On Monday, we talked a bit about Jeremy’s fears of the coming Robot Apocalypse. After the show, Alan began debating whether or not it’s more likely that the robots will rise up and destroy us, or if it will instead be the Zombie Apocalypse that geeks worldwide have feared for years.

On tonight’s show, we debate the topic LIVE. Which is more likely, given the current advances of biological vs. technological science? And in the horrific off chance that BOTH should occur simultaneously, who would come out on top?!

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Tonight’s Show Notes & Download Below:

ROBOTS:

First of all, the article from a few days ago about Google’s Skydrones was FALSE.

Robots are creepy, because they are either distortions of humanity, or completely alien.

Even Obama feels threatened by the impending robotic uprising.

And they even invade our personal lives!

And how scary is a robot that can reproduce itself?

Evolving Robots?

These drones were given a generational software lifespan of a few minutes, they evolved to learn to WORK TOGETHER to find food, avoid poisons and pitfalls, and even deceive outsiders!

“The bots sharing genes learned to help one another perpetuate their "DNA," using their lights to signal to their clan when they discovered food. When outsiders with different genomes were introduced, members of the clan sometimes blinked their lights far away from the food to draw the strangers away.”

Another example of robo-teamwork, and learning/evolving:  Soccer playing robots

ZOMBIES:

Real diseases that currently exist, and turn people into zombies

1. Sleeping sickness
2. Rabies

1. There are zero recorded cases of human-to-human transmission, other than organ transplants.

3. Necrosis
4. Leperosy

Scariest:  Malaria that restarts the heart after death, and results in ‘extreme violence’ in reanimated individuals.

Mathematical Modelling of a Zombie Outbreak – A survival primer

1. A talks about the merits of modeling such an epidemic
2. Conclusion:  Unless extremely aggressive tactics are used against the zombie hordes, they will eventually overwhelm the remaining humans through attrition.

Top 5 Scientific Reasons the Zombie Apocalypse could actually happen

Their #1 theory:  Nanobots.  But isn’t that technically a Robot Apocalypse?

Max Brooks (author of “Survival Guide” and “World War Z”) will answer questions on Reddit

Download: