Rabies Virus Could Mutate Can Cause A Zombie Apocalypse, Study Shows

A new study suggests that the rabies virus could artificially or naturally mutate and cause a disease that triggers a zombie apocalypse.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to rethink what is and what isn’t possible with science, what the study suggests won’t happen right in this instance. But it does say rabies virus could be engineered to have a shorter incubating period and transmit from human to human.

Can Rabies Causes Zombification

Back in 2011, the CDC (Center for Diseases Control) created posters, blog posts, and a graphic novel outlining how it would handle a zombie apocalypse. What it did back then was to show the public how the center will react when there is an epidemic.

In the same year, some junior officers of a training program of the Department of Defense came up with a tactical plan on how the government deals with the zombie threat. While using zombies to demonstrate emergency preparedness is somewhat fun, we have to take it seriously that an outbreak can catch any country off guard.

The study mentions some vital common traits between rabies and zombification, including the fact that the virus can infect via biting and that victims will experience increased aggression.

The study said that some types of viruses were known to have a high mutation rate, meaning they constantly change to increase their chances of infecting other hosts and defend themselves.

It also explained that a small change across rabies variations could cause alterations to the virus in several ways.

The author remarked that even one slight mutation in the protein of rabies is enough to cause drastic changes to the virus characteristics, increasing the speed at which they spread from human to human for example.

The paper also explores the possibility that the Rabies Lyssavirus could be engineered and weaponized in a laboratory, thus recreating the scenario in movies and games like Resident Evil.

While it’s true that advancements in genetic engineering have made it possible to create some very dangerous viruses in the lab, the study went a bit too far when it suggested a theory that SARS could be the result of a lab study.

A more convincing theory here is that since rabies have already caused aggression and hyperactivity, the virus can be altered in the lab to ramp up these tendencies to a point that a human with the virus might bite another human to transmit it.

The author then concluded that while the mortality and incidence of rabies virus had been declined in the last 30 years, we must think out-of-the-box and accept that the theory of a zombie apocalypse shouldn’t be excluded.

Rabies Won’t Turn People Into Zombies…Yet

However scary and dangerous, rabies is preventable and tens of millions of people get the vaccination for it each year. But that doesn’t change the fact that even when death from the virus is preventable, a large number of people in Africa and Asia still lose their lives to it each year.

WHO continues its effort to minimize its impact by supplying vaccines to at-risk people. Because of the ongoing effort to fight it and the fact that developed nations have all the resources they need to treat the virus, it’s highly unlikely, for now, that rabies can turn a large portion of our population into zombies.

There is a real possibility that bad actors could one day re-engineer rabies to kill a huge number of people, but how this theory plays out is still unknown to us. A natural mutation could happen too, turning the current strains into something much more dangerous to humans.

The study points out that while the mutation of rabies into zombie virus is a real threat, we can prepare for it and also for other possible pandemics with education, widespread knowledge, surveillance, and prevention against these devastating viruses.

So in short, is it possible that rabies could turn into a zombie virus that ruins humanity? Yes, as far as we know, anything is possible. But is it likely to happen anytime soon? Of course no.

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