{"id":11574,"date":"2026-03-04T15:54:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11574"},"modified":"2026-03-04T15:54:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:54:58","slug":"6-horrifying-fictional-diseases-and-their-real-life-inspirations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/03\/04\/6-horrifying-fictional-diseases-and-their-real-life-inspirations\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Horrifying Fictional Diseases and Their Real-Life Inspirations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/6-horrifying-fictional-diseases-and-their-real-life-inspirations-2000729012\">Gizmodo<\/a> The Ebola virus, Cordyceps fungi, and even the stomach flu have helped inspire some of the most gruesome infectious diseases seen on the screen. As both a health reporter and avid horror fan, there are few things I love more than seeing a fictional contagious disease take center stage as a villain\u2014especially when they\u2019re inspired by actual germs or parasites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thankfully, there\u2019s no shortage of horror flicks with gruesome infestations or illnesses to pick from. We\u2019re not even three months into 2026, and there have already been two infection-themed films released so far, each with their own particular bent (<em>28 Years Later: The Bone Temple<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Cold Storage<\/em>). So here are some of my personal favorite or especially interesting fictional diseases featured in movies and TV shows, along with their real-life inspirations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"dFfY bwzqMek\"><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gizmodo The Ebola virus, Cordyceps fungi, and even the stomach flu have helped inspire some of the most gruesome infectious diseases seen on the screen. As both a health reporter and avid horror fan, there are few things I love more than seeing a fictional contagious disease take center stage as a villain\u2014especially when they\u2019re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":11575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coping-with-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot-2026-03-04-at-16.51.30.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11576,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11574\/revisions\/11576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}