Zombies are cool? Zombies are sexy? Zombie movies, like Night of the Living Dead, I am Legend, and 28 Days Later have always been popular, but the rise of The Walking Dead television series seems to have brought zombie culture much closer to home than ever before. Instead of a population of nerds like me watching late night zombie flicks on the Sci-Fi channel, now large swaths of the population are soaking it up.
There's even a new, 2013 zombie-girls-in-bikinis video calendar stealing headlines, released by a New Zealand-based advertising agency in an effort to promote The Walking Dead in foreign markets! The calendar is compelling, for sure, but truth be told the zombies in the calendar hardly resemble the zombies in The Walking Dead. The last thing I want to see is a Walker in a bikini, sprawled on a pristine beach.
Surely our leaders in government and medicine can talk some sense into our zombie-obsessed society? Maybe present some statistics about the reality of a zombie apocalypse? If only that were the case! Just last year, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued zombie propaganda, with its Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse campaign, complete with Zombie Task Force t-shirts available for those who joined the task force.
Even our military has jumped on the zombie bandwagon! According to the Christian Science Monitor the U.S. Marines and Navy special-operations forces took part in a zombie apocalypse preparedness drill on Halloween off the coast of San Diego. The organizer of the drill, Brad Barker, CEO of the Halo Corp., security company said in an interview with the Associated Press that, "This is a very real exercise. This is not some type of big costume party."
Really? How tongue-in-cheek was that sound bite? Is the government, CDC and military simply employing consumer public relations tactics (which would represent serious evolution from standard operation procedure)? Or is there a real possibility of a zombie apocalypse? Could a virus really turn healthy people into stumbling, moaning, brain dead zombies in search of blood?
Two recent cases from real life have only added fuel to the fire: the infamous cannibalization of a live subject in Miami by Rudy Eugene, who was shot down by police when he wouldn't stop eating a live homeless man's face. He became known in the media as the 'Miami Zombie' mainly because of the attack, but also because the cop's first bullet didn't stop Eugene from chowing down on his victim's face. It actually took four bullets to put him down.
And then there is Baltimore college student Alex Kinyua, who used a knife to kill a man, slice him up and eat pieces of his victim's heart and brain. When pictures emerged of the Morgan State University student's face covered in camouflage face paint, zombie-aficionados jumped into the fray, calling it another zombie attack and a sure sign of the coming apocalypse. Fortunately, Newsweek and the Daily Beast did us all a big favor and put together a Google map that tracks news instances of similar attacks and zombie behavior.
As our military and medical community prepare for, and provide tactics for surviving the coming zombie apocalypse, we are encouraged to put together survival kits for our families, and make plans for safe travel and safe living zones. Not to mention, the need to know how to shoot a gun, preferably a shotgun! According to Dave Workman, of the Second Amendment Foundation, the zombie fad is now helping push gun sales in the state of Washington.
"There is quite a following on this zombie target shooting -- the idea of shooting targets that look like weird strange zombie people instead of human silhouette targets or junk targets appeal to a lot of people," Workman said in an interview with Seattle's King5 television news.
Tens of millions of viewers around the world are currently sitting on pins and needles in anticipation of what will happen next when The Walking Dead returns this spring. Who will get munched? What will happen to the Governor? Many viewers will sit through the show wondering, "is this foreshadowing? Am I really prepared for this?"
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The have Zombie Posters, a Zombie Blog...wow...
Excerpt:
Wonder why Zombies, Zombie Apocalypse, and Zombie Preparedness continue to live or walk dead on a CDC web site? As it turns out what first began as a tongue in cheek campaign to engage new audiences with preparedness messages has proven to be a very effective platform. We continue to reach and engage a wide variety of audiences on all hazards preparedness via Zombie Preparedness; and as our own director, Dr. Ali Khan, notes, "If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack." So please log on, get a kit, make a plan, and be prepared!
(but actually there was some cool info there)
"zombie genre" + "doomsday preppers" = the set up for a class war.
why do the preppers all live in the burbs? why are they all white?
what do you call a homeless, starving, jobless, person who is intent on eating you out of house or home, whether physically or economically by drawing on welfare? a "zombie". what "are" zombies? they would be "the hordes of jobless, homeless, starving strangers in the streets that are coming to take what you have". much easier to say "zombie" because everyone giggles.
Peace
Now we are talking zombies but not so docile like walking dead and not so super human like the Z movie. Lock and Load and you better where a respirator.
The breadth of interest in zombies lately, going from mainly horror fans to a much wider audience, can also be explained by the general mistrust and paranoia many people (especially Americans) feel toward each other. You can learn a lot from a generation by their taste in horror movies. In the '30s and '40s there were a lot of alien-themed horror movies and books. As our knowledge of space increased, so did our worry over it. In the '50s and '60s, our worries about the atomic age spawned huge radiation-created insects and lizards. In the '70s and '80s, front-page news of serial killers and mass murderers was reflected in slasher movies like Halloween and Friday the 13th. Now, when we're so divided as a nation (and as a globe, really,) and there is so little real trust and so many different manifestations of "enemies," the borderline phobia we feel towards others is reflected in the recent interest in all things zombie apocalypse. Symbolically, we daydream about preparing for (or fighting) the zombie apocalypse because we can't think our way out of the divisiveness we're seeing and experiencing in real life. That's my personal take on it.
Just don't forget the top tactics for surviving: 2.double tap, 1.cardio, 8. get a kick ass partner.
I just joined the NRA, got a gym membership, and have a pact with my best friend, so I'm feeling rather prepared!
Zombies are devoid of feeling, reason, and basic consciousness. Which means they are the most basic, stripped version of humanity. They do not think. Do not reason. They simply act on impulse - being survival by way of any means necessary. In order to do so - killing becomes as easy as breathing, with no real remorse or thought of human life. Clearly, our society's obsession with such behavior mirrors an underlying jealousy. Zombies represent everything we - as humans and animals - wish we could do but can't because of our conscious and the unavoidable consequences. Throw us in a kill-or-be-killed situation against Zombies, and I put money on our behavior only mimicking theirs. Who knows, we would probably kill ourselves off quicker than the living dead do.
Your point is correct and it's something that does not really come across in all the fiction; an ENORMOUS amount of people will die. I'd be stunned if more than 1M out of 6B made it. But for those that did survive, I don't think we'd be jealous of them. Maybe in 100 years when they were able to rebuild the society with some improvements...
As far as the bailout is concerned, given how successful the gov't has been at keeping zombie banks around, I'd probably rely on them to keep the rest of us in decent shape.
Oh wait. It's called "The War on Terror". My bad.