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Zombie apocalypse

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For other uses, see Zombie apocalypse (disambiguation).
Zombies
In media

A zombie apocalypse is a particular hypothetical scenario of apocalyptic literature that customarily has a science fiction/horror rationale. In a zombie apocalypse, a widespread rise of zombies hostile to human life engages in a general assault on civilization.

In some stories, victims of zombies may become zombies themselves if they are bitten by zombies or the virus travels by air; in others, everyone who dies, whatever the cause, becomes one of the undead. In the latter scenario zombies also prey on the living and their bite causes an infection that kills. In either scenario, this causes the outbreak to become an exponentially growing crisis: the spreading "zombie plague" swamps normal military and law enforcement organizations, leading to the panicked collapse of civilian society until only isolated pockets of survivors remain, scavenging for food and supplies in a world reduced to a pre-industrial hostile wilderness.

Genre

History

File:Night of the Living Dead affiche.jpg
George A. Romero founded the zombie apocalypse genre with his 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead.

The founding work of the genre was Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend (1954), which featured a lone survivor named Robert Neville waging a war against a human population transformed into vampires.[1] The novel has been adapted into several screenplays, including The Omega Man (1971), starring Charlton Heston. George A. Romero borrowed the idea for his apocalyptic feature Night of the Living Dead (1968) but substituted vampires with shuffling zombies.[2]

Thematic subtext

The literary subtext of a zombie apocalypse is usually that civilization is inherently fragile in the face of truly unprecedented threats and that most individuals cannot be relied upon to support the greater good if the personal cost becomes too high.[3] The narrative of a zombie apocalypse carries strong connections to the turbulent social landscape of the United States in the 1960s when the originator of this genre, the film Night of the Living Dead, was first created.[4][5] Many also feel that zombies allow people to deal with their own anxiety about the end of the world.[6] Kim Paffenroth notes that "more than any other monster, zombies are fully and literally apocalyptic ... they signal the end of the world as we have known it."[7]

Story elements

There are several common themes and tropes that create a zombie apocalypse:

  1. Initial contacts with zombies are extremely traumatic, causing shock, panic, disbelief and possibly denial, hampering survivors' ability to deal with hostile encounters.[8]
  2. The response of authorities to the threat is slower than its rate of growth, giving the zombie plague time to expand beyond containment. This results in the collapse of the given society. Zombies take full control while small groups of the living must fight for their survival.[8]
Night of the Living Dead established most of the tropes associated with the genre, including the unintelligent but relentless behavior of zombies.[9]

The stories usually follow a single group of survivors, caught up in the sudden rush of the crisis. The narrative generally progresses from the onset of the zombie plague, then initial attempts to seek the aid of authorities, the failure of those authorities, through to the sudden catastrophic collapse of all large-scale organization and the characters' subsequent attempts to survive on their own. Such stories are often squarely focused on the way their characters react to such an extreme catastrophe, and how their personalities are changed by the stress, often acting on more primal motivations (fear, self-preservation) than they would display in normal life.[8][10]

Generally the zombies in these situations are the slow, lumbering and unintelligent kind first made popular in the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.[9] Motion pictures created within the 2000s, however, have featured zombies that are more agile, vicious, intelligent, and stronger than the traditional zombie.[11] In many cases of "fast" zombies, creators use living humans infected with a pathogen (as in Zombieland and Left 4 Dead)—instead of re-animated corpses—to avoid the "slow death walk" of Romero's variety of zombies.

Reception

Academic research

While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.

— Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad, and Robert J. Smith?,
"When Zombies Attack!" (2009)[12]

According to a 2009 Carleton University and University of Ottawa epidemiological analysis, an outbreak of even Living Dead's slow zombies "is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly." Based on their mathematical modelling, the authors concluded that offensive strategies were much more reliable than quarantine strategies, due to various risks that can compromise a quarantine. They also found that discovering a cure would merely leave a few humans alive, since this would do little to slow the infection rate.[12]

On a longer time scale, the researchers found that all humans end up turned or dead. This is because the main epidemiological risk of zombies, besides the difficulties of neutralizing them, is that their population just keeps increasing; generations of humans merely "surviving" still have a tendency to feed zombie populations, resulting in gross outnumbering. The researchers explain that their methods of modelling may be applicable to the spread of political views or diseases with dormant infection.[12]

Government

Main article: 2011 CDC warning about zombie apocalypse
File:Zombie CDCblog photo4.jpg
CDC zombie apocalypse campaign graphic

On May 18, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published an article on Rear Admiral Ali S. Khan's blog instructing the public on what to do to prepare for a zombie invasion. While the article did not claim that such a scenario was likely, it did use the popular culture appeal as a means of having individuals prepare for all potential hazards, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods.[13]

Genre examples

Films

Comics

Literature

Television

Video games

Music

  • The zombie parody of The Beatles, the Zombeatles, began in 2006 with the song Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead and are set in a world where the zombies have eaten all the remaining humans.[44]
  • Technical death metal band Brain Drill's 2008 album Apocalyptic Feasting has cover art and songs depicting a zombie apocalypse.
  • All music, lyrics and imagery surrounding metal/hardcore band Zombie Apocalypse revolve around the idea of a zombie apocalypse.
  • The 2008 Metallica music video for the song "All Nightmare Long" features the Soviet Union using a spore found after the Tunguska event on the United States to covertly create an army of zombies, and then openly destroy all of them, in order to take over the US.[45]
  • Metalcore band The Devil Wears Prada released their Zombie EP on August 24, 2010. The five song EP is about an impending zombie apocalypse derived from lead vocalist Mike Hranica's strong interest in the subject.[46]

See also

  • Zombie Squad, a non-profit charitable organization that uses an upcoming zombie apocalypse as its shtick.
Zombies
In media

References

  1. ^ Template:Cite article
  2. ^ "One for the Fire: The Legacy of Night of the Living Dead" — Night of the Living Dead DVD, 2008, Region 1, Dimension Home Entertainment
  3. ^ a b Christopher T. Fong (December 2, 2008). "Playing Games: Left 4 Dead". Video game review. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
  4. ^ Adam Rockoff, Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978–1986 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002), p.35, ISBN 0-7864-1227-5.
  5. ^ "Zombie Movies" in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, ed. John Clute and John Grant (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), p.1048, ISBN 0-312-19869-8
  6. ^ Cripps, Charlotte (November 1, 2006). "Preview: Max Brooks' Festival Of The (Living) Dead! Barbican, London". The Independent. Retrieved September 19, 2008.
  7. ^ Kim Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006.
  8. ^ a b c Todd Kenreck (November 17, 2008). "Surviving a zombie apocalypse: 'Left 4 Dead' writer talks about breathing life into zombie genre". Video game review. msnbc. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
  9. ^ a b Brian Cronin (December 3, 2008). "John Seavey's Storytelling Engines: George Romero's "Dead" Films". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved 4 December 2008.
  10. ^ Daily, Patrick. "Max Brooks". Chicago Reader. Retrieved October 28, 2008.
  11. ^ Josh Levin (March 24, 2004). "Dead Run". Slate. Retrieved 4 December 2008.
  12. ^ a b c "When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection", by Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad and Robert J, Smith?. In Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress, eds. J.M. Tchuenche and C. Chiyaka, Nova Science Publishers, Inc. pp. 133-150, 2009. ISBN 978-1-60741-347-9.
  13. ^ Kraven, Vlad. "CDC Zombie Warning". "Earlier today the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) issued a preparedness guide on their blog, informing citizens on how to be ready for the rise of the undead.". Retrieved 18 May 2011.
  14. ^ Dawn of the Dead at IMDb
  15. ^ "TheMovieBoy Review - Dawn of the Dead (2004)". Themovieboy.com. 2004-03-20.
  16. ^ "Zombi 2 - The Deuce". Grindhousedatabase.com. 2009-01-15. Retrieved 2009-07-27.
  17. ^ Mark Kermode (2007-05-06). "A capital place for panic attacks". London: Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved 2007-05-12.
  18. ^ "Stylus Magazine's Top 10 Zombie Films of All Time".
  19. ^ "The Zombie Diaries press kit" (PDF). ZombieDiaries.com. Retrieved 2007-09-17.
  20. ^ Pascal. "Fido Movie Review". Movie review. Movies Online. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
  21. ^ ""Grindhouse" double feature a gloriously entertaining contrast". Scene Stealers. April 6, 2007. Retrieved 29 August 2009.
  22. ^ Quint. "Updated! GRINDHOUSE news from Comic-Con! Snake Plissken to be Tarantino's villain! Plus more!!!". Ain't It Cool News. Retrieved 2007-01-06.
  23. ^ Gleiberman, Owen (April 4, 2007). "Grindhouse (2007)". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved May 12, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  24. ^ Michael Brookes: "Review: Colin" Sight and Sound 19:10: November 2009: 52-53
  25. ^ http://www.colinmovie.com
  26. ^ Carroll, Larry (2009-03-04). "'Zombieland' Monster Maker Has Emma Stone, Mila Kunis Eating Brains". MTV Movies Blog. MTV/Viacom. Retrieved 2009-03-29.
  27. ^ "Deadworld - Information about the comic series from Caliber Comics". Caliber Comics. Retrieved 2009-07-27.
  28. ^ Jeffrey Bloomer (June 12, 2009). "Zombie-Ridden Post-Apocalyptic Graphic Novel Gets Film Treatment". Paste. Retrieved 2009-06-20.
  29. ^ WEEK OF THE DEAD I: Robert Kirkman, Comic Book Resources, May 19, 2008
  30. ^ "The Dead Walk the Earth... in Spandex!" Article/Review from I-Mockery
  31. ^ Richards, Dave (June 23, 2009). "Marvel Zombies: The All-Star Return!". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved 6 August 2009. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  32. ^ "Exclusive Interview: Max Brooks on World War Z". Eat My Brains!. October 20, 2006. Retrieved April 26, 2008.
  33. ^ Currie, Ron (September 5, 2008). "The End of the World as We Know it". Untitled Books. Retrieved September 21, 2008. [dead link]
  34. ^ "Zombies Rise in Teen Lit". Pittsburgh Post Gazette. 2009-05-26. Retrieved 2009-08-08.
  35. ^ Grossman, Lev (2009-04-02). "Pride and Prejudice, Now With Zombies!". Time. Retrieved 2009-04-04.
  36. ^ Dance of the Dead at IMDb
  37. ^ "SFX interview with Charlie Brooker". Sfx.co.uk. 2008-10-22. Retrieved 2009-07-27.
  38. ^ "The Walking Dead - Television Adaptation". Retrieved 2011-05-16.
  39. ^ "A Half-Life 1 & 2 Modification". Zombie Panic. Retrieved 2009-07-27.
  40. ^ "Zombie Panic: Source mod for Half-Life 2". Mod DB. Retrieved 2009-07-27.
  41. ^ "Zombie Apocalyse at Konami". Konami. October 16, 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-16.
  42. ^ David Bull (November 29 2010). "Dead Nation Hits Playstation Store this Week, Eradicate the Infection!". Official US Playstation Blog. Retrieved 18 April 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  43. ^ Jeff Cork (September 24, 2010). "Dead Rising 2 Review: The Apocalypse Shouldn't Be This Much Fun". Game Informer Magazine. Retrieved 13 April 2011.
  44. ^ "The ZomBeatles: All You Need Is Brains Tastes Funny". Fan Cinema Today. March 24, 2009. Retrieved 2009-04-09. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  45. ^ Burkart, Gregory S. (December 8, 2008). "Behold Metallica's "Nightmare" Zombie Apocalypse!". FEARnet. Retrieved 8 December 2008. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  46. ^ "Zombie EP". Retrieved 9 July 2010.
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