The Walking Dead S1E6 (2010) - "No Clinical Progress to Report"

Spoiler Level – Low

The Show – During a zombie outbreak, a group of survivors look for safety and answers. Since they're near Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) would be a good place to try.

I'm a fan of this show. The scene I'm going to discuss is the only instance of the science getting really bad. The bigger problem is that the rules for how the infection spreads are very unclear. Their universe doesn't have to obey the same laws as our own but it at least needs to stay internally consistent. Still, there are several characters and relationships that make it worth watching.

The Scene – In Wildfire (S1E5), we get our first look inside the CDC. A scientist, Dr. Jenner, digests some infected tissue in what appears to be nitric acid to isolate the zombie virus. He looks at the virus through a conventional microscope, and sees two particles join together, trade some of their genetic material, and separate again. Unfortunately, before he can come to any conclusions, Dr. Jenner displays some stunningly bad lab safety behavior and ruins his samples.

This actually wouldn't be a bad conceptual model of a virus. However, as a direct observation, it has some big problems. From The Walking Dead.

The Science – I've emphasized before how tiny viruses are. In fact they're so small, they wouldn't actually be visible with a conventional microscope. There are other tools that allow us to see tiny things, but they require special conditions that stop us from viewing microbes while they're alive and active. Still, this isn't a terrible representation of a virus. It fits the general description of genetic material inside a simple protein shell. 

The best direct imaging of virus particles. From Wikimedia Commons.

You'll notice other problems with the genetic material inside. Being smaller than that virus itself, we shouldn't be able to see it at all, let alone with such clarity that we can make out the helix. You can also see that it's not a double helix like we looked at before, but that's actually okay. Viral genetic material isn't always double-stranded DNA. Viruses can use single-stranded DNA or even a similar material called RNA. The real problem, as with Mission to Mars, is the length. The viral genomes they show only have a few dozen bases, which isn't enough to store very much information at all.

The behavior of the virus is problematic as well. Viruses don't join together and split apart to exchange genetic material. The ability to trade genes is important. It increases genetic variation, which is good for the any population's chances of survival. That's why sexual reproduction exists. Viruses, however, do not have sex. At least not as it's commonly understood. The joining and separating of viruses seen here is just not practical given the nature of their shells.

Virus sex: Not an actual thing. At least not like this. From The Walking Dead.

Viruses don't need to have sex as we know it, though. They have other means of exchanging genetic material. Multiple viruses can infect the same cell, and their genomes can exchange information inside the host cell. And that's not all; viruses can also steal genes from the host. In fact, many real life viruses have genes that they originally captured from humans! Strictly speaking, the term sex refers to any exchange of genetic material, so this could be called virus sex. But that's kind of weird.

Finally, I haven't been able to find any evidence that large amounts of concentrated nitric acid are used in virus preparations. This isn't a big issue, but I don't like it when science is depicted as more dangerous than it needs to be. It could turn off people who otherwise might want to pursue careers in research. Also, the man is working with a zombie virus. How much more danger does the scene need?

Protip: Don't dip your hand in nitric acid. That one...that one should have been obvious... From The Walking Dead.

Fixing the Scene – It's never really possible to show the virus itself in action. But what the scientist sees isn't relevant to the story anyway. The scene mostly exists to show that he's still at work. The specifics of that work can be whatever we want. It is possible to see human cells with a normal microscope.  I think Dr. Jenner should add the virus to a slide with healthy human tissue on it and observe the effects. A few of the cells could shrivel and die before suddenly becoming active again and attacking the remaining healthy cells. We could see zombie-ism on a cellular level!

Next Week – We'll see how the actual CDC would handle a real viral outbreak with Contagion (2011).