Plight of the Living Dead, Matt Simon
Plight of the Living Dead, Matt Simon
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Plight of the Living Dead
What Real-Life Zombies Reveal About Our World--and Ourselves

Author: Matt Simon

Narrator: Holter Graham

Unabridged: 6 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 10/02/2018

Synopsis

A brain-bending exploration of real-life zombies and mind controllers, and what they reveal to us about nature—and ourselves

Zombieism isn’t just the stuff of movies and TV shows like The Walking Dead. It’s real, and it’s happening in the world around us, from wasps and worms to dogs and moose—and even humans.

In Plight of the Living Dead, science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre evolutionary history of mind control. Along the way, he visits a lab where scientists infect ants with zombifying fungi, joins the search for kamikaze crickets in the hills of New Mexico, and travels to Israel to meet the wasp that stings cockroaches in the brain before leading them to their doom.

Nothing Hollywood dreams up can match the brilliant, horrific zombies that natural selection has produced time and time again. Plight of the Living Dead is a surreal dive into a world that would be totally unbelievable if very smart scientists didn’t happen to be proving it’s real, and most troublingly—or maybe intriguingly—of all: how even we humans are affected.

“Fantastic . . . You'll be thinking about this book long after you're done reading it.” —Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Soonish

About The Author

Matt Simon is a science writer at Wired magazine, where he specializes in zoology, particularly of the bizarre variety, and the author of The Wasp That Brainwashed the Caterpillar. He is one of just a handful of humans to witness the fabled mating ritual of the axolotl salamander. He lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Mike on January 19, 2019

This was a very good pop-science book about parasites that manipulate their hosts and environment to thrive and reproduce. The tactics these parasites (Simon refers to them as "zombifiers") use to survive shows how nature Nature truly is majestic and terrifying at the same time. Simon starts with cas......more

Goodreads review by Jim on February 15, 2020

When I first read about Toxoplasma I was horrified & fascinated. This is a well documented parasite that needs to breed by going through both a rat & cat, so it makes rats go looking for cats. Of course, this behavior isn't good for the rat, but the parasite doesn't care. It's used that vehicle long......more

Goodreads review by Benjamin on September 19, 2019

This is very much a 'Popular Science' book. That may be good or bad depending on your own preferences so I'll try to avoid a value judgement, but let me at least explain what I mean. Plight of the Living Dead reads like a very, very long article on something like IFLS. The stories about mind-alterin......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on June 16, 2020

Horrors! If this book wasn't so informative, unique and well-written, I'd say skip it, it'll give you nightmares. But it's vastly entertaining, and the facts of life about the birds and the bees (as well as the body-snatching fungi, the brain surgeon wasps, and the mind controlling caterpillars) are......more

Goodreads review by Diana on January 06, 2019

Interesting and gross. 4.5⭐️......more

Quotes

“Burned out on human interaction? Consider zombies instead. . . . Matt Simon looks at zombification, brain-altering viruses and parasites, and the myriad ways mind control shows up in the natural world. It’s fun, weird, and fascinating.”
—Outside Magazine

“Spine-tingling . . . Faced with living (and undead) examples of unimaginable suffering, Simon questions the cruelty of nature, explores the way that mind-controlling viruses have ravaged human society, informs us that one in three humans is strolling around with a zombifying parasite right now, and nearly disproves the existence of free will along the way. It’s a fun read that will haunt you to your very core.”
—Gizmodo

“Surprisingly lively and lighthearted . . . Simon’s fascination is contagious. . . . [His] work is easily the most fun one could ever expect to have reading about the mind-controlling insects, insidious fungi, and parasites living alongside humanity.”
—Publishers Weekly

“An extensively documented, easily digestible, occasionally irreverent, and always engaging look at parasitical zombifiers.”
—Booklist

“Utterly engrossing (no pun intended) . . . [Simon’s] splendid narrative voice can’t help but evoke an enthralling documentary. Conversational and engagingly funny, Simon captures the reader’s mind like a wasp larva virus in a ladybug.”
—Shelf Awareness

“This book is fantastic! The sci-fi stories you've read barely hold a candle to the gruesome ways in which parasites manipulate their hosts in real life. This book will make your skin crawl with some of the best examples of manipulation we've encountered, fascinate you with what we know about how parasites achieve these amazing feats of control, and leave you wondering what this all means for the nature of free will. You'll be thinking about this book long after you're done reading it.”
—Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything

“Matt Simon is, to borrow his term, a zombifier: Plight of the Living Dead will infect your brain, forcing you to spout a stream of bizarre facts—about fat-sucking worms, muscle-eating fungi, brain-stabbing wasps—until your friends buy the book for themselves, and the chain of infection continues.”
—Mark Essig, author of Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig

“A gruesome, fascinating, and somehow hilarious exploration of the most devious, mind-altering tactics of the bug wars. I found myself cringing, laughing, learning, but most of all thankful I’m not an ant.”
—Cody Cassidy, author of And Then You’re Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara

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