Flesh-Eating Bacteria at Myrtle Beach – Is This the Start of the Apocalypse?

Even the birds are ditching the beach before the apocalypse hits. | NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

You don’t have to wait for The Walking Dead to return in October. There’s enough going on in the real world to suggest a zombie apocalypse is upon us.

Monday’s news about a woman contracting a flesh-eating bacteria from the water at Myrtle Beach is just one of many cataclysmic events this summer. (Heck it isn’t even the first shocking thing to come out of the Carolinas. Rip currents killed four people in 10 days back in June.) There are reports that mosquitoes in Stamford, Connecticut have tested positive for the West Nile virus. There’s even Powassan, the tick-borne virus believed to be worse than Lyme disease.

And you thought Jon Snow had his hands full with battling White Walkers. Right now, the reality is starting to look a lot scarier than what we see on TV.

Many news outlets have been skeptical of the bacteria story coming out of Myrtle Beach. The woman’s family first made the claim in a Facebook post. But doctors are still unsure how exactly she came in contact with the bacteria. The bacteria called Vibriosis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains, is more commonly found in fresh warm water or comes from eating raw or uncooked seafood. (In the Myrtle Beach instance, the woman was in contact with salt water.) The Myrtle Beach City Government responded to the viral post with a Facebook post of their own. “The city has been unable to confirm the location or date of any such incident,” the post reads.

Even though this event remains a mystery, it isn’t the first time that a deadly bacteria has struck the southern states. Last summer, there was an instance in Florida where a teen survived contracting a brain-eating amoeba. This rare but deadly amoeba, much like Vibriosis, can breed in fresh warm water and is accompanied by symptoms akin to meningitis.