Epidemics - viruses and bacteria in the final episode

Apocalyptic viruses - Epidemics in the end epic
Plagues like plague and cholera or rabies are the biggest enemy of humans: viruses, not sharks or lions killed millions. Since AIDS, the vampire's oral blood infection is becoming more and more popular, and horror film zombies are becoming more and more biological: black magic takes a back seat to zombification, as the postmodern zombie commonly suffers from a virus that mutates it into a murderous instinct - sometimes he is not even dead. These viral zombies merge seamlessly into virals that are not zombies, but blind or raving around rabidly.

contents

• Outbreak - Silent Killer
• 28 days later
• 28 weeks later
• resident Evil
• quarantine
• the Walking Dead
• The city of the blind
• Zombie virus?
• Benjamin Percy / Red Moon
• The called
• The transition
• Postal apocalypse and postmodernism

According to Aids, the zombie film is currently reflecting the fear of epidemics that globalization can bring to the metropolises from remote corners of the world, and against which there is no antidote: in 1994, bats transmitted the Hendra virus to horses and these to humans. The affected persons suffered from severe pneumonia. SARS-Corona killed nearly 900 people and probably first appeared in 2003 in Guandong. The West Nile virus infected 10,000 people in America between 1999 and 2003, 300 of them died. These illnesses will not be the last to haunt us - and the fear grows.

Plague myths and realities. Image: psdesign1-fotolia

In addition, the traditional pestilences require new victims: influenza as well as tuberculosis. Travel to Africa and India are standard today; The risk of becoming infected with rabies there is much greater than it was at a time when foxes were still suffering from this disease in Germany.

Outbreak - Silent Killer

Wolfgang Petersen filmed a thriller about the Congo virus in 1995: In 1967, two American scientists witness how people in Zaire die from an unknown viral infection. The officer McClintock then extinguished the entire village. But a few years later, the search in the same area breaks out again. Colonel Sam Daniels recognizes an extremely dangerous form of the Ebola virus - then the disease breaks out in a city in the US. Daniels is looking for the transmitter, he suspects an animal as a host and finds him in a monkey.

The US Army developed the virus as a biological weapon and wants to turn off the researchers; but Daniels convinces a pilot to take him out of town instead of bombing it out. Outbreak tells a credible story; but it's not so much about the horror of a virus as a detective story.

28 days later

Animal rights activists save chimpanzees from experimental animal husbandry, they do not know that they are infected with a virus that exposes their aggressiveness - the "rage" virus. They free a chimpanzee who bites and calamity takes its course: in a few seconds, the bitten ones turn into frenzied monsters that also bite each other.

28 days later, London is destroyed. The bicycle messenger Jim missed the catastrophe because he was hospitalized with coma, he encounters mountains of corpses - a raging something in a priest's robe plunges on him. The cries of the infected attract the other sick and an unnaturally fast-moving horde chases Jim. Selena and Mark save him from the viral and bring him to Deptford to his parents. They killed themselves. An infected man bites Mark, Selena kills her companion immediately. They meet two other survivors, Frank and Hannah. The group flies all the way to Manchester, when Frank gets infected with a dead man, soldiers appear and take away the task of killing Frank; However, the soldiers themselves are a danger and sexually harass the women. Jim flees to the area of ​​the infected.

28 days takes over the effects of the new zombie films, but is none. The role model was rabies. The plot seems reasonably realistic; Cinematically outstanding is the deserted London at the beginning (when the film was released in 2002, a masterpiece). The question arises, however, why people affected by a disease move unnaturally fast - and over a longer period. That brings shocking scenes, but insulates the credibility.

28 weeks later

In the second part of 2007, Central London is free of infected people. After a few weeks, the patients died of exhaustion. The US Army has occupied the city, bringing the survivors to a transit camp that oversees the military.

Even the survivor Don comes to the camp and meets his children there. The beginning shows how Don survived, namely, by having his wife Alice die. A horde of infected people stormed her house, the woman tried to protect the child and Don fled with a motorboat.

But Alice survived, traumatized, she now crawls around in her house. The children sneaked out of the security zone and found their mother. Alice is taken to the military station and examined: The chief physician is surprised to find that the survivor is infected - obviously she has a genetic immunity.

Don meets his wife in the quarantine room, kisses her and gets infected as well. He kills them, bites, infects others who infect others, and the military loses control. The order now is to kill anyone who lives in the zone, without distinguishing between the sick and the healthy.

Scarlett, the chief physician, wants to save the children, because she hopes that they carry the genetic immunity of their mother and thus a hope to defeat the virus. The sniper Doyle denies the killing order and joins Scarlett with the children. He leads them out of Zone 1 - shortly thereafter the army destroys the entire area with incendiary bombs and uses poison gas.

Doyle is burned by soldiers with flame-throwers, Scarlett and the children flee into a subway shaft. Don finds his kids and slays Scarlett. He bites the boy, but he stays healthy. Son and daughter find the helicopter pilot Flynn, who rescues her from the burning city. Whether they survive, the film leaves open-it ends with the virus erupting on the continent.

28 weeks later impresses with its realistic portrayal of the military restricted area and a brilliant implementation of the classic elements of horror: isolation and darkness in the subway shaft while simultaneously threatening the army and the infected at the same time.

resident Evil

Resident Evil from 2002 launched a series of films: Apocalypse (2004), Extinction (2007), Afterlife (2010) and Retribution (2012). The director filmed a computer game series and used its aesthetics: The T-virus makes people raging undead and depopulates the earth. The last humans are starving in wretched hiding places. Alice rides a motorcycle through the ruined USA. She has superhuman abilities - a clone of her is used by Umbrella Corporation as a bioweapon. The corporation tries to control the zombies. The experiment succeeds, and Dr. Isaac turns a zombie into a docile slave - the corporation is developing a killer zombie mutant.

The technical effort is impressive, but the characters lack the meat - even those who are not zombies. Who likes the computer game is served, who expects a smart action, will be disappointed.

quarantine

2007 Quarantine by John Erick Dowdle is not about zombies but about rabies. Quarantine is filmed like a documentary: A reporter shoots a reportage about the fire brigade in Los Angeles and accompanies her on a mission: A woman screams in her apartment, the reporter invades police together - the resident seems disturbed. Then she lunges at one of the policemen and bites him in the neck. The house is quarantined - nobody is allowed to leave it.

A sick dog seems to be the cause. Veterinarian Lawrence taps rabies. He looks at the frantic and recognizes the symptoms of the Lyssa: paralysis and salivation. A public health officer takes a brain sample from the wounded - they come to their senses and one bites the vet. The official clarifies the trapped: In fact, it is a mutated rabies virus that breaks out in no time.

The cameraman and the reporter are the last survivors. In the attic you will find traces of a man who stole the virus from a weapons laboratory. The cameraman is bitten by an infected person, in the end the camera shows how someone tugs the reporter into the darkness.

Quarantine shines as a (still) real conceivable horror film, because the virus is not even used as a cerebral hanger for a monster story: The real rabies is one of the worst epidemics, incurable and associated with frenzy. The perspective through the camera lens of the television team also helps the credibility.

the Walking Dead

In the television series "The Walking Dead" a virus transforms people; after her death, she puts only the animal part of the brain back into operation. A group of survivors, led by policeman Rick Grimes, are looking for a safe place to live; the "biter" constantly threaten them, some of the group are bitten, others kill themselves and some go their own way.

"The Walking Dead" is not a series of zombies, but a lesson about people in emergency situations: What happens when everything disappears, which goes without saying? When is suicide an alternative? How do I save my children? When and whom can I kill? How do I change if I kill? How does the fear of the infected change behavior? Who can I trust? How do I deal with strangers??

"Walking Dead" confronts the viewer with existential questions for which the pros and cons of the individual figures stand. Their different solutions are not good or evil, but consistent - from the warhorse who kills to survive to the humanist who demands the human right to be potentially dangerous: to kill a prisoner who might betray the group of enemies and from him Tormenting information before that would be safe - but this murder does not destroy the last thing that separates people from the zombies?

What does privacy mean in chaos? Is suicide a solution? May I sacrifice an individual's life for the survival of the group? Where is the boundary between man and monster??

In these conflicts lies the strength of the viral road movie; and the characters carry them out believably. "Walking Dead" dares to tell a story - in times when the special effect represses the script, that's worth a lot.

The city of the blind

Blindness, produced in 2008 by Japan, Canada and Brazil, leads to a city of the blind. People become blind and infect other people with their blindness; The infected are interned in a psychiatric hospital as felons and refugees are killed.

A woman retains her eyesight, but remains with her husband. Initially, the detainees democratically allocate the food they have allocated. Then a station takes over the dictatorship over the food, demands for it the valuables and later the women. Your bookkeeper is blind from birth and therefore can orient himself better than the infected - but the apparent blind is more than equal to him.

The blind men of the violence regime rape a woman so that she dies of the consequences. But the only dummy blind kills the leader of the violent offenders and the fight begins. The psychiatry burns down, the survivors flee: the guards have cleared the field and outside there is chaos. All people are blind, the stream is down, dogs eat corpses and the blind people are fighting over food in supermarkets.

The doctor's wife leads the group to her husband's house. There, the first infected person can see again. The others hope for salvation. The seer, however, is afraid of now becoming blind. Blindness is an extraordinary movie. For one, he does not set the usual virus beasts either as zombies, werewolves or vampires in scene, of which the horror movie teeming, but shows blindness.

On the other hand, blindness acts as a metaphor: how do people behave who lose their orientation? Some respect human dignity; the others enforce the rule of thumb. Darkness, disorientation and isolation are the core elements of the horror, plus the melting pot, here the closed room, here the institution. Blindness brings this structure of the uncanny into the inside - the loss of sight. The story offers great potential for alternative developments: what if blindness continues and the birthblinds become leaders in a new society??

Zombie virus?

Are viruses that make a person a zombie conceivable? Blindness and quarantine show possible developments: Plagues in which living people become blind or bite are present. Viruses also destroy brain functions - as well as other diseases that mentally dull smart people: in Alzheimer's memory, for example, the memory.

However, zombie viruses, as in Walking Dead, reanimate the brain after the human is dead. Such viruses do not exist, because death means death. Even if there were viruses that set in motion the regeneration of cells, they did not revive a dead body.

Benjamin Percy / Red Moon

"If George Orwell had imagined a future with werewolves, then this novel would have come out." John Irving

Werewolves blowing up airplanes and a presidential idiot mutating into a werewolf? That sounds like crazy esoterics or satire on them. But it is not, but a parable - in the tradition of George Orwell's "1984" or Karel Capek's "The War with the Newts".

George Orwell outlines "1984" total manipulation that is no longer recognized by the manipulated; In Karel Capek's "War with the Little Pigs," Lurches serve the masters as slaves until, literally, they undermine the human world.

What does Percy tell in his 2014 novel? The lycans suffer from a mutation that temporarily turns them into animal species. So doctors used to cut parts of their brains out for them; the victims died or vegetated. At the same time, the Lycans got a "republic" in a wilderness near Finland, where the US exploited uranium and subjugated the Lycans. Lycans struggled for their rights: some became professors at Lycan University, others went into armed struggle. Today, Lycans have to take a drug that nearly kills their emotional world and prove it in blood tests. Most of them falsify the tests, others continue to sue their rights, and the guerrillas mutate into religious terror.

Lycan terrorists set up a bloodbath in three planes, and with that, Oregon Governor William Chase's hour, "This is a special hour. America is being attacked. "The son of the ranch looks as if Charles Bukowski had mashed George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Arnold Schwarzenegger into a porridge and then pulled through the loo.

He proclaims that "extremism can only be tackled with extreme measures," and calls for a public database for lycans; they are no longer allowed in planes and civil service; they should get a stamp "Lykaner" in the passport. While liberals claim that Lycans are not terrorists; but the public belongs to the demagogue.

The president is bitten - the secret Lykaner meanwhile rushes on, but is also looking for a vaccine. Patrick, the "miracle boy" was the only survivor of the attacks, and the fascist militia "The Americans" wants to send him into battle as a "Chosen One." But his mother is mutated, and he falls in love with the Lycan Claire. Killer of the government murdered her mother and her father, Claire flees to her aunt Miriam and learns that her parents fought for the revolution, but the violence abkoren when Claire was born. Miriam's husband Jeremy, on the other hand, is the "Andreas Baader" of the Lycans and responsible for the attacks. Jeremy is arrested and sentenced to death; he attacked as a radical civil rights activist to (counter) terror, but long since differently motivated have taken over the arms: Balor sees himself as a tool of God and wants to create a "pure Lycan world".

Plague defense. Image: © Sauerlandpics - fotolia

On the day of Jeremy's execution, the moon turns red; an explosive-filled Cessna races into a nuclear power plant; 100,000 die immediately; the west of the US is contaminated and evacuated. Balor stages himself as a priest king in the "Ghost Land". In the end, Patrick gets bitten and approaches Claire; at the same time he finds the vaccine, but Claire refuses to take it - because the wolf is one side of her.

"You can not defeat us, because we are a part of you," civil rights activists called out to the police in 1968, and Percy outlines an America that oppresses a minority, putting it into the very hell the agitators painted on the wall. The cracks go through the psyche of each individual. He understands the craft of the parent narrator who shows but does not teach; he thus demands the reader to take a stand himself - and at the same time presents a black pearl of fantasy.

The called

"Another zombie novel, but now it's enough," may moan the reader and leave the called on the shelf. That would be a mistake, because the 2014 published novel by M.R. Carey is great.

A fungus that usually uses ants as hosts mutates and infests humans. The parasite controls its behavior in its sense. Almost all are infected and are moving through the country as alien cannibals.

But some infected children are different. Once they smell people, they too become monsters; otherwise they behave as normal. Researchers examine them in a military-sealed institute, lock them in single cells, shower them with chemical soap and feed them with maggot porridge. The researchers use a preparation that covers their human odor.

Most teachers have no problem violating the children's human rights because they believe that the human behavior of children is also controlled by the fungus. Mrs Justineau, on the other hand, treats her like a human being and teaches with warmth of heart. The 10-year-old Melanie is the most gifted of the infected children. and she loves Mrs. Justineau. But an ice-cold researcher wants to kill the girl to dissect his brain. In it, she suspected the remedy for the Pliz.

There is an open conflict between the two authorities. Then the hell breaks loose: "Schróttwühler", not infected, who pull as a buccaneer through the area, break into the station and drive the infected as a herd of cattle.

The researcher, Mrs Justineau and a soldier are fleeing in a military vehicle - Melanie is there. The soldier sees in her a monster that he would kill at the next opportunity, and the researcher wants to continue to dissect her - but both are only about Mrs Justineau's body.

Melanie not only accepts her identity, she also sees the danger she represents. The others, however, depend on them, because the infected can trust alone out and explore the environment.

On a foray she sees a group of wild children of her age. They have built a kind of tribe and are chasing rats. She does not tell her group about the discovery, but claims she found a gathering of scrap worms.

The mushroom spread so fast at that time that the British government set up a mobile laboratory on a bus. On their odyssey, the group now encounters this lab. The researcher feels in paradise; she has suffered from blood poisoning and knows she will die soon.

But she is about to make a groundbreaking discovery. She saw an infected man push a pram and realized that some of the infested more areas of the Gehrins are preserved than expected. Children like Melanie are the key; that's why she needs the girl alive now.

One point the researchers had overlooked: Infected planted on. Therefore, children come as Melanie. The fungus mutated; in the second generation, he no longer destroys his host, but enters into a symbiosis with him. Children like Melanie are no longer destroyed by the fungus, but live with it. They are human and fungus at the same time.

The group meets in London on the center of the mushroom. A fungid wall ranges from one horizon to the other. Melanie persuades the group to burn down the "forest". The fire spreads in a flash.

Melanie's goal was not to destroy the mushroom. She learned from Mrs Justineuas that plants in the rain forest need fires to blast their seed pods. This is exactly what happens with the spores of the mushroom, which spread like snow in the sky.

This is the end for the former people. Melanie comes to Mrs. Justineau with the wild kids, and just like herself, these symbioses are mushroom and human. Melanie says that the scrap worms and the infected kill each other. But their generation will survive as human beings - but unlike the people of the old days. Mrs Justineau is to teach her to tame the monster in them.

The characters are initially woodcut-like: the ambitious scientist who goes over dead bodies; the teacher who protects her students; and the experienced soldier who thinks hard pragmatically. But they evolve, and at some point it is unclear who is good and who is evil. At its core is the relationship between the teacher and the student and the message that a warm-hearted education brings hope - even under the worst circumstances.

The transition

Justin Cronin's epilogue "The Passage" split readers into enthusiasts and haters. Cronin develops his novel world in detail. He keeps the distance to these people in a completely different society: they think differently, they move differently in time and space. They lack the means to communicate globally. Their communities know nothing about each other.

Fans of Hollywood action will find it easy to literate - friends of Orwell, Melville or Faulkner, on the other hand, find something rare: a well-crafted epic.

Justin Cronin interpreted the theme "the monsters of humane mind are turning to flesh" in "The Transition" and "Twelve." A virus should make people immortal. Scientists experiment and try the virus on twelve serious criminals. The Twelve become supernatural monsters, break out, spread the pathogen, and within a short time, the Virals dominate most of America. But a test object does not mutate into a monster and carries the hope of salvation in itself: Amy.

Cronins Plot is classic - almost too classic. But the professor of "creative writing" masters his craft masterfully. The destroyed America becomes very plastic, as well as the relationships between the people. For example, an addict acquires world fame because he bunkers himself in a high-rise in the virally-ridden Denver and posts his "Last Stand" on the Internet.

An autistic bus driver perceives the downfall in his locked world. Cronin makes the reader tremble from one cliffhanger to the next; and the reader realizes that Viral's America is not a walk - at the latest, when his darlings die.

Cronin says, "I'm developing the world before I tell the story. In doing so, I keep the distance to these people in a completely different society: they think differently, they move differently in time and space. They lack the means to communicate globally. Their communities know nothing about each other. What does love or friendship mean for you? The characters are intuitive, watch my characters closely, and pay attention to the details. "

Cronin does not like illogic. The battle scenes are life-like; he was advised by professional soldiers. He meticulously researched how long a group would need from A to B with the technical resources available, what people eat in the ruined world, how this food affects the body. How do the survivors get resources? Seemingly trivial questions, such as how a car works, are vital for people who are on their own.

Cronin says, "How does someone improvise driving a Porsche for the first time? Which weapons can be used in which situation? A soldier in the house war knows that, or he dies - just as in the fight with the "Viralen". Being a soldier means that decisions about life and death decide and everything changes in a second. "

In "Twelve," Cronin uses (ur) ancient literary patterns: "I begin with a chronicle as found in scriptures. The break-up of the community in the fight against, let's call it, evil, is also very classic. I was inspired by "The lonesome dove", a western. It contains all elements of the Western genre, rattlesnakes as well as revolvers or whores and is also a literary masterpiece. "Twelve" is also a road novel. The Western lives of urbanites who prove themselves in the wilderness of America and have no idea what flowers them. In the ruined America of the future, this wilderness returns. "Twelve" is a second Noah story: how will things continue after the Flood? "

The journey through the destroyed land is only one motive; another is society. How do people organize themselves in an environment full of monsters? Cronin differs here from the horror mainstream of America, where the effect is in the foreground. He shows political contradictions. How people build their respective colonies has pros and cons.

Cronin says, "The people in the city are closest to the Texans. Civilians and militaries divide the powers and believe in their personal strength, they know the story. They decided to fight. The first colony is reminiscent of a kibbutz in Israel and organizes almost Marxist. Their members survive because they are equally entitled. Everyone brings in their abilities and only together are they strong. Separation of powers and collective characterize these two ways; the third is cooperation with the powerful. Some people want to benefit from the power of the immortals and direct their camps. Democracy, communism and the third way is fascism. In contrast to Gulag and KZ the inmates are not extinguished, but serve as food. They are slave laborers and slaughter cattle. "

In doing so, Cronin develops his story and personal conflict for each of dozens of characters. What happens to missing persons? Should I have a child in this world? It tracks the protagonists that the virals they killed were once thinking and feeling people.

Postal apocalypse and postmodernism

Today's post-apocalypse lacks the utopia of a better future as well as the absolute end of the world. It goes on, somehow. Cronin and Percy associate that they compare without immediately evaluating.

As in Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the characters roam through a world in which humans (and other intelligent beings) organize their societies very differently. Salvation as in the Christian apocalypse does not exist.

Nietzsche's conclusion "God is dead" suggests confronting relentlessly what is - and the dark heroes of the post-apocalypse have no choice.

The sociologist Ulrich Beck rightly called the conditions in the "West" risk society. Traditional ties have lost their validity. What is euphemistically called "lifelong learning" means that there is nothing left to rely on: education does not guarantee a job; Family planning is a career risk. Life planning is replaced by "ego tactics" - action in the situation.

The virus-contaminated post-apocalypses reflect this uncertainty. The "heroes" are on their own, constantly having to reorient themselves, and nothing is as it seems. Success has, who faces the circumstances without prejudice, and Melanie in The Called acts insofar as a dark version of Alice in Wonderland. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)