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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

> The injured fisherman in today’s attack, a 19-year-old male, appeared to have sustained a bite to the ankle and transported himself

A disease that propagates itself by making animals want to bite other animals. I suppose rabies is the base phenomenon behind the zombie meme. It's also a good description of a large fraction of social media posts.

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Not quite zombies, but there is a credible theory that rabies was the inspiration for vampires -- and maybe even werewolves -- since a lot of the symptoms are similar, e.g. transmission through biting (often from dogs and bats, which coincidentally are also animals that vampires can transform into), heightened aggression that includes biting, aversion to bright lights and strong smells like garlic:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321780

It's amazing how microorganisms, including that Cordyceps fungus, can "control" macro nervous systems so specifically..

With rabies I'm not sure it is really control in the sense that it makes the host find victims, but rather that your neurons get damaged in a way that causes immense agitation and the biting is almost a reflex to "defend" yourself as you're incapable of processing what is happening.

Kurzgesagt has a video on it - The Deadliest Virus on Earth https://youtu.be/4u5I8GYB79Y?si=kpoOGGK8YUA-2P5k&t=378 (time coded to 6:18 where it talks about the lack of damage to the brain)

Part of it is that after it does its thing in the brain, it then travels to the salivary glands where it can then spread through a bite.

Zombies who eat brains are the mentally ill.

Bram Stoker’s vampire characters and stories are gay, as are their heirs (Anne Rice).

Sparkling Twilight vampires are Latter-Day Saints.

Zombies and vampires existed long before these novels and films got made, but pop culture has a way of wiping out and superseding local folk culture in the modern minds of new generations.

Actually the American shopping mall, specifically the Monroeville mall near Pittsburgh PA in the 1960 inspired zombie lore

The issue there is that the modern Zombie myth of an undead creature that spreads by biting only dates back to 1968.

previous iterations were clearly not cool enough of a fantasy to be propagated

I think you just invented epimemetics.

There is no Epimemetic Division.

Turns out George Romero took the infectious aspect from the novel I Am Legend (made into Omega Man in 1971), which is a vampire story. He mashed up the European vampire with the Haitian "zonbi".

Some scholars think that the 18th century rabies epidemics shaped the vampire legend.

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1999/04/20/rabies-seen-as-b...

Why does it being from 1968 mean it wasn’t inspired by rabies?

It's also a good description of a large fraction of social media posts.

Case in point.

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