GMO Foods, Cannibal Cows, and the Impending Zombie Apocalypse

Forget radioactive space debris, a mutated retrovirus, or even bath salts. If the zombie apocalypse is indeed coming, human greed will undoubtedly orchestrate our demise.

GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are organisms that have been altered through genetic engineering. These include bacteria, plants, fish, and mammals -- basically, in the name of efficiency (i.e., to maximize profits), scientists have been employed to muck about with pretty much anything that has genetic code.

Genetically modified crops have been engineered to be resistant to herbicides and pests so they are able to withstand exposure to levels of chemicals that would kill normal plants. Many have also been modified to slow their discoloration, thus improving their shelf life.

The alarming decline of bee colonies in North America has long been a mystery, but it is now being attributed to their interaction with genetically modified crops. Recent studies show that GMO crops are also killing other animals, such as monarch butterflies, on a large scale.

A hundred years ago, cancer was a far less common disease. The modern diet has brought with it the proliferation of tumors in the human body. But, between the genetically modified foods that we consume and lax standards of our meat industry that harken back to The Jungle, this is hardly surprising.

For the sake of earning a few extra pennies, food conglomerates have compromised our food supply. To reduce costs, mass bred cattle have been fed waste byproducts, including the unwanted left-over bits of other cows.

You can only feed cows other cows for so long before something has to give. Remember mad cow disease? It occurs when a protein starts replicating like crazy, essentially punching holes in the brain as it grows. A similar disease caused by replicating protein in the brain has been observed before... in human cannibals.

Were human beings so arrogant that they genuinely believed they could poison their own food supply, drastically altering both plant and animal life, without there being any repercussions? Or, more likely, in pursuit of the almighty dollar, did they just not care?

The United States is the only developed nation that does not require the labeling of foods containing GMOs, and you can bet that food industry bigwigs are lobbying hard to keep it that way. These days, GMOs may well be present in every food item on American store shelves that doesn't sport a pricey "organic" label, and there is no way to guess at what the long-term effects of their consumption will be.

In my novella, Making the Best of the Zombie Apocalypse, genetically modified crops cause the dead to rise. The scary thing is, the final result of mankind's tampering with its own food supply is still unknown; a zombie apocalypse might be a best case scenario.