Well, I sent this question to Cecil, but I decided to post it, also. Anyways, I read this book called “The Zombie Survival Book” (or something like that). And it talked about a virus called Solanum, which can kill anything within twenty-ish hours. But, with humans, by the twenty-third hour of contracting this virus, the person is “reanimated” (for lack of a better word). The book even had a list of stories about zombies and their encounters. So, my questions are: Does Solanum really exist and is it true that it “reanimates” humans after they’ve died? Do these “zombies” also exist?
Just so you know, The Zombie Survival Guide is fiction. You might have noticed it shelved in the “humor” section of your local Barnes & Noble.
I think it’s very telling that the “Zombie Survival Guide” can be found in the fiction section on your local bookstore or library. 
It’s a good book, by the way – it’s essentially a very straight-faced parody of disaster survival books. But a google search for the solanum virus brings up a bug that infects plants, not people, and it doesn’t reanimate them after they’re dead – which is good, because nobody wants to open their fridge and end up stalked by a bunch of celery.
Incidentally, the “Zombie Survival Guide” only applies to Romerian zombies – if you’re attacked by any of the newer 2004 Models, you can just chuck that book into the nearest trashcan!
EZ
Don’t forget to check out Cecil’s column on How to Create a Zombie.
There is this classic straight from Cecil: How do I go about creating a zombie?
As always, search is indeed your friend.
Amazingly, I have something to add to The Master’s words.
You can think of zombification as a societal event, not a medical event.
If you were Japanese and you ate the wrong part of a fugu fish at the sushi bar, and you slipped into a deathlike coma for a few days and woke up a little disoriented, but alive, they’d said, “How ya doing, Bob, case of the ol’ fugu posioning, huh?”
Whereas if you lived in Haiti and someone slipped you some puffer fish powder in your pina colada, deathlike coma, etc, when you awoke they’d run screaming, shouting “Aiiii! zombie!” In that culture “zombifying” someone gives you social control over them.
While the same physiological events take place in fugu poisoning, the social result is not the same. That’s why “zombie” is a social term, not a scientific one.
Am I making any sense here? We actually talked about this one day in one of my Anthropology classes way back when (we were reading a book called Mama Lola, about a voudou priestess in Brooklyn).
Click on the links on the left side to get details about both zombies and vampires, including details about the virus involved in each and how it affects the human body.
Note the disclaimers at the bottom…
That is the absolute worst pun I’ve ever heard. Bravo!
how is that a pun? 
stalked … celery; celery stalk.
Too bad a pun to have been deliberate.
I would also point out that the Zombie Survival Guide, which is currently sitting in my bathroom, (but is ready to be moved immediately to a more defensible location 
) was written by Max Brooks. He’s the son of Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs) - humor and parody are definitely a family thing.
Also note some of the impossibilities inherent in ZSG zombies - for example, the assertion that, since the brain has been somehow “modified” by the virus so that it doesn’t need oxygen, zombies no longer need oxygen at all. Their other organs would still need oxygen to function! Or what about the part about how every single living animal, insect, AND bacteria fears them and is able to avoid them with perfect accuracy? For most animals, zombies would be only a predator, and a relatively minor one at that - they show up rarely, don’t move quickly, and are always WAY more interested in humans. For parasitic insects, they’re just not good food - there wouldn’t have been superstrong evolutionary pressures in favor of being able to reject zombies. And bacteria rejecting them just makes NO sense at all.
It was premeditated. Guilty on all counts.
EZ
Yes. Yes, zombies and the like are fictional.
:: quietly closes suitcase and beckons family to join him in the last CIA chopper out of here::
Yes, of course they are. Go back to your pizza. If you hear any noises in the streets tonight don’t worry about it, okay? Night night!
:: scurries off, dropping a couple of testtubes on the way ::
Do they exist?!
Haven’t you seen Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld?
I’m confused. I thought they were demons(or so my leftist friends keep telling me).
Besides, if they were zombies, Ashcroft would take care of them.
“How do you make a zombie?”
“Well, first you buy her a few drinks . . .”