It’s real, and it’s happening in the world around us, from wasps and worms to dogs and moose—and even humans. In Plight of the Living Dead , science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre evolutionary history of mind control. Along the way, he visits a lab where scientists infect ants with zombifying fungi, joins the search for kamikaze crickets in the hills of New Mexico, and travels to Israel to meet the wasp that stings cockroaches in the brain before leading them to their doom. Nothing Hollywood dreams up can match the brilliant, horrific zombies that natural selection has produced time and time again. Plight of the Living Dead is a surreal dive into a world that would be totally unbelievable if very smart scientists didn’t happen to be proving it’s real, and most troublingly—or maybe intriguingly—of all: how even we humans are affected. “Fantastic . . . You'll be thinking about this book long after you're done reading it.” —Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Soonish Praise for PLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD......Page 2 About the Author......Page 4 Also by Matt Simon......Page 5 Title Page......Page 6 Copyright......Page 7 Dedication......Page 8 Contents......Page 9 Introduction: Welcome to the surreal world of the real-life living dead.......Page 11 1. The First Rule of Zombification: You Do Not Want to Be a Zombie......Page 16 This Might Sting a Little......Page 17 A Brief and Dare I Say Fascinating Story of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection......Page 23 If You Be My Bodyguard, I Can Be Your Long-Lost Manipulative Pal......Page 27 The Very Not Hungry Caterpillar......Page 30 2. Nothing Brings the World Together Like Unsolicited Mind Control......Page 34 The Zombie Ant: Chronicle of a Death Foretold......Page 35 Your Long-Lost Uncle, the Fungus......Page 39 Hey Sister, Go Sister, Soul Sister, Go Sister: Ain’t No Family Drama Like Ant Family Drama......Page 42 The Fungus Among Us......Page 45 Attack of the Zombie Unicorn Caterpillar and the Flying Salt Shaker of Death......Page 48 3. When Life Gets Complicated, Life Gets Zombified......Page 53 Disco Snails and the Ants That Would Be Berries......Page 54 That Time Crustaceans Clamped onto a Guy’s Leg Hairs and Began a Scientific Movement......Page 59 How to Get into the Business of Ruining Other Creatures’ Lives......Page 64 Evolution: Making Watches (of Sorts) Since 3.5 Billion Years BC......Page 66 Second Curse, Same as the First......Page 69 4. No Creature Lives in a Vacuum, Not Even a Zombie......Page 72 Parasites Warm the Heart of My Cockle......Page 73 You’re off the Hook This Time, Butterflies......Page 80 On the Road with Hitchhikers, Lucky Passengers, and Copilots......Page 83 5. How to Succeed in Parasitism Without Really Dying......Page 87 I’ve Got a Gut Feeling......Page 88 Insane in the Membrane (Insane in the Brain)......Page 94 It Ain’t Easy Being Mean......Page 97 I’ve Got a Parasite, and the Only Prescription Is More Fever......Page 102 6. Dawn of the Sexually Undead......Page 105 Barnacles: The Sexual Deviants of the Sea......Page 106 If a Bacterial Infection Changes Your Sex, It’s Probably Too Late for Antibiotics......Page 113 Sex Appeal......Page 118 7. The Great Escape from the Umwelt......Page 120 The Legendary Biologist Who Thought Darwin Was Full of Shit......Page 121 The Actuality of the Cave......Page 126 The Curious Case of the Bird That Smelled Kind of Funny......Page 128 Breaking the Sound Barrier......Page 131 8. The Great Hacking of the Umwelt......Page 135 Let’s Not Necessarily Get Physical......Page 136 The Inherent Poetry of Bumblebees Slaughtering Each Other......Page 142 That’s a Nice Family You’ve Got There. It’d Be a Shame If Someone Parasitized It.......Page 145 Bastardizing the Umwelt......Page 149 9. The Brain-Hacked Mouse That Wore a Funny Hat and Destroyed the Notion of Free Will......Page 152 Welcome to the Machine......Page 153 The Whole-Body Model of the Great Big Sham That Is Free Will......Page 159 10. You, the Undead......Page 164 Reality Bites......Page 165 As If You Needed Another Reason to Get a Dog Instead of a Cat......Page 171 Inside the Fallible Human Brain......Page 174 11. End Times......Page 177 Acknowledgments......Page 181 Bibliography......Page 183 Zombification isn't just the stuff of movies and TV shows like The Walking Dead. It's real, and it's happening all around us, from wasps and crickets to dogs and moose--and even humans. In Plight of the Living Dead, science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre science of real-life mind control. Along the way, he visits a lab littered with the corpses of zombie ants, joins the search for kamikaze crickets in the hills of New Mexico, and travels to Israel to meet the wasp that stings cockroaches in the brain before leading them to their doom. A madcap, brain-bending journey into an exhilarating new frontier of neuroscience, Plight of the Living Dead shows us that nothing Hollywood dreams up can match the horrific zombies that evolution has produced time and time again Zombieism isn't just the stuff of movies and TV shows like The Walking Dead. It's real, and it's happening in the word around us, from wasps and worms, to dogs and moose - and even humans. In The Plight of the Living Dead, science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre evolutionary history of mind control. Along the way, he visits a lab where scientists infect ants with zombifying fungi, joins the search for kamikaze crickets in the hills of New Mexico, and travels to Israel to meet the wasp that stings cockroaches in the brain before leading them to their doom In its teachings, practices, and institutions, Buddhism in its varied Asian forms is centrally concerned with death and the dead. This title offers a comparative investigation of this topic across the major Buddhist cultures of India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Tibet, and Burma. It contains essays that represent a range of methods