What would the medical term for a zombie be?

Answer 1

There are actually several real-life conditions and diseases that cause one to act in a zombie-like state.

They are:

• Cotard's Syndrome - also known as Walking Corpse Syndrome. This is a psychological condition where people believe they are dead after a near-death experience. Causes them to act zombie-like (blank minded) but with no violence
• Sleeping Sickness - caused by infected bites from tsetse flies, found in the African continent. The condition causes you to sleepwalk violently in a zombie-like state
• Rabies - rabies symptoms are the same as "zombie-like" symptoms. Aggression, agitation, no control over actions, partial paralysis, cannibalism, unstoppable hunger, mania, disregard for own safety and so on. In fact, scientists think accounts of "Zombies" in history was actually a rabies outbreak
• Necrosis - this is a condition where a person is medically "half dead". Their skin, tissue and muscle begin to rot, decay and peel away. People with necrosis sound and act like a zombie because the brain is slowly decaying inside the body while the person is still half alive. No cure.
• Dysarthria - a medical condition causing loss of control over limbs, behaviour and speech. Causes people to walk around in a "sleepwalking-zombie"-like state while groaning due to loss of control over vocal chords.
• Leprosy - leprosy is a condition which affects the muscle and tissue of sufferers, making them appear to look zombie-like. It causes numbness in limbs that causes them to walk in a zombie-like fashion.
• Lazarus Syndrome - this is a rare condition where the heart starts pumping blood around the body of a dead person. The individual is already dead because there is no brain activity, but due to an electrical charge still in the body, the heart starts pumping again after death. 30% of the time the patient can be brought back to life when this happens, but it is extremely controversial to bring them back from the dead when they have this syndrome, because the brain was already dead before being forced back to life. So waking them up will cause

  permanent neurological damage - sometimes locking people in a zombie state.

• Ophiocordyceps unilateralis - this is actually a fungi released from spores. The spores are released into the air by this fungi. Any passing insects are immediately affected by the spores. The spores are breathed in or swallowed by the insect, which then hatches and releases a parasite inside the insect. The parasite takes over the brain of the insect and turn it homicidal and cannibalistic. When the parasite has had enough, it grows a new fungi, using the brain as fertiliser, then eventually releases new spores, killing the insect in the process. According to scientists, if this problem grows and gets out of control, it will affect larger animals and eventually humans.

There are several fictional conditions that people believe can cause zombification, such as "Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome", which was made up by an author for a spoof medical journal - it does not exist in real life.