Major Cooper is a minor character in George Romero's Day of the Dead. His death is not shown onscreen, but his fate is revealed in graphic detail.
Biography[]
He is the leader of the underground operation in Florida. He was called 'an asshole' by Fisher, he was also regarded as 'a sweetheart' next to his successor, Captain Rhodes. By the beginning of the film, Cooper was used in his experiments to understand the zombies' physiology. The men are unaware of this, despite burying what they thought was his body when it was actually one of Logan's previous specimens. How he died is left to speculation.
The majority of Cooper's head is stripped away leaving only the brain and spinal column, with his cerebral cortex removed. Logan wires the core of the brain up to a machine to prove that the corpse still has motor function but can be cured of their homicidal aggression with surgery to remove the part of the brain "inherited by the reptiles" that governs violence. Realizing that this is not a practical approach to dealing with the many hordes of ghouls threatening the few remaining humans in the world, Logan zealously believes this experiment is enough proof that the true danger of the pandemic of ghouls is that humans have been reset into violent, base, animalistic versions of their former selves, driven by the most primitive instincts for survival. According to Logan, they only attack us because all that remains is a desire to consume and kill to accomplish that goal. He proposes, in this scientific discovery, that the ghouls can likely be converted from homicidal monsters into benign domesticated creatures as long as older memories are revived, speculating that our basic humanity that defines us 'as civilized' is lost to brain damage in the several minutes after death before revival. His murder of Cooper is discovered by Sarah, who discovers Cooper's jacket. Logan calmly claims that this was necessary since he provided valuable information, and asserts that the corpse can't be recognized, hoping that she will not expose his crimes.