Fight as we may, death is an aspect of life that everyone has to go through, whether we like it or not. Even scientists are finding ways to prolong the inevitable, and some of their experiments are straight-up questionable, as you will learn in this article. But the things they’re doing are downright scary and may just bring about a full-blown zombie apocalypse, in our lifetime. Here are the five times science flirted with a zombie apocalypse. 

1. Scientists in Pittsburgh Resurrected Dogs

The dog lovers among you will find this one a bit hard to read. In 2005, researchers from Pittsburgh looking for a way to save victims of serious blood loss conducted a whacky experiment on living dogs. To begin, their bodies were drained, leaving them in a vegetative state. Next, they were pumped full of a cool saline solution mixed with glucose and oxygen, only to be revived three hours later, after their blood was returned, then shocked back to life. Most of the dogs recovered just fine, but some suffered permanent side effects.

2. A Microscopic Creature Came Back to Life After 24,000 Years 

If you’ve ever seen “The Thing” then you’re aware that it’s never a good idea to play around with frozen organisms from way back when. Russian scientists did just that, when they thawed out a 24,000 year old microscopic worm back in July, 2021. Found in Russia’s frozen Alayeza River, the team managed to not only thaw out the organism but also got it to start reproducing with itself. And this isn’t their first time bringing things back from the dead—they revived a 30,000 plant in April of 2021.

3. The Restoration of Metabolic Function in Pig Brains 

Back in 2019, a team of scientists from Yale’s School of Medicine led by Nenad Sestan, conducted an experiment on none other than pig brains. Using their original machine called BrainEx, they were able to keep the pigs’ brain functioning by maintaining vital fluids through it at just the right temperature and pressure that it would experience if the pig were actually alive. They even managed to restore some of the brain’s cellular function. Funny enough, Sestan took crucial steps to prevent neurons from firing up, fearing that it could become conscious.

4. The Cryonics Industry Is Still Preserving Bodies

The cryonics industry has been around for quite some time now, since the 1960s, to be precise. And they aren’t slowing down either. Take for instance, the Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute, a Chinese company who claimed to have a total of 10 frozen clients back in 2020 alone. Their most notable client was a man who had his head and brain frozen with medical grade anti-freeze due the contagious nature of COVID-19, while the rest of his body was frozen with liquid nitrogen.

5. Dead Pigs Have Had Organ Function Restored

The same team who revived pig brains were at it yet again in August 2022, this time with their hearts too. Like the first time, they pumped the poor animals’ organs with a cocktail of synthetic blood, among other things, using a machine they called OrganEx. This was a huge moment for science because it dispelled the belief that cells die right away and that they can’t be restored after death. However, Dr. Anders Sandberg of the Oxford University warned that “there is a risk that it mainly prevents people from dying rather than making them recover.”