A scene from a Russian TV series in which a dead man comes back to life is gaining popularity on social media as a justification for further conspiracy theories. Nobody rose from the dead in Tver… There is also no indication that we are dealing with a zombie apocalypse in China.
A video stylized as CCTV footage appeared on social media. Each time it is accompanied by different theses, despite the fact that its content is the same. The first uses of the video in the context of conspiracy theories were recorded on 24 January, 2022, on the night of Sunday to Monday.
The film is set in a morgue. There’s a body of a deceased person lying on a corpse transport trolley.
At first, his hand begins to move, and after a moment he rises from under the blanket and looks around. When the protagonist of the video tries to stand on his feet, his muscles refuse to cooperate. He tries to move forward, with the help of the trolley, while his limbs perform involuntary, unnatural movements.
Resurrection in Tver?
Source of the video
Tver is a Russian city inhabited by more than four hundred thousand people. On the Russian social media platform VKontakte, there is an account associating its residents. The group brings together a community larger than the official profile of the city.
It was there that the aforementioned video surfaced: according to the descriptions, in one of the Tver morgues a deceased person was to be resurrected. The news also spread on other media platforms, such as Telegram or YouTube.
Internet users quickly noticed that the scenes and the room from the video resemble those from the trailer of the Russian TV series “Hello Again”. The similarities can be seen in the still frame where hospital trolleys are visible, and the one in which the deceased stands in the same way as in the conspiracy video:
In addition, after fast-forwarding the video to the final second, a microphone can be seen in the still frame.
Authorities and experts deny
In an interview with the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, the Ministry of Health in Tver denied:
The video is fake. The room in the video, which is supposed to be one of Tver’s morgues, is not. There are no morgues in Tver similar to the one that appears in the film.
Journalists from Tverigrad.ru and the Russian Metro Newspaper indicate that the video was most likely shared in this form as part of a viral marketing campaign. The journalists also mention a similar, actual incident that took place in Siemianowice Śląskie.
The assumptions were confirmed by Komsomolskaya Pravda in an interview with a professor of the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University:
The video is stupid and cannot be judged at all. This is a movie set. And it was filmed not in Tver, but in Moscow. In July-August, a series was filmed in the autopsy room of the morgue of our medical institute, which was closed for reconstruction. Obviously, at this point the time of filming has been revealed on the Internet, and the previous campaign was to attract higher interest in their film “masterpiece”.
Vox Ukraine also denied another theory, according to which the resurrection was to take place not in Tver, but in one of the Ukrainian morgues.
Zombie apocalypse in China
A different theory has gained huge interest among users of TikTok.
It all started with an article from 16 June, 2022, titled “This is how a zombie apocalypse is most likely to start in China”.
It was published on the We Are The Mighty portal, which is run by American veterans.
In the article, the author envisioned how China would behave if there was a zombie epidemic. He referred to situations that actually took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cultural factors of the Middle Kingdom.
Some Internet users misunderstood the text and treated it as an information article. The rumour spread and–to the disbelief of most users–the phrase “zombie in china” trended both on the aforementioned platform and on Twitter.
Soon, the video discussed earlier was used as evidence for the appearance of zombies.
According to one of the clips, there are no zombies in China, because the only one created by scientists was quickly killed. This not necessarily reassuring statement was appreciated by users of the platform, as a result of which the clip also went viral.
As for the existence of zombies, it is so distant and unlikely that it functions at most in the thought experiments of philosophers who debate whether zombies, understood as bodily creatures without mind, would be logically consistent with one another at all. There is no evidence to support this.
Summary
The video is a fake. It does not depict the resurrection of the deceased in Tver or in Ukraine, and certainly does not confirm the existence of zombies in China. There are also no indications suggesting that the zombie apocalypse is a real possibility.
Sources
Vox Ukraine: https://voxukraine.org/fejk-video-mertsya-shho-ozhyv-v-ukrayinskomu-morzi/
Twerigrad: https://tverigrad.ru/publication/video-o-voskreshenii-muzhchiny-v-morge-v-tveri-okazalos-fejkom/
KnowYourMeme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/zombies-in-china
