How do scientific ideas grow across generations of researchers, disciplines, and perspectives?
Scientific discovery is an ongoing conversation across generations. Every mathematical model, computational framework, and scientific interpretation presented in this archive builds upon ideas first explored by others.
The research documented in this Narrative Scholarly Archive draws inspiration from multiple disciplines—including mathematical epidemiology, computational science, numerical methods, systems biology, popular culture, folklore, and science communication. Together, these diverse sources demonstrate that innovation often emerges at the intersection of established knowledge and creative thinking.
Rather than presenting the references as a simple bibliography, this page highlights the major intellectual foundations that shaped the project and acknowledges the researchers whose ideas contributed to its development.
The compartment models developed throughout this project are rooted in the long tradition of mathematical epidemiology, where differential equations are used to describe the dynamics of populations and infectious diseases. These works provided the theoretical and methodological foundations upon which the SCA, SCAR, SCARE, and SCARED models were ultimately developed.
References
Foppa, Ivo M. 2016. A Historical Introduction to Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases, 1st Edition: Seminal Papers in Epidemiology. Academic Press, pp. 214 (ISBN: 9780128022603).
Frauenthal, James C. 1980. Mathematical Modeling in Epidemiology. Springer-Verlag: Berlin, pp. 120 (DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-67795-3).
Gustafsson, Leif and Mikael Sternad. 2010. Consistent micro, macro, and state-based population modelling. Mathematical Biosciences 225 (2):94-107 (DOI: 10.1016/j.mbs.2010.02.003).
Perkins, T. Alex. 2017. Retracing Zika’s Footsteps Across the Americas with Computational Modeling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114(22):5558-5560 (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1705969114).
Tegner, Jesper N., Albert Compte, Charles Auffray, Gary An, Gunnar Cedersund, Gilles Clermont, Borris Gutkin, Zoltan N. Oltvai, Klaas Enno Stephan, Randy Thomas and Pablo Villoslada. 2009. Computational Disease Modeling – Fact or Fiction? BMC Systems Biology 3:56 (DOI: 10.1186/1752-0509-3-56).
Developing mathematical models is only the first step in understanding complex systems. These references provided the computational techniques, numerical methods, and simulation principles that enabled the translation of theoretical models into executable computer simulations.
References
Aguilar, Maira, Roberto Cavoretto, Nico Stollenwerk and Ezio Venturino. 2016. Mathematical Models and Numerical Methods in Life Sciences. In Proceedings of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Conference 1738:390001 (DOI: 10.1063/1.4952175).
Fehlberg, Erwin. 1969. Low order Runge-Kutta formulas with step control for heat transfer problems. Technical Report TR-R-315, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, pp. 46.
One of the central ideas of this research is that fictional narratives can serve as computational laboratories for studying complex systems. Rather than treating vampires, zombies, or cybernetic aliens as fantasy alone, these works demonstrate how imaginative settings can illuminate general principles of contagion, adaptation, and resilience.
References
Alemi, Alexander A., Matthew Bierbaum, Christopher R. Myers and James P. Sethna. 2015. You Can Run, You Can Hide: The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies. Physical Review E 92:052801 (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.92.052801).
Greene, Sean. 2015. What zombies can teach us about infectious diseases. Los Angeles Times (Science Now Section, http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-zombie-apocalpyse-bmj-christmas-20151218-story.html).
Houghton, Frank, Katie Del Monte, Daniel Glessner, Joyce Goff, Edward Hopkins, Krista Loney, Ghazal Meratnia and Jeremy Toms. 2016. Zombie Pandemic Preparedness: A Cautionary Observation. NZMJ: New Zealand Medical Journal 129(1432):97-99.
Lofgren, Eric T., Kristy M. Collins, Tara C. Smith and Reed A. Cartwright. 2016. Equations of the End: Teaching Mathematical Modeling Using the Zombie Apocalypse. Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education 17(1):137-142 (DOI: 10.1128/jmbe.v17i1.1066).
Madore, David and Robert Madore. 2011. The Physics of Zombies: Madore’s Rules of Zombie Cohesion, Zombie Cells and Super Cells, Zombie Black Holes, Zombie Cell Stress-Fission and Zombie Quirks. JOAN: The Journal of American Necropology I(1):1-19.
Munz, Philip, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad and Robert J. Smith?. 2009. When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection. In J.M. Tchenche and C. Chiyaka (eds) Infectious Disease Modeling Research Progress, pp 133-150.
Nasiruddin, Melissa, Monique Halabi, Alexander Dao, Kyle Chen and Brandon Brown. 2013. Zombies - A Pop Culture Resource for Public Health Awareness. Emerging Infectious Diseases 19(5):809-813.
Nuñez, Felipe, Cesar Ravello, Hector Urbina and Tomas Perez-Acle. 2012. A Rule-based Model of a Hypothetical Zombie Outbreak: Insights on the Role of Emotional Factors During Behavioral Adaptation of an Artificial Population. ArXiv:1210.4469 [q-bio.PE, cs.MA, cs.SI, physics.soc-ph]
Smith, Tara C. 2015. Zombie Infections: Epidemiology, Treatment, and Prevention. The British Medical Journal 351:H6423 (DOI: 10.1136/bmj.h6423).
Smith?, Robert J. 2014. Mathematical Modeling of Zombies. University of Ottawa Press: Ottawa, Canada, pp. 468 (ISBN: 0776622102).
Several fictional narratives have long served as metaphors for real social issues. These works illustrate how vampires, zombies, and other fictional beings can represent disease, identity, consumerism, political behavior, or broader societal change. They helped frame the project's broader view that fictional epidemiological events can communicate scientific ideas while simultaneously exploring social phenomena.
References
Boluk, Stephanie and Wylie Lenz. 2010. Infection, Media, and Capitalism: From Early Modern Plagues to Postmodern Zombies. Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 10(2):126-147 (DOI: 10.1353/jem.2011.0001).
Daly, Keenan. 2015. The Modern Vampire Narrative: History, Fighting, And Living With HIV & AIDS. BuzzFeed (https://www.buzzfeed.com/keenandaly/the-modern-vampire-narrative-a-metaphor-for-the-h-1lce2)
Harper, Stephen. 2002. Zombies, Malls and the Consumerism Debate: George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-Present) 1(2).
Hochreiter, Ronald and Christoph Waldhauser. 2013. Zombie Politics: Evolutionary Algorithms to Counteract the Spread of Negative Opinions. ArXiv:1401.6420 [cs.SI; physics.soc-ph].
Lavigne, Carlen. 2004. Sex, Blood, and (Un)Death: The Queer Vampire and HIV. Journal of Dracula Studies 6:9 (https://kutztownenglish.com/journal-of-dracula-studies-archives/).
Primuth, Richard S. 2014. Vampires Are Us. The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, January-February (http://www.glreview.org).
Stokes, Jasie. 2017. Ghouls, Hell and Transcendence: The Zombie in Popular Culture from “Night of the Living Dead” to “Shaun of the Dead.” All Theses and Dissertations, paper 2103. Brigham Young University.
The project deliberately incorporated elements of Philippine folklore alongside internationally recognized fictional narratives. These references provided cultural context for exploring indigenous stories as possible computational case studies and demonstrated that scientific modeling can engage with locally meaningful narratives as readily as globally popular ones.
References
Ramos, Maximo D. 1990. The Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform: Scotts Valley, CA, pp 444 (ISBN: 1530389992).
The Aswang Project (https://www.aswangproject.com/ Accessed Online 20 September 2017).
Unlike zombies and vampires, the Borg represent assimilation through cybernetic integration rather than biological infection. These references inspired the extension of epidemiological thinking toward cybernetic and information-based systems, broadening the scope of the project's generalized framework for recoverable human systems.
References
Brkich, Christopher Andrew and Timothy Barko. 2011. Star Trek, the Borg, and threats of methodological simplicity to the enterprise of qualitative research. Seventh International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain Illini Union, Urbana, IL.
Yates, Steven. 1997. Star Trek and Collectivism: The Case of the Borg. Foundation for Economic Education (https://fee.org/articles/star-trek-and-collectivism-the-case-of-the-borg/).
The references collected here represent more than sources of information. Together, they reveal the interdisciplinary character of the research itself. Ideas originating in epidemiology, mathematics, computer science, folklore, cultural studies, and popular media converged to form a unified framework for investigating generalized contagion through computational modeling.
Many of these works inspired the project's original models during its funded lifetime. Others gained renewed significance as the research was revisited and interpreted through the perspective of this Narrative Scholarly Archive. In this way, the intellectual lineage of the project continues to evolve, demonstrating that scientific understanding is not static but grows through continual reflection, reinterpretation, and dialogue.
Every scientific discovery begins as someone else's question. By acknowledging the ideas that came before us, we recognize that research is not a collection of isolated achievements but a continuing conversation across generations.