Much to my surprise, I’ve become a bit of a zombie junkie.

I’m a big fan of the Walking Dead television show and zombie films in general (I could watch Shaun of the Dead endlessly). I’ve been intrigued and spooked by the genre’s post-apocalypic visions of a humanity overrun by a mysterious virus that brings the dead back to life—only to stalk the living.

While it doesn’t necessarily speak to the kind of speculative fiction that I normally enjoy, it does offer some food for thought as far a the science is concerned. And it got me thinking: Could such a thing ever happen? Moreover, given the potential power of future technologies, could a ‘zombie virus’ be deliberately engineered? The more I thought about this, the more I became convinced that such a thing might actually be possible.

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