How to make a ZOMBIE

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How to make a ZOMBIE!
I Want Your Brain
A Zombie
WARNING Do Not Attempt this at home without
adult supervision
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The Background

• Human muscles are controlled by neurons (nerve
  cells) called axons.

An Axon
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Nerve Impulses

• Axons carry electro chemical impulses as waves
  of alternating sodium (Na), and Potassium (K)
  ions across a membrane.
• After a neuron fires however, it must recharge
  itself by pumping the Na and K back to where
  they started.
• This is the Sodium / Potassium pump and uses up
  to 85 of the bodys metabolic energy

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Sodium Potassium Pump
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Enter the Pufferfish

• Voodoo practitioners from the Caribbean isolated
  an unusual poison found in the pufferfish called
  Tetrodotoxin

pufferfish
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Tetrododotoxin

• Tetrodotoxin works by shutting-down the Sodium /
  Potassium pump of axons controlling your
  voluntary muscles causing paralysis, and usually
  death.
• However, in small doses applied to the skin, only
  paralysis results, and since the body uses 85 of
  its energy for the sodium / potassium pump, the
  victims oxygen needs are only a fraction of
  what they used to be.

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Buried Alive
Someone poisoned this way would not be able to
move, would only breathe a couple of times a
minute and would have an undetectable
heartbeat. They would appear dead Accordingly,
they would be promptly buried.
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Slavery!

• After being buried, those people responsible for
  the poisoning would return and dig-up the
  unfortunate victim.
• They would be taken to a different island, and
  when they recovered, be sold into slavery.

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The Warm Welcome Home

• Needless to say, if the victim managed to escape
  or buy his/her freedom and return home, the
  victim's relatives would be quite shocked since
  the victim was believed dead.
• Many believed that the person had risen from the
  deadhence the legend of the zombie was born.

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Voodoo PR

• Some voodoo practioners would poison victims to
  prove their powers.
• They would stand over their victims performing
  various rituals until the person revived. It
  would appear to be the result of the
  witch-doctors powers. Great PR

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THE END?