On the Origin of Zombies: A Modeling Approach

A zombie apocalypse is one pandemic that would likely be worse than anything humanity has ever seen. However, despite the mechanisms for zombie uprisings in pop culture, it is unknown whether zombies, from an evolutionary point of view, can actually rise from the dead. To provide insight into this unknown, we created a mathematical model that predicts the trajectory of human and zombie populations during a zombie apocalypse. We parametrized our model according to the demographics of the US, the zombie literature, and then conducted an evolutionary invasion analysis to determine conditions that permit the evolution of zombies. Our results indicate a zombie invasion is theoretically possible, provided the ratio of transmission rate to the zombie death rate is sufficiently large. While achieving this ratio is uncommon in nature, the existence of zombie ant fungus illustrates it is possible and thereby suggests that a zombie apocalypse among humans could occur.