There seems to be a marked difference between humanity’s chances in apocalypses with either slow zombies, like those in The Evil Dead and The Walking Dead, or fast zombies, like the biters in World War Z and 28 Days Later. Humans appear to have a better chance fighting back against a shuffling throng than they do sprinting corpses. In other words, the kind of zombie you fight makes a huge difference. So there must be some scientific difference too — what determines the speed of a zombie?

In my latest Because Science, I’m looking at the geeky science featured in the very accessible neuroscience book Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? by Bradley Voytek and Timothy Verstynen. Not only do the pair of zombie nerds give a name to what zombie disease actually is, they come up with a theory — the “Time to Resurrection Hypothesis” — that would explain what makes a slow zombie slow, and a fast oOHMYGLOBHERETHEYCOME

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