Popular Mechanics says 'I Am Legend' Style Vampire Plague Impossible.
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Warner Brothers, Newsstand
If you know absolutely nothing whatsoever about I Am Legend, what follows counts as a SPOILER. Otherwise, as Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth says, "Good news, everybody!" Matt Sullivan forwarded us the news that Popular Mechanics is officially debunking the chain of events in I Am Legend. Their team of scientists and technologists assert that it's all just fiction: retro-viruses causing vampirism, Serengeti-style velds growing in Times Square, gas powered generators working for years, and Manhattan mocked by the sad spectacle of the brick caissons of the Brooklyn Bridge with dangling cables hanging from it. (The upside is no more bridge and tunnel people.)
In the article, Alan Weisman of The World Without Us describes a people-free Manhattan. Dr. W. Ian Lipkin of Laboratory for Immunopathogenesis and Infectious Diseases at Columbia University Medical Center claims that a vampire plague, as described in the film, can't happen: "Viruses don't mutate and become airborne. They typically fall into a couple of different categories-respiratory, STDs and vector-borne like insects, ticks and mosquitoes. They don't change from tick-borne to pneumonic. They just don't do that." Some will be agonized that Popular Mechanics wasted their time dissecting this fantasy, but, if you have a nightmare prone child the article might bring them some comfort. Future issues promise to prove that volcano-style supervillain headquarters are impossible to build, and that a yellow brick road would be unstable and prone to fissures.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-16-2007 @ 4:25PM
Screen Rant said...
"if you have a nightmare prone child the article might bring them some comfort"
If you have a nightmare-prone child why in the hell would you bring them to this movie?!
Vic
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12-16-2007 @ 5:29PM
Philip said...
I can't tell you how much better I feel now that PM has debunked this myth. Man I was totally believing that whole flick was rooted in reality till now.
Now if they'll just tackle that pesky breaking-a-mirror-is-bad-luck myth we're all set.
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12-16-2007 @ 6:10PM
Tarheel said...
Breaking news - they've also disproven Will Smiths other movies - Men in Black, Independance Day, and the Pursuit of Happyness.
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12-16-2007 @ 6:47PM
Dave said...
This movie was likve a cross between 28 days later and Dawn of the Dead from 2004. The movie itself was just ok and obviously not based in reality. Did popMech really have to delve so deaply, couldn't they just say that a virus wouldn't turn you into a superhuman capable of scaling buildings and breaking through roofs. Anyway, I feel stupid just thinking about this.
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12-16-2007 @ 9:15PM
Erik said...
I posted before but it never appeared (?). The link for Alan Weisman's website is incorrect.
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12-16-2007 @ 9:16PM
Erik said...
Correct link for the Alan Weisman's website =
http://www.worldwithoutus.com/
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12-16-2007 @ 9:17PM
bamboo said...
I think PM is full of crap and wasting their time. The virus in the movie was not a natural organism, it was man made and completely different, who knows what hell could happen. And the worst part is there are tons of labs working on exactly this kind of stuff. I actually read these articles last week before I knew it was in the movie.
http://www.dailytech.com/Does+Craig+Venter+Have+an+Artificial+Organism/article10044.htm
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/duncan/17623/
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12-17-2007 @ 3:16PM
john said...
Doesn't Bubonic Plague change from tick born to pneumatic when it reaches the lungs?
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12-18-2007 @ 1:46PM
Tony C said...
Hey, thanks for the movie spoiler in the title -- I haven't seen it yet! :oP
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12-20-2007 @ 1:27PM
Jenna Ryan said...
In the book, it wasn't a virus. Neville -- who had no real training -- believed it was something close to bubonic plague, which was a bacterial infection after he viewed it under a microscope. I don't think that they can become "airborne" by mutation, but if the dust storms actually contained bits of the humans infected with the disease, then it could have spread. After all, the first cases of biological warfare were those in which the Mongols/Huns/Turks/Alexander the Great's army threw the carcasses of humans, cows, etc over the walls of fortified cities in order to get inhabitants to leave.
Ugh. I can't believe I actually put some thought into this. Why do we have to prove and disprove make believe? Aren't we supposed to escape into movies, suspend our disbelief and let go?
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