Thank you, Science. We have been waiting in earnest for a world in which zombies exist. The usual threats to our safety and well being have, over time, become too boring and outmoded. Clinical depression, unemployment, homicide, war, famine, flesh-eating bacteria, AIDS, you name it. These omnipresent threats to modern society are barely enough to keep us up nights anymore. Fortunately, the creative wonder that is our nation's military-industrial complex is developing the real-world incarnation of a very 1950s sounding menace: Steam-Powered Flesh Eating Robots!

That's right, our modern town crier Fox News reported today about military contractor Robotic Technology's steam-powered robot that is capable of turning any battlefield organic matter into its own fuel. Examples include "grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies". Yes, that is a quote.

The robot (pictured above) is to be called Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (or EATR... seriously). The article goes on to state, "The advantages to the military are that the robot would be extremely flexible in fuel sources and could roam on its own for months, even years, without having to be refueled or serviced" [emphasis ours].

Just wait until a couple of of these things (or whole divisions) go rogue, working their way through a nice, greenery free urban environment such as New York City where there's pretty much no organic matter but bodies. Who's to say these things will want or know how to discern between the living and the dead when humans and little dogs are their only source of fuel?

Just take a look at those pictures. A few aesthetic changes and Johnny 5 is our new worst nightmare. Richard Matheson could not have written it better.  Future, thank you for not disappointing us. We were hoping it would get weird before the end.