A Zombie Apocalypse and Vampires? No.

     In Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite, Matt Kaplan sets out to disprove many of the classic "monsters". As I started reading this book I was excited to get to the chapter on zombies and vampires, wanting to be able to explain why they are not real. I have never believed that either actually exist; however, there are many ignorant people at my small-town school that seem to be in full belief of both. Many students even believe that there is an actual zombie disease going around in Africa and that the zombie apocalypse is coming. I absolutely cannot stand when people use no logic and try to argue that this is true so, naturally, I was extremely anxious to disprove them. Once I got to the chapter and read why they are not real, though, I was completely struck with how easily these monsters are explained.
     Obviously, neither zombies nor vampires are real; interestingly, though, the origins of both are easy, short explanations. It is shocking to me that they have not been more publicized. I suppose, though, that the explanation of these monsters would take quite a bit of money away from the movie industry. Vampires have never been real; people thinking that they were came from a mix of misunderstandings about postmortem humans and how diseases spread. Though, it was extremely interesting to learn that, in a way, zombies have been real in Haiti. People called "zombie makers" used to mix many different natural ingredients into a sort of poison that completely paralyzed people, making it seem as if they were dead even though they were conscious the entire time. Once the doctors, without the amount of medical technology we have today, would pronounce the person dead, they would be buried. The "zombie makers" would then dig them back up, give them the remedy to the poison, and enslave them to work on a "zombie plantation". Clearly, though, with the technology of today this no longer happens and the half dead, decaying zombies portrayed in movie theatres around the world are not and have never been real. These monsters are easily disproved, yet people still believe; I may never understand why that is, but at least, now, I can logically argue their existence through science.