About

Marburg Virus is a rare hemorrhagic fever disease carried by African bats and monkeys. It was named after a lab in Marburg, Germany where an outbreak occurred in 1967 among scientists and researchers. In 2023, conspiracy theorists on Twitter / X, Rumble and other platforms speculated that an October 4th test of the American government's emergency alert system would use 5G rays to activate Marburg virus germs inside of dormant nanoparticles that had supposedly been included in the COVID-19 vaccines. Users then predicted that those infected by the 5G Marburg nanoparticle activation would turn into flesh-eating zombies, leading to fevered conspiracy theory posting and debunking online. There is, however, no evidence for any of these claims.

Origin

Marburg virus was first named in 1967 after 31 people got sick at a series of labs in Europe that worked with the carcasses of animals from East Africa. Since then, there have periodically been outbreaks of Marburg virus often tied to people who visited caves where infected animals lived. The disease is also extremely lethal. In a February 2023 outbreak in Equatorial Guinea, 12 out of the 16 people infected died.^[1]

On May 7th, 2022, conspiracy theorist Rashid Buttar shared a theory on the YouTube alternative platform Rumble about the virus.^[5] He proposed that "sleeper cells" of Marburg had been placed inside of the coronavirus vaccine and would be activated by 5G. Clips from that interview were reposted to TikTok, such as in the video below, which was captioned in Malay and received almost 3,600 likes in the course of a day.^[4]

Spread

General Mike Flynn, prominent QAnon devotee^[7] and former Trump administration official, endorsed the conspiracy theory on May 8th, 2022.^[6]

On April 22nd, 2023, Todd Callender, a man claiming to be a lawyer based in Colorado, added to Buttar's conspiracy theory, sharing his new take on Jeffrey Prather's conspiracy talk show on Brighteon TV. Like Buttar, Callender said that the Marburg virus had been baked into nanoparticles inside of the coronavirus vaccine, but he additionally predicted that a test of America's 5G systems on October 3rd and 4th, 2023, would lead to the release of the virus, mass fatalities and the creation of zombies. ^[2] Throughout the summer, Callender continued to appear on Prather's show and spread his claims.

As October 4th, 2023, drew closer, others in conspiracy theorist networks began to share and talk about the Marburg virus.

Callender's claims about Marburg creating zombies notably mirror the plot of an early-2010s series of zombie fiction novels by Seanan McGuire, who called the CDC multiple times to figure out a somewhat realistic way for zombies to happen. In the novels, a genetically engineered Marburg virus infects the population.^[3]

Various Examples

External References