The Plague of the Living Dead story
Dr. Gordon Farnham unwittingly creates a mob of zombies when he injects his immortality serum into people who died in a volcanic eruption.
16 total · 6 major · 10 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| human vs. monster | major | It fell to Dr. Farnham and the government officials to put an end to the zombie mobs' murderous rampage. |
| revival long after death | major | Dr. Farnham revived first animals, then humans hours after they had died. However, they returned as zombies. |
| the dangers of unfettered scientific advancement | major | While Dr. Farnham had the best of intention in his efforts to invent an immortality serum, its realization resulted in the creation of a mob of indestructible, man-eating zombies. |
| the flip side of immortality | major | Dr. Farnham invented a serum that turned dead people into unkillable zombies. |
| the quest for immortality | major | Dr. Farnham invented a serum that made the living immortal and the dead into zombies. |
| zombie | major | A mob of zombies ensued when Dr. Gordon Farnham injected a number of dead people with his immortality serum. |
| animal cruelty | minor | The narrator took such pains to explain that Dr. Farnham's macabre experiments on animals were humane and done in the name of science that one wonders whether he was making an ironical point about animal cruelty. |
| cannibalism | minor | The zombies were consuming human flesh. |
| chemical weapons | minor | The use of poison gases in World War I was alluded to. |
| choosing who dies and who lives | minor | In the wake of a volcanic eruption that left scores dead, Dr. Farnham consciously chose to resurrect only the youngest, most intelligent adult victims, because he had a limited supply of the serum. |