Alien Zombies

I haven't actually had a chance to do any research this week because I've been busy with edits.  Not my own, unfortunately, but freelance projects.  I'm not really complaining, they pay, but I'm excited to get back to work on my zombie project!

Last week, I met with a friend and fellow author, Mike Brotherton, who happens to also be an astronomy professor.  We talked about what it would take for zombies to come from space--if they could come at all.  We also talked about his Launch Pad Workshop, which is freaking awesome and I had the pleasure of being an attendee in 2011.  Man, it seems like a long time ago!

If you recall, the zombies in Night of the Living Dead are created when a meteor with high amounts of radiation crashes onto Earth.  This film was made in 1968, a time when the effects of radiation were just coming to be known.  It was also a time when the space race was on, and no one knew what we were going to find out there.  Radiation causes a lot of awful things--cancer, sterility--but it's highly doubtful it would create zombies.  Because of the time, it was just a convenient causation.

The Ghosts of Mars is another film where zombies are created by an alien substance.  I haven't watched it again (yet), so I don't really remember the details, but the basic premise is that miners on Mars are turned into murderous creatures bent on ridding the planet of the human infestation.  It's a great film.  I really enjoy it, but it never really reached main-stream popularity.

So, anyway, the point was:  what would it take for zombies to come from space?  There is so much out there that we don't know, and there is a theory, called Panspermia, that proposes that all viruses come from space.  I need to do some more digging, but it's a fascinating idea.

The truth is, if there are pathogens in space, they can conceivably make their way to Earth.  Do you have any idea how many meteorites slam into our surface?  And they can potentially make us sick.  Like I said, I need to do a lot more digging to find answers, but the prospects are looking promising!