Zombies are all horrible fantasy right? Ever since George Romero shambled his way into our hearts, they’ve been a staple. But just like any good science fiction, there’s a little bit of reality.
Combining two of the go-to bad guys, Government and Russians, in a confluence of pseudo-science and B-Movie plots, the Communists came eerily close to causing the zombie apocalypse. Some time around 1940, Communist scientists began experimenting with the idea reanimating dead organisms. The operations are credited to Doctor Sergi S. Bryukhonenko in all his Russian-Mad-Scientist glory. He fully documented the experiments with video, and the film exists to this day in the Prelinger Archives.
Like a lot of Soviet science did, these experiments relied on half-truths and an incomplete idea of what “life” is. The team just pumped fluid in and out of recently dead tissue in a slightly more advanced form of the “shocking a dead frog experiment” I performed once when I was younger. I also think you should take the final part of the film with a grain of salt, because the Soviets weren’t exactly known for being completely open and honest with their science. However, the experiments are some of the creepiest things I’ve seen.
Below is a selection from a movie as narrated by British Scientist J. B. S. Haldane. I will warn everyone, the video IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. I repeat, the video has GRAPHIC CONTENT. In case you want something happier and friendly, here’s a secret agent fighting a pigeon over a bagel…