Zombies

A fungus is known to control the minds and bodies of ants to help itself reproduce, but it’s not the only insect to use the morbid tactic. Certain species of parasitic wasps have been found to “zombify” spiders, and now a new review paper has examined exactly how the insects pull off this feat.

To us vampires are the stuff of movies, but for many ancient cultures the undead were seen as a very real threat. Now archaeologists excavating a children’s cemetery in Italy have uncovered the skeleton of a child with a large stone jammed into its mouth, to prevent the body returning from the dead.

It’s one of nature’s most disturbing horror stories: a fungus takes control of a living ant to spread spores through the colony. But now a study led by Penn State University has found that the fungus makes these “zombie ants” without directly infecting the brains of its hosts.

For people in medieval England, zombies weren’t fictional entertainment, they were an existential threat. Bones from a medieval North Yorkshire village have been found to bear telltale battle-scars, when the living took some extreme measures to make sure the dead stayed dead.

We've seen zombie apocalypse fiction in nearly every form of storytelling. With virtual reality opening up a new media frontier, it's only natural the undead will inevitably creep into your favorite VR headset. Arizona Sunshine manages to put you inside the zombie Armageddon like never before.

British firm Tiger Sheds has turned to Kickstarter in an attempt to reanimate its Zombie Fortification Cabin (ZFC-1) concept. Should funding prove successful, the "zombie-proof" cabin will be used as part of an interactive horror experience.

The Motoped Black Ops is a shameless, shallow grab for attention that has 100 percent done its job on me. A zombie hunting moped? Seriously? But the product behind it is actually pretty sweet. A highly customizable moped with a 500-mile range, 200 mpg efficiency and heavy-duty engineering.

"Virtual reality needs its arcade moment," argues Zero Latency co-founder Tim Ruse. The Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus headsets may be set to dominate your living room, but the Melbourne-based startup is aiming bigger – offering full immersion with body tracking and real space to move around in.

The zombie-killing gore masters at IRLShooter are preparing to launch their second "real life video game" in Melbourne – Lazarus.

Australian real life video game company IRLShooter is back in 2014 with a total upgrade and redesign of its Patient Zero live action zombie shooter game, including some great new weapons and the "pain belt" to add real consequence to your actions. Naturally, we made a video test.

While the Hyundai Tucson that figures prominently in The Walking Dead might not be ideal for fighting zombies, the automaker is about to unveil a one-off car that could be – the Santa Fe Zombie Survival Machine.

"There was a full team of farmyard animals came through, and they murdered everything they saw." Meet Dave Leadbetter and Drew Hobbs of IRL Shooter, an Australian company that's blurring the boundaries between video games, live action role playing and laser tag.