If the sets for "Decay," a super-low-budget flick about zombies at the Large Hadron Collider, look incredibly realistic — well, that shouldn't be surprising. The movie was filmed at the home of the LHC, Europe's CERN physics complex on the French-Swiss border, right under the noses of the authorities.

But don't worry: Everything's cool with CERN, even though they didn't know about the film in advance. The 75-minute movie is a hit, especially when you consider that it cost the grad students who made it just $3,500. And there's no danger that the Higgs boson has a "bio-entanglement" effect that turns underground workers into zombies, as portrayed in the movie.

The film was written and directed by Luke Thompson, a Ph.D. physics student at the University of Manchester who has been working on a project at CERN known as the LHeC experiment. The other masterminds on the "Decay" team included Manchester Ph.D students Hugo Day (stunt coordinator) and Clara Nellist (assistant director). The 20 cast members had no real film experience and worked with props that were scavenged or built by the crew, according to the Mancunion newspaper.

"Decay" was screened for the first time last month in Manchester, and this weekend it made its online debut as a free video on YouTube and the DecayFilm.com website. Thompson told me in an email that he and his fellow filmmakers have been "overjoyed at the reception thus far":

"Reactions have been hugely positive (especially considering it is, after all, the Internet!) and it's great to be getting so much coverage. The premiere in Manchester on the 29th of November was fantastic, and the audience really got into the film, which was great for all of us to experience.

"The tunnels in the film are indeed at CERN, but they're not the LHC tunnels. 'Our' tunnels are the basement-level maintenance tunnels linking many of the buildings at CERN just below ground. These mainly allow access to water pipes and so forth, but nothing critical for the running of CERN or the LHC. As such, they're not restricted access. On the other hand, access to anything important or dangerous, such as the LHC tunnels themselves, is tightly controlled. There are many kilometres of these maintenance tunnels, so of course the film doesn't show them all, but it does show a wide range of them. Many areas have their own unique 'feel,' and where possible we chose locations based on that, depending on what atmosphere we wanted to convey. We show some of the overground part of CERN as well, including (the outside of) the real ATLAS control room building, but of course most of the film is underground. We did try to give an 'overview' of what CERN is really like in the opening credits, before going crazy with the bad science :)

"The idea was entirely based on the location; some of us had been exploring CERN early in our Ph.D.s and, particularly in the case of the tunnels, thought it would make a great setting for a horror movie. We didn't think much more of it at the time, but a few months later it came up again, and we decided to actually make a zombie movie. We perhaps didn't realise how ambitious the project was at the time!

"As for the future: My Ph.D. will be done within about 6 months, after which I'll be doing a further six months' work on the LHeC project. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I've really enjoyed doing this film and have added filmmaking to my already too-long list of hobbies, so it's absolutely something I'll at least continue casually. That said, it's a tricky industry to make a living in, and as great as the reception has been, it's still an amateur film — so I'm not expecting any Hollywood projects to fall into my lap!"

CERN spokesman James Gillies told me that "Decay" wouldn't have been green-lighted if the students had asked, but now that it's out, there's no harm done. Gillies played it cool in his email:

"That film was made by a bunch of grad students in the kind of locations you describe [non-sensitive areas such as conference rooms and maintenance tunnels]. They did not ask permission until the whole film was in the can, at which point they asked us for an endorsement. We took the position that, even though we would not have granted permission had they asked before filming, it would not make any sense for CERN to try and block the film. The underground areas were the basements of the CERN main building complex and connecting tunnels on the Meyrin campus.

"Our criterion for accepting filming requests is based on the portrayal of scientists, not on the accuracy of the science. As you know, we worked with Sony Pictures on 'Angels and Demons.' Even though the science in that film was far from accurate, the scientists were well-portrayed. That's not the case for 'Decay.'

"What do folks think? For my part, it's the product of a bunch of grad students doing the kind of thing grad students do in their spare time.

"Can the Higgs field cause zombification? Well let's just say that the science in 'Decay' is at least as wide of the mark as the science in 'Angels and Demons' ..."

So, once again, LHC zombies are nothing to worry about. It's only a movie. That will surely come as a relief to the kid in this video. 

More about physics at the movies:

• Reality check on 'Angels and Demons'
• How I created an algorithm for Spider-Man
• Physics in the realm of Hollywoodland!
• The physics behind the movie magic

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

David Hughes / Penn State

This zombie ant has been taken over by a brain-manipulating fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis s.l.), which in turn has been castrated by a hyperparasite fungus (white with yellow material).

The Cordyceps fungus has become a staple of "stranger than fiction" nature stories: Its complex and lethal parasitism of ants, causing the insects to climb as high as they can before the fungus bursts like a horn from their heads, is both bizarre and captivating. Now scientists report that the parasite is getting a dose of its own medicine, as it finds itself under attack from yet another parasitic fungus — one that targets Cordyceps. It's nature's way to pile weirdness upon weirdness.

Researchers led by David Hughes at Penn State University were looking into how some groups of ants were able to survive a Cordyceps attack. The fungus is extremely virulent and can often wipe out an entire colony. Ants groom each other to remove potentially troublesome fungus and microbes, but that couldn't account for the survival rates they were occasionally seeing.

What they found (and reported in PLoS ONE) was another fungus growing in and around the ant colonies — just as much a specialist as the first fungus. This newly discovered fungus attacked the "zombie-ant" fungi and effectively neutered them, sabotaging their spore-producing organs and preventing them from fruiting. Some ants would still be infected (the researchers described a "high density of zombie-ant cadavers in the graveyard"), but the spread of zombie-ism was largely stopped.

Each species of Cordyceps fungus targets only one species; the ant-zombifying variety is just the best-known type. That there could be a fungus that was parasitic in such a fascinating way on a single species is amazing enough, but that a second fungus would specialize in attacking the first is almost beyond belief. It's an example of the density and biodiversity that one finds in, as Hughes puts it, "the exciting theater played out on the rainforest floor."

In addition to Hughes, the authors of the PLoS ONE paper, "Disease Dynamics in a Specialized Parasite of Ant Societies," include Sandra B. Andersen, Matthew Ferrari, Harry C. Evans, Simon L. Elliot and Jacobus J. Boomsma. 

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Itar-Tass / Reuters

Russian leader Vladimir Putin stands with a gun at a shooting gallery of the new GRU military intelligence headquarters building in Moscow during a 2006 visit. Last month, Putin said nations would eventually develop new types of weapons, including "psychophysical" weapon systems.

Are we on the brink of an arms race over zombie ray guns? You might think so, based on the alarms being rung over Russia's potential to create mind-scrambling weapons. But the reality is that it'll be a long time before we have to worry about super-soldiers taking over our brains.

The Americans as well as the Russians have been looking into psychotronic weapons for more than 15 years. You can find ample references to the subject on the Internet, including a feature published by U.S. News and World Report in 1997 and a report written for a U.S. Army publication in 1998.

Such weapons purport to take advantage of the effect that pulsed microwaves can have on brain activity. Some researchers have reported an effect known as microwave hearing, in which a directed beam of radiation produces a sensation of buzzing, clicking or hissing in the head. "This technology in its crudest form could be used to distract individuals," according to a declassified Army review of non-lethal weapons.

Theoretically, electromagnetic beams could cause an epileptic-type seizure, or involuntary eye motion leading to dizziness and nausea. Military researchers have also looked into using infrasound or laser beams to confuse or incapacitate a foe — but when you start going down this road, before you know it, you're talking about remote viewing, ESP and all the way-out concepts chronicled in "The Men Who Stare at Goats."

The Russian connection
The Russians have looked into these potential technologies at least as deeply as the Pentagon has, and you're hearing about zombie ray guns now because top Russian officials started talking about psychotronic weapons a couple of weeks ago. That has brought the subject back from the dead like a ... well, you know.

Moscow is planning to set up an advanced military research agency similar to the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov referred to those plans on March 22. Here's what the RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying during a meeting with Prime Minister (and President-elect) Vladimir Putin:

"The development of weaponry based on new physics principles — direct-energy weapons, geophysical weapons, wave-energy weapons, genetic weapons, psychotronic weapons, etc. — is part of the state arms procurement program for 2011-2020 ... We will draft the proposals for the next program by December 2012."

Putin, who begins his presidential term next month, pledged during the campaign that he would beef up Russia's military. In February, he laid out his national security plan in an article published by Rossiiskaya Gazeta. At the time, most of the news reports picked up on Putin's call for almost $770 billion in spending over the course of a decade to modernize the armed forces. But Putin also observed that the current balance of power, held in place by nuclear arsenals, could well shift in the future due to new technologies. It was in that context that he brought up the psychotronic angle:

"The military capability of a country in space or information countermeasures, especially in cyberspace, will play a great, if not decisive, role in determining the nature of an armed conflict. In the more distant future, weapons systems based on new principles (beam, geophysical, wave, genetic, psychophysical and other technology) will be developed. All this will, in addition to nuclear weapons, provide entirely new instruments for achieving political and strategic goals. Such high-tech weapons systems will be comparable in effect to nuclear weapons but will be more 'acceptable' in terms of political and military ideology. In this sense, the strategic balance of nuclear forces will play a gradually diminishing role in deterring aggression and chaos."

In the wake of Serdyukov's comments, folks dredged up Putin's reference to "psychophysical" weapons, added in some background about the research into electromagnetic mind control, and voila: the zombie ray gun. Last week, Britain's Daily Mail suggested that the guns "could be used against Russia's enemies and, perhaps, its own dissidents by the end of the decade."

The Mail also quoted Anatoly Tsyganov, head of the Military Forecasting Center in Moscow, as saying microwaves could make for "a highly serious weapon":

"When it was used for dispersing a crowd and it was focused on a man, his body temperature went up immediately as if he was thrown into a hot frying pan. Still, we know very little about this weapon and even special forces guys can hardly cope with it."

Based on that comment, Tsyganov was apparently talking about a different kind of non-lethal weapon, an analog to the millimeter-wave "pain ray" that the U.S. military has been working on for years. As we noted a couple of weeks ago, the beam of radiation can be directed at a crowd, producing a severe burning sensation on the skin that forces the target to jump away instinctively.

How fast can mad scientists work?
There are a few problems with the pain-ray technology: It takes hours to build up enough power for the beam generator, and the system reportedly works only in clear atmospheric conditions. Nevertheless, testing of the "Silent Guardian" system is continuing, not only for military applications but also for use against oceangoing pirates and rioting prisoners.

The bottom line is that Russia certainly seems to be on track to set up its own DARPA-like "Department of Mad Scientists," working on heat rays, mind-altering electromagnetic beams and heaven knows what else. But there's nothing in the comments from Putin and Serdyukov to suggest that the Russians are anywhere close to having psychotronic weapons. In fact, Putin makes it sound as if the next frontier in warfare won't be the zombie ray gun but the coordinated cyber-attack. And that's scary enough for me.

What do you think? Please feel free to register your opinion in the unscientific poll above, and the comment space below.

Update for 11 p.m. ET: A couple of commenters noted that the zombielike picture that originally accompanied this item had a caption that didn't quite square with the lore for the "Left 4 Dead" video game. The more I learned about the game, the more I saw that the picture really didn't fit. So I've put in the picture of a gun-toting Putin instead. Thanks to the gamers who pointed out the problem. If I ever play "Left 4 Dead," I'll want you on my side.

More about weapons technologies:

• U.S. military seeks 'stunning' new weapon
• Navy's ray gun disables boat with laser light
• Railgun tests could lead to super-weapon by 2020
• Military-funded brain science sparks controversy

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.