I love zombies.
Well, not zombies per se. More like zombie horror in general. The genre has bred numerous films, books and, more recently, video games with the hungry undead at their heart. College students around the country play games of "Humans vs. Zombies," which we have witnessed firsthand here at Ball State.
Zombies have come a long way since their beginnings as the subjects of voodoo magic. George Romero undoubtedly set the standard for the modern menace we know and love (or fear) today with his film "Night of the Living Dead" and its five sequels: "Dawn of the Dead," "Day of the Dead," "Land of the Dead," "Diary of the Dead" and the upcoming "Survival of the Dead."
Romero pioneered the classic zombie, the one we see as a shuffling mass of decaying flesh with an appetite for the living and an affinity for shopping malls. These were menacing in their own right. In the numerous films featuring "Romero zombies," the protagonists are faced with constant danger with the pokey, ever-present undead stalking them endlessly.
Only recently are we seeing the emergence of the fast zombie archetype, first appearing prominently in the "Return of the Living Dead" series. A remake of "Dawn of the Dead" was created featuring this class of undead, as well as the film "28 Days Later."
What is it that's so appealing about the menacing zombie? What makes us watch zombie films, play zombie video games and partake in "zombie walks?"
Max Brooks, author of "The Zombie Survival Guide" and "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War," attributes the popularity of the zombie to the possibility that, in the event of such an outbreak, mankind would be wiped out.
"Other monsters may threaten individual humans, but the living dead threaten the entire human race," Brooks said in an interview with USA Today. "Zombies are slate wipers."
This topic has bred some research. Professors from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University concocted a study asking this: If humans were pitted against zombies, who would come out on top?
"We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies," Professor Robert Smith? of the University of Ottawa said in a BBC article. (The question mark is legally part of his name.) "We introduce a basic model for zombie infection and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions."
The study's primary purpose was to model the spread of an infectious disease. Researchers said a zombie outbreak and many other infectious diseases share several similarities. The big difference is that zombies come back to walk the earth.
"It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else ... we are all in a great deal of trouble," researchers said of the imagined scenario.
That scenario involved slow, shambling zombies, too. What if we were faced with a viral epidemic that turned people into lightning-fast, super zombies?
It might play out like the "Left 4 Dead" series of video games. In "L4D" and its sequel, "L4D2," you and three friends (or computer-controlled allies if you are like me and have no friends) are pitted against the undead horde reminiscent of zombies featured in "28 Days Later." It also throws "special infected" into the mix, highly mutated zombies that will make your gaming experience a living hell, so much that you'll be calling for a restraining order against the "Tank."
In this series, a virus breaks out in a city in Pennsylvania and spreads across the nation. The government has tried to cover up the outbreak to stem panic and maintain order, but when you see government agents in environmental protection suits and military personnel among the undead, you realize you're on your own.
Government incompetence has been a recurring theme in zombie horror. "World War Z" focuses on mankind almost being annihilated because of bureaucratic red tape and insufficient government response to an obvious problem. Many of Romero's films refer to the ineptitude of those in power dealing with the undead until the undead are scratching at the door.
Political messages aside, zombie horror is pure entertainment. It's fun, campy and engrossing. It also makes you wonder what would happen if there was an outbreak, which, given the current state of the world, may be entirely possible.
And I secretly cannot wait for that day. If it comes, I am going to have so much freaking fun.
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