Other Keywords: Miami Cannibal

Rumours are circulating the Internet regarding an apparent highly contagious virus, dubbed LQP-79 or "the zombie virus", that is infecting victims and making them display symptoms one would expect to see in a zombie horror flick. Specifically victims appearing confused and having an apparent hunger for human flesh.
The rumours claim (and were likely inspired by) the recent grisly attack in Miami that involved an attacker eating the face off a homeless man happened because the attacker was infected with the virus. The rumours assert that LQP stands for Lysergic Quinine Protein.

However the rumours are nothing more than baseless scare-mongering. In many cases "stories" relating to the rumours are clearly designed to be humorous as opposed to be taken seriously. Pranksters have even set up an entire spoof website about the fictional virus.



The term LQP-79 is fictional, just like the virus. There is no mention of any virus by this name of description any where on the Internet dating back more than a few days before the rumours began to appear. The story about the attack in Miami was certainly not down to this imaginary virus. Pranksters have even used a photoshopped article of the Huffington post (image below) to lend credibility to their nonsense. The real article is here.




However according to the latest reports the grisly incident in Miami occurred because the attacker was high on some form of drug, such as LSD or "bath salts".

And for the conspiracy theorists who have questioned why the US government or any related body have not responded to the plethora of panicked and ever-so-slightly needless concerns, the CDC have actually released a statement(!!) denying the existence of any known zombie-like disease. A spokesperson told the Huffington Post - "CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)"

So LQP-79 is a fictional name, used to describe a fictional virus. The Miami attack was just an unfortunate incident involved a man high on drugs and zombies are not coming after your brains.

The Internet, and social networking sites like Facebook, are perfect platforms for spreading untruths, misinformation, rumor and propaganda. Thousands of inaccurate, exaggerated, deceptive or just plain false messages are circulated every single day.

For the anti-scam community to successfully tackle this plethora of false rumours, it is important that anyone who uses the Internet be able to identify false rumours and fully understands the possible consequences of spreading false information.

We have a two part blog post that helps provide this information. Part 1 deals with how to spot and debunk Internet rumours and Part 2 deals with the reasons why you should never circulate false information.

Additionally if you have fallen for this rumour or have Facebook friends that have, you can join our growing Facebook page here.