What caused the zombie outbreak in "The Walking Dead"?
Does it even matter at this point?
Well, we know the answer and we'll let you decide.
For starters, let's take a look at what's actually known.
The root cause is a virus that infects the brain and, after death, reanimates the body.
The TV series ultimately provided more clarity on the mechanics than the comic.
In "TS-19," the season 1 finale, CDC researcher Dr. Edwin Jenner compared the disease to meningitis.
He also explained that the virus only infects the brain stem, which is why a dead person's
personality and memories aren't restored, nor can a zombie form new ones.
"Everything you ever were or ever will be…gone."
The characters initially assumed the virus is transmitted through a zombie biting someone,
but it turns out the virus is actually airborne.
Even the living are infected.
Someone who's bitten dies from the resulting infection, then the dormant virus activates.
Unless you amputate a bitten limb or damage the corpse's brain, anyone who dies returns
as a zombie.
Some writers would be tempted to make an active mystery of the disease: where did it come from?
Can it be cured?
If so, how?
"Walking Dead" co-creator Robert Kirkman is not one of those writers.
While he's occasionally offered some hints or jokes, the series itself is always focused
on the micro world of the characters and how they survive in a radically altered world.
It'd be hard to guess from the series itself, but outer space has cast a shadow over "The
Walking Dead" since the beginning.
Kirkman's pitch to Image Comics doesn't resemble the final product at all.
As he recounted at San Diego Comic-Con 2018:
The closest Kirkman came to implementing this "alien invasion" was a joke ending of issue
#75, later followed by the non-canon mini-series "Rick Grimes 2000."
"The Walking Dead" ended in 2019 with issue #193 without ever explaining the virus' origin.
Then in 2020, Kirkman seemingly answered the question with a now-deleted Tweet, which simply
read:
He later backtracked, claiming this was a joke.
Yet, this explanation would be strangely fitting.
It would explain the logistics of how quickly the virus spread: Earth was blanketed in the spore.
It would also account for the unearthly virus in a more grounded way than an outright alien invasion.
An extraterrestrial origin even has precedent in the genre.
Space spores infecting humans is right out of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," especially
the 1978 version which opens with the spores reaching Earth.
Kirkman's pitch, aliens softening up humanity with zombies, was even cribbed from "Plan
9 From Outer Space."
Then there's George Romero, the godfather of the zombie genre and Kirkman's primary influence.
His later films leaned more towards the supernatural — such as "Dawn of the Dead", where it's said:
"When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth".
However, in the original "Night of the Living Dead," the zombies are hinted to have been
created by radiation from a crashed space probe.
The TV version of "The Walking Dead" has always been a different story than the comic.
While the original series ended without the virus' source revealed, the spin-off series
"The World Beyond" offered a clue.
The season 2 series finale, "The Last Light," featured a post-credits scene set in France.
An unnamed woman enters an abandoned lab named la Biomédicine DDMI.
On a laptop, she watches a pre-recorded message from Jenner before a man enters holding a gun.
From their conversation and some nearby graffiti, "Les morts sont nes ici" – which translates
to "the dead were born here" — it's implied this lab is the source of the virus.
Did the French researchers merely stumble upon their creation or was it deliberately
engineered as a bio-weapon?
Likewise, was it accidentally or deliberately released?
The upcoming Daryl Dixon spin-off will be set in France, so if any of the spin-offs
answer these questions, it'll probably be that one.
While the TV universe may be going a different route, Kirkman feels that the virus' origin
simply wasn't important to the story he wanted to tell.
In a 2018 Tumblr Q&A, he said that he does have the origin determined, but it wouldn't
make sense to reveal it in the comic.
He said:
What's important is how the apocalypse affects the people living in it.
That's true for Kirkman's comics as well as Romero's zombie films.
"Night" and "Dawn" are about, respectively, how neither racism nor consumerism ends even
when the world has.
Even in "Day of the Dead," where the leads are scientists and military officers trying
to reverse the virus, the story is about the internal breakdown of the group.
In real life and stories, people want there to be a tangible bad guy because that brings
a sense of order.
It's better, however, to take "The Walking Dead" as what the story is on its face: a
new disease appeared, the world changed forever, and here's how people lived through that change.