Flakka

As if we needed another one, there's a new "Florida Zombie" cofactor out there: it's a designer drug known as "Flakka", which has been linked to cases of bizarre and insane behavior in Floridians. It's typically made from alpha-PVP, a synthetic version of the amphetamine-like Cathinone, and is in the same class of drugs as the infamous "bath salts" that was blamed for the "Face-eating Zombie" of Miami.

According to TIME magazine:

In recent weeks in Florida, this new drug has led to a man trying to break down the door to a police station, a man impaling himself while trying to scale a fence, and an armed and naked man shouting about hallucinations from a rooftop.

“We’re starting to see a rash of cases of a syndrome referred to as excited delirium,” Jim Hall, an epidemiologist at the Center for Applied Research on Substance Use and Health Disparities at Nova Southeastern University, told CBS. “This is where the body goes into hyperthermia, generally a temperature of 105 degrees. The individual becomes psychotic, they often rip off their clothes and run out into the street violently and have an adrenaline-like strength and police are called and it takes four or five officers to restrain them. Then once they are restrained, if they don’t receive immediate medical attention they can die.”

I say "cofactor", of course, because there is a voluminous body of data about Floridians (and people nationwide as well) flipping out in precisely the same manner. Flakka, bath salts, and meth all add to the zombie freakout problem, but it can't possibly explain all the cases. I think the Jumping Jack Flash Hypothesis website is on to something when it suggests that the methane and Hydrogen Sulfide that are rapidly building up in our ecosystem are things to consider.

Here's just a few of the hundreds of "naked zombie" cases in Florida, and there are thousands more, possibly tens of thousands more, nationwide:

In April 2014, a woman disrobed in a St. Petersburg McDonald's restaurant and proceeded to demolish the place in an insane rage. August 8, 2014: a grandmother enters her granddaughter's room to find a naked man has climbed into the window and into the bed with her. (A similar incident occurred in Tampa in March 2015.)

On August 16, 2014, a naked man armed with a sword went berserk, yelling and charging at people in Mayport, near Jacksonville. The day before, a naked and masturbating man terrorized Fort Walton Beach. In September 2014, a naked man in Palm Beach breaks a window and items in house, attacks police dog. September 11: naked man goes berserk on golf course and attacks golfers in Tarpon Springs.

On October 3, a naked bloody man tries to break into a home, attacks cops, and suddenly drops dead. Then on October 8, a man went on a naked rampage around town, then beheaded himself. The next day, a naked burglar inexplicably dropped dead while being arrested.

On October 27, a man with a metal ring around his genitalia said UFOs told him to go outside naked. On October 28, 2014 a man in Hollywood, Florida strips naked in public, talks to trees, attacks cops, gets tased and dies.

As Bob Dylan once said, "Something is happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?"