You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News Read online

  One of the tips was to replenish the brain with nutrients, but we’re assuming we get plenty with all the spiders we’re eating every night. Oh, you didn’t know?

  4. YOU ACCIDENTALLY SWALLOW APPROXIMATELY EIGHT SPIDERS A YEAR

  This commonly believed statistic has been fed to us by countless Internet chain emails: When you sleep, you open your mouth to breathe and supposedly this is the ideal window of opportunity for all the spiders who hang out near your bed, hoping to be eaten alive.

  Why is it a load of crap?

  Back in 1993, PC Professional columnist Lisa Holst decided to prove that you could make up anything on the Internet and people would believe it.

  She did this by putting together some utterly ridiculous “facts,” the spider myth (taken from a collection of insect folklore that dates back to the 1950s) among them, and unleashing them on the world in the form of an email.

  As Holst’s email was forwarded from inbox to inbox, it began to evolve. The spider thing stayed, but somewhere along the line someone just “happened” to forget to include the fact that these facts were completely fake.

  Who was fooled?

  In 2006, the UK’s Daily Mirror warned that “the average person will swallow anything from eight to 20 spiders before they die.”

  The Mirror then upped the ante by adding, “A spider is also likely to drink from your eye at least three times in your life. Some experts have suggested they are attracted by the vibrations of snoring and the smell of undigested food—a good reason to floss your teeth before bedtime.”

  Really, is that what it takes to get the UK to worry about dental hygiene?

  3. MEN THINK ABOUT SEX EVERY SIX SECONDS

  As we all know, men do nothing but think about sex with their girlfriend or ex-girlfriend or friend who happens to be a girl/friend’s sister. It follows, then, that on average men think about sex every six seconds, right?

  Why is it a load of crap?

  Hey, fellas, when you were reading the spider-eating segment, did you think about sex? Were you imagining a massive spider orgy? If so, you’re alone (obviously). According to the Kinsey Institute, close to half of the men they surveyed said they don’t even think about sex every day, let alone every six seconds. Even if men did think about sex that frequently, how would they be able to break it down to such a precise rate of perversion? Hook electrodes up to some dude’s head and count how many times the sex lobe lights up in a week?

  Who was fooled?

  About half of us believe this fact, according to a 2007 poll conducted by mencanstoprape.org. It seems like common sense would have squashed this one even before it got started. Let’s say you watched a four-hour marathon of Matlock, a show during which it is physically impossible to think about sex. To make up that average later, you’d have to think about sex every, what, two seconds? So for the rest of the day your brain would just turn into a spinning kaleidoscope of titty.

  2. AFTER EATING YOU MUST WAIT THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE SWIMMING

  For some families, the harsher “hour” rule was used. If you broke the rule, the fear was that you would get cramps, drown, and die. This statistic is apparently based on the assumption that water-to-skin contact will cause the food in your belly to explode.

  Why is it a load of crap?

  Because you’re not a gremlin. As you may have already guessed, water does not bear properties that form a food-related cramp of death. Getting into the water after eating will have no more effect on your body than going for a walk.

  This one’s just an old wives’ tale that slowly became popular over time. Supposedly, your stomach is using oxygen to digest food that your muscles need to swim. In actuality, the amount of oxygen your body needs to swim is more than satisfied, whether or not you’ve eaten.

  Who was fooled?

  Plenty of books and websites offer swimming tips that still buy into the thirty-minute rule. Go to any pool party with children, and we guarantee you’ll hear someone’s mother squawking about it.

  1. CHRISTMAS CAUSES SUICIDE

  It might be true that Christmas has become commercialized, but people generally seem to enjoy it. Aside from the stress, family you hate, travel, and the junk lying around the house, of course. And the music.

  When we hear that suicide rates jump during the holidays, it’s easy to believe. Especially if you’ve ever spent a Christmas drunk and alone, eyes tearing as you sat in your apartment watching your favorite Christmas movie from childhood (Die Hard).

  Why is it a load of crap?

  According to Canada’s Centre for Suicide Prevention, the suicide rate actually goes down significantly around the holidays.

  While it’s depressing as hell to be alone on Christmas, the truth is that most of us aren’t. It’s hard to commit suicide when there are people around constantly trying to get you to wear ugly sweaters. Depressed or not, most people aren’t big enough dicks to let the kiddies find them hanging over the Christmas tree with a note pinned to their chest.

  Who was fooled?

  Just about every newspaper in the country tends to climb on board. In 1999, a press release was issued to major newspapers warning against reporting the myth. During the holidays that same year, the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that two-thirds of newspaper articles mentioning the word suicide cited the mythical stat.

  In the general population, whether or not you believe this stat tends to depend on how much you hate Christmas. When we’re miserable, we like to project it on other people and assume they’re all miserable too. And if thinking that other people are suicidal makes you feel a little less suicidal yourself, then go for it.

  THE FOUR MOST INSANE ATTEMPTS TO TURN NATURE INTO A WEAPON

  NATURE inspires mankind’s greatest ideas. The vivid colors of the setting sun might be reflected in an abstract masterpiece. The simple, rugged lines of a mountain range could serve as inspiration for an architectural wonder. The gentle caress of ocean waves lapping on the beach may be heard undulating in the symphonies of Mozart.

  Or we could just shove nature into a gun and kill people with it. We do that a lot too.

  4. BALL LIGHTNING CANNON

  What is it?

  Ball lightning is a phenomenon that usually occurs during thunderstorms and is often mistaken for fire or, in the South, a UFO. It’s quite similar to ordinary lightning, but it’s much rarer, lasts longer, and comes in a playful ball shape, presumably just to mess with your head. Science really doesn’t know a ton about it, beyond the fact that it’s astoundingly dangerous and notoriously unpredictable. So obviously scientists started trying to weaponize it the moment it was discovered. Nobody’s gone public with how successful they have actually been, but Dr. Paul Koloc has been working on it for at least thirty years. Koloc’s not one of those PhDs with pretentious fake goals like “advancing understanding” or “doing good”—no, his goal is now and has always been to create a functioning plasma cannon. He calls it the Phased Hyper-Acceleration for Shock, EMP, and Radiation, or PHASER, because he’s a triple-threat guy: deadly, brilliant, and a giant nerd.

  A ball lightning-based weapon would theoretically destroy man and machine alike. It would be useful for shutting down electronics, shooting down missiles, stopping car engines, or just barbequing square-jawed do-gooders while the operator laughs maniacally and screams electricity-based puns from atop a giant robot spider.

  Does it work?

  Not yet! The problem isn’t in creating the plasma itself—Dr. Koloc has been able to generate rings of various sizes for a while now—no, the problem is sustaining that plasma ring for a long enough period to kill someone dead. In part, this difficulty is because we don’t know what ball lightning is exactly or how it works. And having even the vaguest understanding of something is a very helpful step when you’re trying to put it in a gun and shoot planes out of the sky with it. So at this stage in the game, the military having a lightning cannon would be akin to a kindergartener owning a revolver that fires calculus.
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br />   3. DEEP DIGGER

  What is it?

  Chances are you’ve heard the term bunker buster before—the name of a bomb capable of destroying hardened underground structures, as well as a girl with a big ol’ booty who knows how to use it (we made that one up, but we still stand behind it as a brilliant and accurate nickname). A typical bunker buster bomb has a timer that’s activated once the bomb is released. The explosive is set to detonate only after the bomb has enough time to crash through a certain number of floors within a structure. The Deep Digger is the next logical step: Rather than simply crashing through your ceiling and exploding, the Digger actually propels itself through the earth or concrete—tunneling into bases—before it goes off.

  And that’s pretty terrifying, but where does nature come into all this? Well, the massive pulse created by the Deep Digger actually triggers a localized mini-earthquake upon detonation—collapsing tunnels, crushing subterranean bases, and probably pissing off any nearby Mole Men (but we’ll cross that bridge when it rises from the earth to wreak vengeance on our children).

  Does it work?

  Oh yes, and their mass-production could mean the end of underground bunkers or underground anything that’s not a Deep Digger, for that matter, in modern warfare. The newest version of the Deep Digger can reach depths of 150 feet, where, after separating into a group of twenty drilling warheads, they detonate and collapse all structures up to 300 feet below the surface for a 200-yard radius.

  “But wait, couldn’t bunkers be built below 300 feet?” you ask, because you’re kind of a killjoy.

  Yes, but there’s something you’re not thinking about: Every bunker needs an entrance leading to the surface. The damage isn’t done by exploding the bunker; it’s done by sealing the earth around the people inside of it. So, if you want to be technical about it, the Deep Digger is a nonlethal weapon like mace or tear gas; that is, if mace buried you and your friends alive until you suffocated or cannibalized each other.

  2. THE SUN GUN

  What is it?

  During World War II the Germans were developing a series of whimsically named Wunderwaffen, or “wonder weapons,” which, despite sounding like a warfare strategy developed by the Care Bears, were actually terrifying. These Wunderwaffen were designed to be both practical and theatrical—intimidating foes while also killing the shit out of them. If you gathered up every Bond villain superweapon and whipped them into a mixture of dubious science and murder, added a dash of the occult, and baked it in an oven preheated to clown-shit-crazy degrees, you’d get the sun gun. Originally designed in 1929, the sun gun was pretty simple: A space station in orbit held a hundred-meter-wide mirror, which it used to focus concentrated sunlight on any point on the planet. It was like a gargantuan Nazi child roasting human ants with his space magnifying glass, if that helps you picture it.

  Did it work?

  If you’re reading this right now, chances are your grandparents weren’t melted alive by space Nazis—but that isn’t because the mirror didn’t work; the Nazis just never finished building it. There weren’t enough resources (or spaceflight) at the time, but researchers were able to determine the necessary size required of a mirror to burn up a city and even what materials they could use to construct it.

  During Allied interrogation, those working on the sun gun stated that it was all merely a matter of time and manpower to get a fully functioning prototype. They weren’t wrong of course. It just would have taken much more time and manpower than they could muster. Seeing as these were the same people who thought Hitler was an awesome boss and that the “nation” of Poland was more of a suggestion, really, nobody was too surprised when it turned out they were full of shit.

  1. THE VORTEX CANNON

  What is it?

  Another Wunderwaffen, or Willy Wonka’s weapons of whimsy, the vortex cannon worked on the idea that even small-scale turbulence could knock fighter planes out of the sky. The Nazis figured if they could create turbulent skies on demand, they could economize on the massive resources they spent building shells for antiaircraft artillery and start really getting serious about the giant sun laser. A Nazi scientist named Dr. Zimmermeyer developed the first version of the vortex cannon, which was astoundingly simple technology considering we’re talking about a tornado gun: A giant mortar barrel was sunk into the ground and loaded with shells containing coal dust, hydrogen, and oxygen. When the shells detonated, they would create a mini-vortex strong enough to bring down any planes within a hundred meters and cause everybody witnessing it to quit the war because “dark wizardry” isn’t covered under the Geneva Conventions.

  Did it work?

  Holy shit … yes?! At one point in history, the Nazi forces had a functioning tornado gun they used to whirl planes out of the sky? Presumably Indiana Jones got to them before it could be deployed, as that is the only conceivable reason why we won the war against the Axis of Ridiculous Superweapons.

  Well, actually it was because the gun didn’t work nearly as reliably as conventional antiaircraft weaponry. Considering the whole appeal of the vortex cannon was that it was supposed to consume fewer resources than a normal gun to take down a plane, the Axis decided to stick with the stupid, boring old explosive shells.

  So really, it all boils down to this: The only reason you’re not living in a fantastical comic book world of wacky doomsday devices is because the people in accounting ran the numbers, and supervillainy, while totally feasible, was just too damned expensive.

  THE FOUR GREATEST THINGS EVER ACCOMPLISHED WHILE HIGH

  REMEMBER DARE? Those brave police officers came into your school and told you nothing good ever came from drugs? They were lying too.

  4. FRANCIS CRICK DISCOVERS DNA THANKS TO LSD

  Francis Crick is the closest the field of genetics gets to a rock star, which it turns out is pretty damn close. In 1953, he burst through the front door of his Cambridge home and told his wife, Odile, to draw two spirals twisting in opposite directions from one another. She drew what he described, having no clue that her sketch would become the most reproduced drawing in the history of science: a first draft of the double helix structure of DNA that scientists today still describe as “balls on.”

  The drug: LSD

  When not discovering the key to life, and winning the Nobel Prize for it, Crick spent the 1950s and ‘60s throwing all-night parties famous for featuring that era’s favorite party favors: LSD and bare-naked breasts. Crick never made it a secret that he experimented with the drug, and in 2006 the London Mail on Sunday reported that Crick had told many colleagues that he was experimenting with LSD when he figured out the double helix structure.

  Why it makes sense

  The double helix is essentially the Sgt. Pepper’s of scientific models, a ladder that’s been melted and twirled by a pasta fork, or the two snakes from the caduceus if one of them was boning the other with a hundred dicks (depending on whether the artist ate the good or bad acid). Now, obviously scientists don’t arrive at models by doodling on their Trapper Keepers and picking out the shape that looks the coolest. Crick was a fan of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, a study of the human mind undertaken, like all good studies, while driving around LA on mescaline.

  Huxley wrote that the sober mind has a series of filters on it that basically prevent abstract thought. Evolution put them there to keep you from plowing your car into a tree while gazing at the mind-blowing beauty of its foliage. But Huxley and Crick thought drugs like mescaline and LSD could temporarily remove those filters. So rather than melting his mind into a lava lamp of trippy shapes, Crick probably used LSD to get unfiltered access to a part of his brain most normal people rarely use.

  Before you go trying it …

  While Crick never officially wore a tinfoil hat, he was known to argue that life was seeded on earth by a race of prehistoric aliens, a theory that has yet to gain widespread acceptance among the scientific community or really anyone who isn’t a character on The X-Files or a member of the
Church of Scientology.

  3. FREUD AND COCAINE INVENT PSYCHOANALYSIS

  Freudian psychoanalysis is one of the most influential and controversial theories of the twentieth century. While you can argue its merits all day, you can’t deny that it created an entire branch of medicine and, more important, gave us the two best seasons of The Sopranos.

  The drug: cocaine

  The first ten years of Sigmund Freud’s career were like a roving cocaine pep rally. He wrote cocaine prescriptions for his friends with headaches, nasal ailments, or just to “give [their] cheeks a red color.” He wrote cocaine-fueled love letters to his wife in which he referred to himself as a “wild man with cocaine in his blood.” Oh, and he also published a paper called On Coca, wherein the basic thesis was: Cocaine is freaking awesome. You should really think about trying some.

  After one of his friends overdosed on the drug, Freud quietly folded up his cocaine pom-poms and sweater-skirt combo, and went on to found the theory that bears his name. But according to Freud biographer Louis Berger, it may also have played a part in the less-embarrassing second act of his career.

  Why it makes sense

  Apparently, before cocaine Freud was an emotionally sterile, socially awkward lab rat. Flash forward to a series of all-night cocaine benders in which Freud and his friend Fleischel stayed up all night discussing their “profoundest despair.”

  Scarfreud 2: Freudface

  This probably sounds familiar to anyone who’s been around people on the drug or has at least seen the movie Boogie Nights. Cocaine gives you a preternatural ability to talk about yourself, and according to Berger (who is a professor emeritus of psychoanalytic studies at the California Institute of Technology), it was responsible for Freud’s enthusiasm for discussing how you feel about your mother.