Posted by A half-serious article about the “cannibal” cases in the United States that sparked talk of a zombie apocalypse, such as Rudy Eugene in Miami in 2012 and Austin Harrouff in Florida in 2016. Drugs like flakka and bath salts were blamed, but tests did not confirm them. The most likely explanation, at least for Harrouff, was a psychotic episode.
You know when you are watching a film or a TV series about the zombie apocalypse, and at the start there is always the guy who dies because he sees a living dead person chewing on some intestines, does not realise it is a zombie, and gets eaten alive?
Is that perhaps what has been happening in recent years to some unlucky citizens of the United States? Are we living through the beginning of a zombie apocalypse?
Ok Lilith, slow down. What do you mean, a zombie apocalypse?
Well, reading some news stories from recent years, you start to wonder. Let me explain.
Just a few days ago I wrote the article about the teenage cannibal Austin Harrouff, who in August 2016 attacked and killed a couple, then ate the face of one of the two victims. Police tried to stop him, but several taser shocks were not enough to get him off, and it took 4 officers and a dog.
In 2014 another man, naked, attacked an 18-year-old and a retired police officer. After attacking the retired officer, the man went for the young man, trying to eat his face. The young man managed to defend himself with a box cutter but suffered very serious injuries. In this case too police said the man seemed to have superhuman strength and the taser had no effect. Police had to shoot him and the man died in hospital.
In 2012, in Miami, 31-year-old Rudy Eugene stripped naked and attacked Ronald Poppo, a 65-year-old homeless man, on the MacArthur Causeway, biting off most of his face, including an eye, and leaving him blind. The newspapers nicknamed him “the Miami zombie”. Here too police had huge difficulty pulling the man off his “prey”, so much so that they had no option but to shoot him dead.
Krokodil, flakka and bath salts
The most widely accepted theory for these attacks is that the cannibals had taken substances such as krokodil or flakka (bath salts) beforehand. These are the names of some drugs with devastating effects.
People who take flakka (also called bath salts) experience hallucinations, delirium, superhuman strength and a high tolerance to pain, as well as delusional and even cannibalistic behaviour. Its scientific name is alpha-PVP: it is a synthetic stimulant of the cathinone family, related to amphetamines, made mostly in China and sold for a few dollars.
Krokodil, on the other hand, is a home-made drug made from codeine, “cooked” with petrol, solvents and other toxic substances. Its effects include black patches on the skin, caused by the skin rotting, which can lead to amputation of limbs.
Although these symptoms are very similar to the behaviour of the cannibals mentioned above, tests did not find traces of these drugs in their bodies. In Harrouff’s case there were only traces of marijuana, and for Rudy Eugene too, although bath salts were immediately talked about, tests confirmed nothing of the sort.
That does not mean, however, that they were lucid.
I must mention, though, that these and other drugs really do make users behave “like zombies”: just watch videos of people who have taken the drug “K2” behaving like zombies.
Could they be government experiments to create a horde of the living dead?
Mental illness
With drugs ruled out, the next hypothesis is mental illness. At first it seemed odd, because these men had never had obvious problems before those days. But a first psychotic episode can come on suddenly, especially in young adults, and often the people around them notice only small changes.
That is exactly what emerged in Austin Harrouff’s case: in 2022 a judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity, because at that moment he was in the grip of an acute psychotic episode.
But what is causing these cannibal attacks, then?
Zombie apocalypse
The most pessimistic among us can only think of an imminent zombie apocalypse. What if these attacks were caused by an unknown virus? What if this virus were spreading exponentially among humans?
Maybe governments even know about it, but are not releasing information to avoid mass panic. Maybe that is why they want to pass these attacks off as acts committed by drug addicts or lunatics.
Maybe the victims of these people are the classic guy at the start of a film who does not realise he is facing a zombie.
And what if it happened to you? Are you ready for the zombie apocalypse?
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