Читать книгу The Zombie Book - Nick Redfern - Страница 62

In 1986, the initial signs of a frightening new disease began to quietly surface in the United Kingdom. It was given the name of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). It has since become far better known as mad cow disease. For the farmers whose animals were affected, identifying a BSE-infected cow quickly became a very easy task: quite simply, they moved, and acted, like zombies.

The way in which the cows walked noticeably altered: as the effects of BSE increased nearly day by day, walking became shuffling. Their manner changed from docile to erratic and, at times, to dangerously belligerent and violent. And it was all due to the fact that cows were secretly being fed the remains of other cows. The infected were, in effect, cannibals, and just about the closest thing one could imagine to real-life animals of the zombie variety.

When the scale of the disaster became apparent, huge concerns dominated the minds of just about everyone in the United Kingdom: did the virus have the ability to jump from species to species? Could eating the meat of an infected cow cause the development of BSE-like symptoms in people? And, if so, what about sex or kissing: could bodily fluids spread the disease? As the outbreak grew on a near-daily basis, the answers to those controversial questions became the stuff of nightmares. And a stark realization hit home all across the land: Britain was infected.

When matters were at their absolute height, sensational rumors were rife in the media that millions upon millions of British people were very likely already affected and, when the symptoms started to manifest, the nation would quickly be plunged into unrelenting chaos. People would be split into two camps: those free of infection and those irreversibly affected by it. Fortunately, such a cataclysmic situation failed to come to pass. It did not, however, prevent a significant number of people falling victims to the deadly human version of BSE: Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, or CJD.

While there are several categories of CJD, the one which caused so much panic across the United Kingdom was vCJD, which is better known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, and that is specifically caused by eating BSE-tainted beef. Official figures in the United Kingdom suggest that around two hundred people died from vCJD which, like its animal form, provokes distressing, strange and violent behavior of both a physical and psychological nature. Although, in a nation of around sixty million people, two hundred may not sound like many, it is important to note one disturbing factor: vCJD can, it is believed, take decades to develop. That is to say, it’s not out of the question that millions of British people—who unknowingly ate BSE-infected beef products back in the 1980s—might, in just a few years from now, start to develop the classic symptoms of vCJD. The rise of the infected could, one day, be coming to the United Kingdom yet again.