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The zombie apocalypse is a particular scenario of apocalyptic fiction 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 mythologies, victims of zombies may become zombies themselves if they are bitten by zombies; in others, everyone who dies, whatever the cause, becomes one of the undead. 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.

Contents 1 Genre tropes 2 Subtext 3 Fandom 4 Examples 4.1 Films 4.2 Comics 4.3 Literature 4.4 Television 4.5 Video games 4.6 Music 4.7 Theatre 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Genre tropes

There are several common story elements that create a zombie apocalypse:

1. Zombies, whatever form they take, are unprecedented in the setting of the story; the event that created them is unknown or has never happened before and it is not generally known how to effectively suppress them. The zombies cannot be controlled easily with available technologies.^[1]
2. Initial contacts with zombies are extremely traumatic, causing shock, panic, disbelief and possibly denial, hampering survivors' ability to deal with hostile encounters.^[2]
3. 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.^[2]

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.^[2][3]

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.^[1] Recent films, however, have refeatured zombies that are more agile, vicious, intelligent, and stronger than the traditional zombie.^[4] In most cases of "fast" zombies, creators use mindless human beings (as in Zombieland and Left 4 Dead) instead of re-animated corpses to logically counter the "slow death walk" of Romero's zombies. 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."^[5]

[edit] 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.^[6] 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.^[7][8] Many also feel that zombies allow people to deal with their own anxiety about the end of the world.^[9] In fact the breakdown of society as a result of zombie infestation has been portrayed in countless zombie-related media since Night of the Living Dead.^[10] Kim Paffrenroth 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."^[10]

[edit] Fandom

Thanks to large number of films and video games, the idea of a zombie apocalypse has entered the mainstream and there have been efforts by many fans to prepare for the hypothetical future zombie apocalypse. Efforts include creating weapons,^[11] selling posters to inform people on how to survive a zombie outbreak,^[12] and creating websites "documenting" zombie attacks.^{[citation needed]}

At Goucher College, students invented the tag game Humans vs. Zombies where human "survivors" armed with NERF guns face off against designated "zombies." The game has spread widely, to many schools primarily in the United States, but has caused some controversy in light of the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech and the 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois, with some feeling the game belittles how dangerous guns can be.^[13]

Some notable individuals have discussed what they would do in a zombie apocalypse. Mixed martial artist Nick Denis said "I plan on getting, one, an aluminum bat [and], two, a rope ladder, so if I live in the second level of an apartment, that’d be my exit, in and out the window. And then I’d like to get chainmail. No zombie can bite through that. That’d be a good start for my bag."^[14] Adam Cayton-Holland said he tried to practice firing a gun: "in order to prove my worth to the denizens of whatever abandoned hovel I will inevitably hole up in during the zombie attack, I should learn how to fire me a flintlock."^[15]

In an interview with Ain't it Cool News, The Zombie Survival Guide author Max Brooks commented on the fans of zombie apocalypses: "I don't know what's scarier, the fact that zombies could rise or the fact there are actually people out there that can't wait for it to happen. So they can just start loading up with guns and get on their motorcycles..." Brooks also compared the interest in surviving a zombie apocalypse to people preparing for a Soviet invasion of America in the 1980s after the film Red Dawn was released.^[16]

[edit] Examples

[edit] Films

• Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), and Diary of the Dead (2008) by George Romero.^[17]
• Zombi 2 (1979), starts with a small group of zombies, which expands to engulf a city.^[18] Not only is this movie popular^[19] and considered "essential viewing"^[20] but it also helped director Lucio Fulci break into the international market.^[21]
• 28 Days Later (2002), and its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007), in which a man-made "rage" virus is unleashed at first in Britain, and then continental Europe.^[22][23]
• Undead (2003), set in Australia, features a group of survivors in a village infected with zombies. Aliens clean up the infection but it gets out of the village and engulfs the world.^{[24][clarification needed]}
• Dawn of the Dead (2004)^[25]
• The Zombie Diaries (2006), a British made movie in which a virus creates a plague of zombies.^[26]
• Fido (2006), a zombie comedy set in the 1950s, where humanity is saved from a zombie apocalypse by a corporation who turns zombies into personal servants.^[27]
• Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), a virus infects most of the Earth's population, turning them into zombies. The few survivors move away in armored groups, or hide underground.^[28]
• Planet Terror (2007), one of the two films in Grindhouse where a biochemical agent causes a worldwide zombie infection.^[29][30][31]
• Colin (UK, 2008), At the onset of an apparent zombie apocalypse, Colin is apparently bitten and is turned into a zombie, yet his point of view implies residual human memories of the recent past ^{[32][33][clarification needed]}
• Zombieland (2009), America is ravaged by a zombie plague, but a lone band attempts to survive while traveling to an amusement park.^[34]
• Shaun of the Dead (2004)

[edit] Comics

• The Deadworld comic series by Stuart Kerr and Ralph Griffith, which began in 1987.^[35][36]
• The comic series The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, beginning in 2003, chronicles the story of survivors in a world overrun by zombies.^[37]
• The 2005 comic series Marvel Zombies and its sequels: Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness, Marvel Zombies 2, Marvel Zombies 3.^[38]
• The Japanese manga series Highschool of the Dead, beginning in 2006, features a group of Japanese high school students caught in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.^[39]
• The 2008 webcomic The Black Cherry Bombshells by Johnny Zito and Tony Trov and illustrated by Sacha Borisich, where all the men in the world are turned into zombies.^[40]

[edit] Literature

• Max Brooks' 2006 novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War details humanity's efforts to defeat a worldwide zombie apocalypse.^[41][42]
• David Wellington's zombie apocalypse trilogy: Monster Island (2004), Monster Nation (2005), and Monster Planet (2005).^[43]
• The 2006 novel Cell by Stephen King, features people being made into zombies through a cell phone signal that "pulses" them into zombies with supernatural powers.^[44]
• The 2009 novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is set over 100 years after the zombie apocalypse in an isolated village surrounded by a forest full of zombies.^[45]
• The 2009 novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith combines Jane Austen's classic 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice with elements of modern zombie fiction.^[46]

[edit] Television

• Masters of Horror, episode "Dance of the Dead" (2005), directed by Tobe Hooper, features a manmade virus causing a zombie outbreak after World War III.^[47]
• Dead Set (2008) involves a zombie outbreak and the real television show Big Brother UK.^[48]

[edit] Video games

• The 2006 action-adventure Dead Rising. A group of survivors, lead by a reporter, attempt to survive an outbreak in a small town by hiding in a mall.^[49]
• The 2007 multiplayer Half-Life 2 modification Zombie Master, pitting human players against a horde of zombies.^[50]
• The 2007 multiplayer Source modification Zombie Panic that features a human and a player-controlled zombie team fighting against each other in a zombie apocalypse.^[51][52]
• The 2008 PlayStation Network game The Last Guy, where a player attempts to save survivors from zombies and other creatures.^[53]
• The 2008 video game Left 4 Dead, and its sequel Left 4 Dead 2, a co-operative, survival horror, first-person shooter where a rabies-like pathogen has infected most of humanity except for a few survivors.^[6]
• The 2009 video game Zombie Apocalypse, released as a downloadable title for the Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade is a shoot em up title. The player takes control of four survivors and may fight against hordes of mutated hordes as a team, rescuing other survivors and investigating the cause of the infection.^[54]
• The 2009 game OneChanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad where two sisters fight against a zombie infested Tokyo.^[55]

[edit] 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.^[56]
• Technical death metal band Brain Drill's 2008 album Apocalyptic Feasting has cover art and songs ("Consumed by the Dead" and the title track^[57]) depicting 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.^[58]

[edit] Theatre

• How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse - A Seminar that premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2009 that teaches all the necessary skills to survive a zombie apocalypse.^[59]

[edit] See also

• List of video games featuring zombies
• List of zombie films
• List of zombie novels
• Xombie, Flash cartoons by James Farr
• Zombie
• Zombie Squad, a non-profit charitable organization that uses an upcoming zombie apocalypse as its shtick
• Zombies in popular culture

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• "Zombie Movies from Hell". The Gothic Lilith eZine. http://www.lilith-ezine.com/articles/gothic/Zombie-Movies.html. Retrieved 2007-04-27. 
• 5 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen by David Wong, TE Sloth
• Military Developing Blood Farming Machine, Zombie Apocalypse Coming Soon by Jesus Diaz on Gizmodo
• 10 games to prepare for the zombie apocalypse by Conrad Zimmerman
• The zombie boom of 2003 by Racer Django
• Urban Dead - a free-to-play browser-based multi-player game where you play the survivor or victim of a zombie outbreak in a quarantined city center.
• Zombie apocalypse on Zombiepedia
• What Are Your Chances of Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse?
• Tales of the Zombie War - zombie apocalypse fiction

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