PATIENT # 266 - SERGIO

Goal: Travel from cache to cache in search of BRAAAAINS.  Visit Geocaching events.  Spread the plague.  Please take photos!

Meet Sergio, patient #266 in our ongoing study of the spread of the zombie plague via geoaching.  Sergio was a toy maker from Brazil.  He specialized in making stuffed animals that moon walked when you squeezed their paw.  Sergio was also obsessed with entering into contests, and he must have been very lucky as our records show that he frequently won.  As just a few examples, Sergio had won a set of handcrafted kitchen knives, a set of DVD’s of a 1990s telenovela, a year’s supply of hair mousse, and a subscription to a geocaching magazine.  Through the geocaching magazine, Sergio learned about the hobby and began to geocache whenever possible.  His favorite geocaches were located near fountains, because he believed that throwing a coin into a fountain would bring him more luck.  It must have worked, because he won a weeklong all expense paid vacation to Washington, D.C. 

We believe that Sergio contracted the zombie plague from Lena, patient # 9 in our study of the spread of the zombie plague.  While Sergio was in Washington, D.C., he and Lena both attended a nighttime geocaching tour led by a Park Ranger, Christopher, patient # 264. The nighttime geocaching tour went to the many virtual and earthcaches around the National Mall, such as at the WWI Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, the Roosevelt Memorial, and the Jefferson Memorial. Sergio loved the idea of a geocaching tour to all the best tourist locations, especially since so many involved fountains.  Pictures attached to the logs for the tour reveal that for the earthcaches, Christopher passed around a magnifying glass so geocachers could get an up close look at the marble of the monuments to identify the type of marble and the impurities that existed within the stone.  Lena noted in her logs that while she wasn’t feeling well, she loved getting an up-close look at the marble and she loved the haunted feeling of the nighttime virtual geocaches.  Sergio noted in his logs that while he did not speak English and had no idea what the Park Ranger was saying, he followed what everyone else was doing and used the magnifying glass to look at the marble.  Sergio’s luck must have run out because the day he was suppose to fly home to Brazil, he began to show symptoms of the zombie plague.  Video captured from the airport shows flight personnel questioning him about his health, and Sergio tried to act like he was fine.  It is unclear if he boarded the plane back to Brazil, and further research is necessary to determine where he may have gone next. 

This travel bug is part of a larger study to take a closer look at how the zombie plague might propagate if the primary vector for spreading the disease was geocaching.  Please visit the following website for further details, and a visualization of how the disease has propagated thus far based on the movement and discovery of this and other infected Zombie travel bugs:

FinditLogitSpreadit.info