The full extent of the effects of radiation on the human body and brain are still not known. When the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was the first time that in-depth studies on what happens when the human body is exposed to saturated radiation were able to be conducted. Since then, radiation has crept into a variety of accepted medical treatments.

Radiation therapy is common in the treatment of brain tumors, but still the full long term effects are not fully understood. When you examine some of the currently known side effects, a pattern of warning signs familiar to the serious Zombie enthusiast emerges.

It isn't hard to imagine that using these resources and what is increasingly being discovered about the effects of concentrated radiation on portions of the brain, that mass "intellectual sterilization" could take place. With the right mix of radiation, braincells would constantly be dying and not regenerating, giving a virtual blank slate for instructions to be put into. However, as you would be left with something only capable of simple repetitive tasks, these zombies would not be violent unless programmed that way, and if left to their own devices would be more likely found staring at the wall blankly than chewing on your scalp. Additionally, the balance between the programming and the radiation doses would have to be delicate enough to ensure that patches of programming would not be erased by miscalculated doses of radiation.

Would we need be afraid of radiation zombies? Unlikely, unless they were programmed killing machines which would likely not be very efficient. What we should be worried about is becoming them should our governments decide it's too much trouble convincing us to do what they want, and just decide to directly control us.