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| Zach Gompert |
A cure for the infectious zombie outbreak will not be available for years, according to Zach Gompert, an assistant professor of biology at Utah State University.
“I’m sure there’s certainly lots of people working on vaccines that would prevent the spread,” Gompert said, “but those things take a long time to figure out.”
According to Gompert, the fact that viruses tend to mutate further complicates the situation.
“You can have a vaccine that works and then suddenly it’s no longer working because the virus itself has evolved,” Gompert said. “So it may take a while before something’s truly nailed down.”
Even if cured, those infected with the virus have little hope for recovery.
“The sooner a cure for the infection was administered the better off a patient would be,” said Josh Woolstenhulme, a physical therapist at The National Institutes of Health. “Zombies’ bodies are breaking down all the time. Depending on their injuries, zombies would need a lot of amputations and prosthetics.”
Woolstenhulme said after a certain time, even with a cure, the damage sustained to the body would be so great that the person would not survive.
Greggory Madden, an experimental behavior analyst at USU, said classical and operant conditioning can be used to teach them.
“Since they’re so stupid, you could probably manipulate their behavior quite readily,” Madden said.
According to Madden, it may be difficult to do this because the zombies may not give humans the amount of contact they need to condition them. Instead it might be better to associate humans with an aversive sound as a way to ward off the zombies.
The League of Supernatural Nations is encouraging all those who have not been infected to stay home and not to open the door for anyone, even family and friends.
UnDeadline reporters Alora Clark, Christopher Campbell, Stewart Ulrich, Emily Lindley and Hannah Hendricks contributed to this report.
