The Zombie Book. Nick Redfern

permitting their extraterrestrial captors to find them, and extract even more cells and DNA, no matter where the people live or to where they might move.

      There is a mind-blowing variant on this controversial theory, however. It is one that suggests that implants are put in place to control the minds of the abductees. And here is where things become decidedly sinister and downright zombie-like. Imagine, if you will, millions of people, all across the planet, and all implanted with highly sophisticated devices fashioned in another world. Imagine, too, that the day finally comes when E.T.—a definitively hostile creature very far removed from Steven Spielberg’s E.T.—decides to take over the planet. But the aliens don’t choose to do so via a massive show of force, or by pummeling our cities and landscapes with terrible, futuristic weaponry in Independence Day-style. No; instead, they get the abductees to do their dirty work for them.

      One day—those researchers who adhere to this particularly controversial theory believe—all of those millions of currently dormant implants will be “switched on.” For all intents and purposes, each and every one of the abductees will then suddenly become a mind-controlled, lethal killer. We will wake one morning to frightful scenes of utter carnage on the streets, as the zombified abductees follow their pre-programmed assignments in violent and crazed fashion, which might range from sabotaging missile bases, destroying buildings, and going on wild and rampaging killing sprees. But, it won’t be occurring just here or there. It will be on your very doorstep. It will be on all of our doorsteps. It will be everywhere. And there will be no stopping it.

      The world as we know it will be plunged into utter chaos as the implanted—rather than the infected—do their utmost to wipe out the rest of us for their extraterrestrial masters. And, when the war is finally over and humankind has been decimated and practically destroyed, the aliens will then trigger the release of a deadly virus that currently lies dormant within the implants. In quick time, the implanted will all be dead, too, allowing those hostile invaders from the stars to take over without the need for even a single shot from the average, alien ray-gun or laser-weapon. In view of the above, should you one day encounter someone who claims to be an alien abductee, it might be most wise to follow that one word which so often gets shouted, in fear-filled tones, in just about every zombie movie at some point or another: “Run!”

       Alien Infection

       See also: AIDS, Alien Virus, Black Death, Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease, Infection, Spanish Flu

      There can be absolutely no doubt at all that one of the most controversial, and some would say outrageous, developments in the field of UFO research surfaced in 1999, when a researcher by the name of Philip Duke, Ph.D., suggested that both cattle mutilations and alien abductions were connected with a nefarious extraterrestrial plot to conquer the Earth by infecting the human population with HIV, and creating a plague-like situation in which the thousands of infected would soon become the millions, then the billions, and, finally, to the point where, as Rick Grimes of The Walking Dead so famously and memorably worded it: “We’re all infected.”

      Cattle mutilations, for those who may not be aware of the phenomenon, have gone on for decades. All across the United States, since at least 1967, shocked ranchers have found cows with their organs and bodily fluids extracted via what appears to be highly skilled means. We are not talking about predators in the slightest. Or, it’s more accurate to say that we are not talking about predators as we generally understand the term.

       This 1996 photo from NASA shows what many scientists thought were fossilized bacteria from Mars. What if some microorganism like this came to Earth with dire consequences?

      According to Philip Duke’s personal hypothesis, so-called cattle mutilations are “logically explainable only as extraterrestrial activities. The mutilation body materials taken, all correspond with sites of HIV transmission or replication (blood) in humans, except for the ear, which may contain a locator device. Circumstantial evidence suggests cattle are mutilated primarily to harvest HIV antibodies and virus from blood in quantity, and to obtain information relating to possible HIV transmission in humans.”

      And what, exactly, might be the purpose? Hold onto your hats very tightly as we’re about to go on a wild ride. Duke adds, on the matter of visiting aliens: “We have a whole new wonderful world, teeming with life, just waiting for them. There is only one thing standing in their way—that is us. Attack us openly, we would retaliate, and they would inherit a radioactive biosphere wasteland. No—the smart thing is to secretly destroy our civilization, and with it our means of organized (atomic) retaliation by employing a Biological Warfare (BW) agent. That agent is HIV. When enough people are sick, dying, and dead from AIDS, then alien colonization will proceed openly.”

      Is Philip Duke’s controversial scenario one of outrageous fantasy and nothing else? Or, incredibly, is it a warning of a dark and dire future that awaits us all, a future dominated by a deadly virus, the apocalypse and the extinction of the entire human race? Time may one day tell. Although, let us all earnestly hope it doesn’t.

       Alien Virus

       See also: AIDS, Alien Infection, Black Death, Creutzfeld-Jacobs Disease, Infection

      In the 1968 movie, Night of the Living Dead, speculation was raised that the birth of the zombies was possibly triggered by the actions of a U.S. spacecraft. While visiting Venus, the craft, it was surmised, became contaminated by extraterrestrial radiation and, as a result, on its return to Earth let loose that same radiation upon an unsuspecting populace. The outcome: the dead soon walked. And they had no intention of stopping. Is it truly feasible that such a thing could actually occur in the real world?

      In a fictional format, at least, a somewhat similar scenario was famously played out in the 1969 book The Andromeda Strain (which was written by Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park and Congo fame), and in the subsequent 1971 movie adaptation of the same name. Although zombies do not appear in either the novel or the film, pretty much everything else does. An American space probe, returning to Earth, unleashes a deadly alien virus that, in its tiny, microbial form, attaches itself to the craft before its reentry into the planet’s atmosphere and its crash in the wilds of Arizona. Deaths amount with alarming speed as the U.S. government struggles to find an antidote before the virus threatens to wipe out the entire human race. While The Andromeda Strain is just a highly entertaining, but disturbing and thought provoking story, it does, rather incredibly, have real life counterparts.

       James Olson plays a scientist trying to stop a deadly plague from outer space in the 1971 film The Andromeda Strain.

      As amazing as it may sound, NASA and numerous other worldwide space agencies, military bodies, and governmental agencies have taken serious steps to prevent the human race from falling victim to an extraterrestrial hazard of the viral kind. According to the text of Article IX of The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, that was collectively signed at Washington, D.C., London, England, and Moscow, Russia on January 27, 1967, and that was entered into force on October 10 of that year:

      “In the exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, States’ Parties to the Treaty shall be guided by the principle