You Might Be a Zombie . . .

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

THE FIVE MOST HORRIFYING BUGS IN THE WORLD

THREE COLORS YOU DON’T REALIZE ARE CONTROLLING YOUR MIND

THE FOUR MOST BADASS PRESIDENTS OF ALL TIME

FIVE FAMOUS ARTISTS WHO DIDN’T CREATE THEIR SIGNATURE CREATION

SIX TERRIFYING THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT CHILDBIRTH

FIVE FUN THINGS THAT WILL KILL YOU

FIVE MOVIES BASED ON TRUE STORIES (THAT ARE COMPLETE BULLSHIT)

OH THE PLACES YOU’LL GO (WHEN YOU’RE DEAD): SIX INSANE THINGS SCIENCE MIGHT DO ...

THE FIVE MOST RIDICULOUS LIES YOU WERE TAUGHT IN HISTORY CLASS

THE SIX CUTEST ANIMALS THAT CAN STILL DESTROY YOU

FIVE STORIES ABOUT JESUS’S CHILDHOOD THEY HAD TO CUT FROM THE BIBLE (TO AVOID ...

THE SIX MOST TERRIFYING FOODS IN THE WORLD

FIVE WACKY MISUNDERSTANDINGS THAT ALMOST CAUSED A NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST

THE SIX MOST DEPRESSING HAPPY ENDINGS IN MOVIE HISTORY

FIVE FAMOUS INVENTORS WHO STOLE THEIR BIG IDEA

THE FIVE MOST FREQUENTLY QUOTED BULLSHIT STATISTICS

THE FOUR MOST INSANE ATTEMPTS TO TURN NATURE INTO A WEAPON

THE FOUR GREATEST THINGS EVER ACCOMPLISHED WHILE HIGH

FOUR MYTHOLOGICAL BEASTS THAT ACTUALLY EXIST

FIVE WAYS YOUR BRAIN IS MESSING WITH YOUR HEAD

FIVE FIGHT MOVES THAT ONLY WORK IN MOVIES

FIVE AWESOME PLACES TO HAVE SEX (AND THE HORRIFIC CONSEQUENCES)

FIVE AWESOME THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW COULD MAKE YOU SICK

FOUR THINGS YOUR MOM SAID WERE HEALTHY THAT CAN KILL YOU

THE GRUESOME ORIGINS OF FIVE POPULAR FAIRY TALES

FIVE HORRIFYING FOOD ADDITIVES YOU’VE PROBABLY EATEN TODAY

FIVE STORIES THE MEDIA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT

FOUR BRAINWASHING TECHNIQUES THEY’RE USING ON YOU RIGHT NOW

FIVE HOLLYWOOD ADAPTATIONS THAT TOTALLY MISSED THE POINT

THE TEN MOST INSANE MEDICAL PRACTICES IN HISTORY

FOUR GREAT WOMEN BURIED BY THEIR BOOBS

THE AWFUL TRUTH BEHIND FIVE ITEMS ON YOUR GROCERY LIST

FIVE CLASSIC CARTOON CHARACTERS WITH TRAUMATIC CHILDHOODS

FIVE CONSPIRACIES THAT NEARLY BROUGHT DOWN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

FOUR TICKING TIME BOMBS IN NATURE MORE TERRIFYING (AND LIKELY) THAN THE ONES IN ...

FIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS THAT PROVE HUMANITY IS DOOMED

THE FIVE CREEPIEST URBAN LEGENDS THAT HAPPEN TO BE TRUE

FIVE BELOVED U.S. PRESIDENTS THE MODERN MEDIA WOULD NEVER LET INTO THE WHITE HOUSE

THIRD REICH TO FORTUNE 500: FIVE POPULAR BRANDS THE NAZIS GAVE US

FIVE SCIENTIFIC REASONS WHY A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE COULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN

CREDITS

“Hugely enjoyable. I found it irresistible but, sadly, too useful by far.”

—Noel Botham, chairman of the Useless Information Society and author of The Book of Useless Information

“Trivia on steroids! A wild, irreverent ride through some of the craziest facts I’ve ever come across, and that’s really saying something. I read it straight through.”

—Don Voorhees, author of The Book of Totally Useless Information

“A hugely enjoyable read—witty, well researched, and worth buying for ‘Five Stories About Jesus’s Childhood They Had to Cut from the Bible’ alone.”

—Karl Shaw, author of 5 People Who Died During Sex

“This book blows the lid off dozens of absurd fallacies and unearths scores of highly entertaining historical ironies.”

—Joey Green, author of Contrary to Popular Belief

PLUME

Published by Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) •

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Books (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, January 2011

Copyright © Cracked.com, 2011

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

You might be a zombie and other bad news : shocking but utterly true facts / Cracked.com. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-47815-8

1. Curiosities and wonders—Humor. I. Cracked.com

PN6231.C85Y68 2011

818’.60206—dc22

2010030031

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

http://us.penguingroup.com

For refusing to collapse into an earth-devouring black hole under the force of its own staggering density, we dedicate this book to Theodore Roosevelt’s left testicle.

THE
Cracked.com editorial team would like to thank the thousands of talented comedy writers who worked tirelessly, often under threat of violence, to make this book possible.

In addition to the folks listed in the credits section, we would like to thank every last member of the Cracked Writer’s Workshop. The Workshop is an ongoing experiment based on the idea that if you let thousands of Internet strangers into your writers’ room, some of them will turn out to be geniuses.

Others will turn out to be dangerous and deranged, sure, but that was a risk we were will ing to take. It paid off—you’re holding the proof in your hands. We would also like to thank the effortlessly funny PWoT forum moderators, for cultivating the only online community where such an experiment could be anything but an embarrassing failure.

We’re eternal y grateful to the il ustrators and Randal Maynard, for their ability to draw exactly what we had in our heads, except way better and without all the dicks. Also, to our fact checker Ben Smith, for the hours of Google and library searches that have almost certainly made him a person of interest to the FBI.

A huge thanks to everyone at Demand Media, especial y Larry Fitzgibbon, Jeremy Reed, Stewart Marlborough, and Lex Friedman, for taking a chance on a site that, in retrospect, probably wasn’t very good yet, and to Richard Rosenblatt and Shawn Colo, for trusting that it could one day be worth a damn.

And, of course, thanks to Cracked.com GM Oren Katzeff, for putting up with us and running a tight ship that features far less sodomy than most in naval history. We’d especial y like to thank Mandy Ng, Adam Tourkow, Simon Jia, Lina Ung, and Jeremy Rylan, for the incredible work they put in every day to keep Cracked.com up and running. We’d also like to thank Matt Polesetsky, David Ho, and Emma Sansing in the legal department, Wadooah Wali and our PR team, and our SEO, marketing, sales, and monetization teams. Special thanks to will Teran and the design team for making us look like a real, legitimate website, and to Shannon O’Brien and Moment Design for all the free advice.

We would especial y like to thank Becky Cole and Nadia Kashper from Penguin, and our agent Dan Strone from Trident Media Group, for their invaluable feedback, and for giving us the creative license to stray outside of the rules as dictated by the AP (and common decency) when we swore it was necessary.

And of course none of this would be possible without the young men and women who have fought and died so we could go on doing our ridiculous job.

We may not know any of your names, but you are the bravest interns in the world.

THE CONSPIRACY

YOU
have been the victim of a conspiracy to make the world around you more boring than it actually is.

It’s true. Did you know that you could save the lives of thousands of depressed people by painting the Golden Gate Bridge blue? How about the brain parasite currently infecting 50 percent of people on earth that turns lab rats into zombies—did you know about
that
? We didn’t think so.

Nearly everything your impressionable mind soaks up from your peers, teachers, parents, and the media is a lie. Imagine if
Pulp Fiction
and
Goodfellas
had been rol ed into a single movie and set loose aboard the spaceship from
Aliens
. That’s the real world you’ve been missing. The people who taught you everything you know took that movie, edited out all of the most aggressively ass-kicking scenes, and made it into a Saturday-morning cartoon. This book is the shocking, unrated director’s cut.

You hold in your hands the most mind-blowing nuggets of information federal and local anti-headsplosion laws all ow us to print on anything that’s not a tarp. In these pages, you will find answers to questions you didn’t even know you should be asking. Questions like, Why
were
the Nazi’s so wel dressed?

and, Why is this five-inch-long hornet chasing me?

THE ROAD TO
YOU MIGHT BE A ZOMBIE

The many shocking answers you’l find in this book all arose from a single question we found ourselves asking about two years ago: How can we come up with $2.5 mil ion, and fast?

It didn’t take us long to settle on the idea of writing a book. Like our online humor articles, books contain words. But while our website is free, people who suck at shoplifting pay
money
for books. The more we looked into this book business, the more the idea checked out. Our first move was to take a quick survey of some of the bestsel ing books of all time.

The Bible (300 BC-AD 95), 6 billion copies sold

Quotations from Chairman Mao
(1964), 800 mil ion copies sold

The Koran (AD 610-632), 800 mil ion copies sold

Xinhua Dictionary
(1957), 400 mil ion copies sold