Zombies or Criminally Insane?

Are you ready for a zombie apocalypse? 

Some are excited, and some people are scared shitless. But the real question is...Are you ready for a zombie apocalypse? I'm going to show you some recent stories of some may call zombies and others may call mentally unstable people but it is up to you to decide which you believe. 

Ronald Poppo, 65, Victim of cannibalism
His face before it was chewed off. 

Photograph by 

Miami Beach Police Department via Getty Images. 

Everybody is still talking about the Miami Zombie Attack. It is said that the person who attacked the homeless man was on Balt Salts...Maybe it's some cover story? Maybe not, but here is the story either way.

An officer came across the men shortly after 2 p.m., when police responded to a 911 call about two naked men fighting on a bike path along the Causeway.  The fight was taking place at the causeway exit near the Miami Herald building.

The amazed officer tried to stop it and ordered the man making a meal out of the other man to stop. When the blood covered man refused to stop and turned toward the officers and growled, the officer shot him. The Medical Examiner has 

identified the man as 31-year old Rudy Eugene. 

Since news of the unthinkable attack first broke, the big question has been, Why? Why did the man attack the other? Why were they naked? Why did the attacker turn into a cannibal on the causeway?

Image of the attack.

  

The head of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, Armando Aguilar, said cases related to the type of drugs known as “bath salts” are not new locally.

“We have seen, already, three or four cases that are exactly like this where some people have admitted taking LSD and it’s no different than cocaine psychosis,” Aguilar said.

In the cases Aguilar mentioned, he said the people have all taken their clothing off, been extremely violent with what seemed to be super-human strength, even using their jaws as weapons.

Emergency room doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital said they too have seen a major increase in cases linked to the street drug called “bath salts” or what Aguilar described as “the new LSD.”

Recent updates on the case - The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner issued a statement Wednesday saying that its toxicology lab and an outside laboratory were unable to find any cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, LSD, Oxycodone, bath salts or synthetic marijuana in Eugene’s system.

 In a written statement, Medical Examiner Dr. Bruce Hyma said, “Within the limits of current technology…Marijuana is the only drug identified in Mr. Rudy Eugene’s body.”

Some think the words “within the limits of current technology” may be key in the laboratories finding nothing but pot in Eugene’s system.

H. Chip Walls, a forensic toxicologist, said makers of over-the-counter drugs like synthetic marijuana and so-called “bath salts” change the ingredients often to stay ahead of the law, and may be staying ahead of the ability of labs to detect their merchandise. As jurisdictions outlaw products, makers alter the contents.

“These drugs are being substituted on a daily basis. When one becomes controlled, they put another in that’s not controlled,” Walls told CBS4′s Gary Nelson. “Many times the laboratories don’t have the drug standards for correct identification.”

Walls said some naturally grown marijuana is also being cultivated now with such high levels of the active ingredient, THC, that even pot alone has been known to set off bizarre behavior.

A Miami police officer shot and killed Eugene. The homeless man, 65 year-old Ronald Poppo, is still being treated at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

South Miami forensic psychologist, Dr. Wade Silverman, has a straightforward opinion of what caused Eugene’s bizarre behavior.

“In common terms, obviously, the man was out of his mind,” Silverman told CBS4 News. In short, crazy.

Silverman said there may be a clue to Eugene’s psychotic break in the fact that he left his home with his bible the day of the cannibalistic attack. Some pages of the bible were torn out and strewn along the causeway, along with Eugene’s clothes. There is often a religious element to schizophrenic behavior, Silverman said.

“There are all sorts of irrational justifications that the psychotic mind uses to justify their behavior,” Silverman said, including the possibility that Eugene believed that God was telling him to do what he did.

Silverman cited the case of David Berkowitz, the so-called “Son of Sam” killer in New York who believed a dog had ordered him to commit a series of murders.

“Schizophrenics often believe they hear voices speaking to them, including animals, Satan, even aliens from outer space.”

At the end of the day, whatever substance – or demons – possessed Rudy Eugene may remain a mystery, an enigma that followed the causeway cannibal to his grave.

Ronald Poppo Picture (Warning: Extremely Graphic)

He is recovering well, the doctors say. 

The photo shows the upper two-thirds of Poppo’s face covered in thick, bloody scabs. He’s missing his nose and both eye sockets are covered, one with gauze and one with what appears to be a skin graft.

source: Miami CBS Local/ Slatest.com

1,000 news stories about cannibalsfeatured on Google News.  Stories about zombies were also starting to catch on, mostly tied to the tragic and sad story of an attack on a homeless man in Miami that left the man faceless. Gawker weighed in on the story with a piece aptly entitled “Could People Please Stop Eating Other People’s Body Parts?”  Some have speculated that the cannibalism (zombieism?) is being caused by a virus, others like Forbes contributor Alice Walton have attributed it to synthetic drugs.  In fact, cannibal stories have popped up not only in Miami, but other related stories with zombie/cannibal overtones have cropped up around the world including:

• A story in Maryland where a man has been charged with killing a man and eating his brain’s and heart.
• A story in Canada about a porn star turned murderer and cannibal who is currently on the run from police.
• A story in Sweden where a man is alleged to have cut off his wife’s lips and eaten them. And a separate story where a woman is alleged to have bitten her boyfriend’s penis.
• A story in New York where a man chewed the ear off of of another man at a Staten Island restaurant.
• A story in New Jersey where a man stabbed himself repeatedly in front of police and then threw his skin and intestines at them.

source: Forbes