The Walking Dead: 8 theories on what caused the zombie outbreak

Modified rabies virus

It’s possible that the Walkers could have originated from a modified rabies virus. Redditor BobTheRedditUser offers a pretty complex and thought-provoking take on it all.

As we all know, rabies is highly fatal. It’s very complex and I could write for hours on the ins and outs of how this virus works. The symptoms range from hallucinations to aggressive behavior.

Using rabies as a base, BobTheRedditUser derived an entire origin story for the Walker virus. The theory goes that a scientist could have been working with new strains of the rabies virus, probably a version cooked up for use a biological warfare, and eventually notices that that test animals remained in their rabid phase from much longer than usual.

However, when something goes wrong at this facility — government sabotage, human error, etc — the virus begins to spread among people at the facility. At first, those people only think they have the flu. They go home and spread it to their families, who spread it to their friends, and pretty soon we’ve reached a tipping point and the zombie outbreak truly begins.

Eventually, the virus mutated further and spread over the world, and here we are. It’s a terrifyinly detailed theory!