Wednesday, October 8, 2014

The Ebola Zombie Debunked

*Unfortunately, as I was preparing for this article, news broke that Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with ebola in the United States, has passed away at a Dallas hospital.  Please keep him and his family in your thoughts today.*

It all started with an article from the All Africa website, dated 24 September 2014.  The article discussed that two Liberian women, Dorris Quoi and Ma Kebeh in their 40s and 60s respectively, had been declared deceased, succumbing to the horrible disease ebola.  However, before their bodies were buried, the two women were said to have resurrected.

While the article doesn't flat out say that this story obviously isn't a sign of the coming zombie apocalypse, it is important to note that this area is a very small, very superstitious area.  More importantly...ebola is such a scare right now and with a shortage of doctors and medical supplies and people being turned away at hospitals, its very possible that these women do exist...and were actually declared or thought to be dead 'dead,' but really weren't.

It wasn't until later that a third case of an ebola victim coming back to life hit the media, which apparently was actually the FIRST.  Apparently ABC News, while filming a segment with Dr. Richard Besser for Good Morning America caught footage of a man in a body bag, ready for burial begin moving his arms.  This footage fueled the idea that maybe there was actually something to all this...at the very least, it supported the idea that people who were thought to be dead might not actually BE dead to begin with.

And then, the infamous photo showing one of the living Liberian zombies (see above) went super viral (pardon the pun) after being posted on a satirical news site. The dead probably aren't coming back to life---more likely, they were never dead to begin with, but we do know for sure that the photo released of the victim is nothing but a hoax.  Two images were combined to create the "zombie":

1. A still shot from the movie World War Z, featuring Sarah Amankwah, who played a zombie employee at the W.H.O. lab.




2. This really awesome mask created by sculptor  Jordu Schell

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