The Coming Apocalypse

You can hardly go anywhere these days without some reference to zombies. The CDC has a page on "Zombie Preparedness". The Bristol City Council (U.K.) detailed specific plans on how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse. The security company, HALO Corp., has started training personnel from the military, police, medical, and federal workers on dealing with zombies. Even the Department of Homeland Security declared "The zombies are coming!" Yada, yada, yada.

So, I ask myself, what is a zombie? "Oh, that's easy," the well-informed suburbanite tells me. "It's a drink made from rum, citrus juice, and apricot liqueur." Now, come on. What is a zombie? As it turns out, the concept of a zombie was not originally that of a dead person alive. It was a snake god worshiped in West Indian and Brazilian religious practices of African origin. On a website called Zombiesdefined there is a page on zombie origins. (Thanks, guys.) That page traces the evolution from Haitian African-American Voodoo (okay, to be accurate, they assure us that it's more correctly "Vodou") to modern day flesh-eating fiends. The original "zombies" from Haiti were drug-induced. It was believed that witchdoctors applied neurotoxins that imitated death and then brought them back later to own their souls. The University of Michigan has an interesting history on the subject primarily from movies (because, let's face it, that's the only place you're going to get any information on this concept). The first movie on the topic was the 1932 White Zombie. Of course, that one had a much less malevolent version. Zombies from Haiti were mindless folk who did what their masters commanded. No eating of brains. No "horde" or even "apocalypse". In fact, prior to 1960 zombies never really left Haiti. In 1961 they started becoming more sinister with titles like I Eat Your Skin, but it was Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) that put it over the top. Now zombies were mindless dead cannibals who spread their disease by biting their victims ... you know, like vampires or werewolves. Oh, wait ... so we've managed to combine them all now? By now they're insatiable, unthinking, reanimated dead people (who, ironically, can be killed) bent solely on eating those who are not insatiable, unthinking, reanimated dead people (because apparently the brains of zombies aren't as tasty and nutritious?). And they're getting faster! Romero had them as slow, shuffling things, but Dawn of the Dead and Zombieland fans can tell you that they're much quicker, much more aggressive, much more deadly than ever before.

Zombies, then, have evolved, but the concept has managed to touch on a host of human fears. They started with a loss of will and consciousness, robbing them of humanity while still in human form. A horrible form of slavery, where even death doesn't free you. They progressed to complete amorality, indulging purely in their singular desires without any regard for family, friend, or moral responsibility. They spread their disease by mixing body fluids (can you say, "STDs") inexoribly and without containment. Now there is the common concept of the "zombie apocalypse" -- including the new film, World War Z coming soon -- where the living dead overpower the few remaining humans and we're all in a heap of trouble for sure.

Of course, despite the CDC, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Bristol City Council (all of which, to be quite fair, are using the "zombie apocalypse" idea to simple preach emergency preparation and not that there are real zombies), we all know that it's a myth. There are no zombies. Look around you. I'm pretty sure you won't find hordes of living dead, people without minds intent only on satisfying their own cravings without regard to morality or family or other considerations and never actually finding satisfaction for their cravings, but always seeking to take more and more from those around them without any apparent will of their own, serving only the will of their masters, and infecting all those around them. It just doesn't happen. Or ... does it? Well, okay, maybe, but now you're scaring me.

As a postscript, I was researching famous quotes from really bad people and came across this gem:

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think. - Adolph Hitler

From the mouth of a zombie master.