Zombie enthusiasts practice being scary before setting out on a "Zombie Walk" in the city center on October 27, 2012 in Berlin, Germany.
The initial incident was bizarre enough. In May, Miami police shot and killed 31-year-old Rudy Eugene, whom they found lying naked under a highway overpass eating the face off a homeless man. Police later said that Eugene was likely high on “bath salts”, a designer drug similar to amphetamines. But then, things got really weird. A couple of weeks later, another Miami homeless man, reportedly high on bath salts and Four Loko, tried to bite a police officer’s hand. An article in GQ investigating the origins of bath salts asked, “more importantly, will this cause the Zombie Apocalypse?”and Buzzfeed proclaimed, “The Zombie Apocalypse Continues” after yet another cannibalistic attack in Louisiana. Even the Centers for Disease Control was compelled to weigh in, advising worried Americans that it knew of no “virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms).” Thankfully, the flesh-eating incidents turned out to be less a trend and more a string of violent outbursts. Bath salts dropped out of the public eye, and the number of reported incidents thinned. However, if people haven’t gotten their fill of zombie news, they can always catch an episode of The Walking Dead.