What you need to know about the zombie virus:
- The zombie virus is passed from the undead to the living through biting.
- Of course just because you're bit doesn't mean you will become a zombie (so don't shoot your mother just yet).
- People have varying degrees of resistance, some people need to be bitten several times before they get on the zombie bus, and if you do get it, there are treatments.
- Some zombie viruses are fatal, so that the undead eventually become the actually dead and the crisis subsides.
What other contagions are spread from agent to agent?
Real viruses are contagious, as are memes such as jokes, anecdotes, rumors, jingles, slogans, and strange beliefs.
Here are few surprising contagions dug out of social science literature:
- health, wealth, joy, voting habits, norms,
trust, customs
- suicide, disease, depression, obesity, violence, panic, suspicion, hysteria, laughter, backache, koro
Three degrees of influence: As a contagion spreads from its source, it loses its potency. After about three hops its chances of influence are negligible unless reinforced from other agents.