Читать книгу The Zombie Book - Nick Redfern - Страница 30

There can be absolutely no doubt at all that the most lethal part of the zombie is its head. Aside from the fact that the head just happens to be home to a zombie’s vicious mouth—from which an infectious, and usually fatal, bite is invariably delivered—the head has the ability to keep on living and snapping even if, or when, it is severed from its decaying body. The only surefire way to ensure that a zombie stays down forever is to penetrate its brain—either with a bullet or two or a sharp and deadly object.

Few people realize, however, that centuries before the fictional zombies of television and cinema infected the imaginations of people here, there, and pretty much everywhere, the severed heads of the dead were spreading deadly disease in the real world. It was the ruthless and deadly Mongol Empire—which rose to prominence under the rule of the maniacal Genghis Khan—that came up with a novel, and admittedly horrific, way to defeat and kill their sworn enemies. And it was a method most famously put to outstandingly good use way back in 1347.

At the time in question, the Mongols were engaged in a violent confrontation with the people of Caffa, an ancient city located in the Ukraine. It transpired that this was the very same timeframe in which a dreaded plague that became known as the Black Death had taken a decisive and deadly grip on the landscape. It was a plague that went on to kill around 200 million Europeans between 1348 and 1350, and took its name from the hideous blackening of the skin that was caused by massive and unstoppable hemorrhaging. Always on the lookout for new and novel ways to exterminate the enemy, the Mongols had a sudden (no pun intended) brainwave.

Peter Breughel’s painting The Triumph of Death captures the horrors of a Europe caught in the grip of the bubonic plague.

Carefully protecting themselves from the risk of infection as best they could, the Mongols sought out the corpses of the infected dead, and then quickly and decisively severed head from body. The decapitated heads were then placed into huge catapults and shot across the sky, over the surrounding walls of the city, and right into the heart of bustling Caffa. Even in death, history has graphically demonstrated that the Black Death could still be quickly spread. And, indeed, in no time at all, the heads of the infected ensured that the people of Caffa—the arch-enemies of the Mongols—soon became victims of the deadly virus.

For those who think that the only hazardous head of the dead kind is to be found on-screen or in the pages of a novel or comic book, it’s time to think again.