Lions, and Tigers, and...Zombies?

Forget everything you know about vampires or werewolves because zombies are what you need to be aware of. If there were a zombie apocalypse would you be prepared? Do you even believe in zombie apocalypse theories? Film and television alike are indulging in zombie trends, which have been around for a while but have been recently gaining popularity over the past few years. Even in books and video games the concept of zombies and the apocalypse are everywhere. Movies such as Shaun of the Dead (2004) starring English comedians Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and Zombieland (2009) starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson and most recently Warm Bodies (2013) and World War Z (2013) starring Brad Pitt are examples of different styles of films spanning across the past ten years demonstrating this growing fascination with zombies. 

                       

                                                                                          

                  

                                                                        

Photo via IMDB

Photo via IMDB

AMC’s show The Walking Dead is one of the biggest shows on television in recent years. Premiering in 2010, The Walking Dead is about a police officer that leads a group of survivors in a world overrun by zombies. This show has been successful season after season and has a huge following with over 27 million likes on   Facebook and 2.46 million Twitter followers.  This is not the first mega successful show for AMC, their show Breaking Bad, which just ended this past year, also received the same amount of success, dealing with the unusual subject of a high school chemistry teacher who sells top line crystal meth.  Just like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead deals with a different and unusual topic, this time being about the zombie apocalypse, which draws people in immediately.

Photo via Amazon

Zombies are included in books and video games just as much as any other medium.  Books and video games reach an entirely new audience than that of television and film. The book Deck Z: The Titanic: Unsinkable, Undead by Chris Pauls, took the infamous story of the Titanic and combined it with zombies making a completely new story just from the concept of zombies. 

                                                         

Before World War Z was a movie it was a novel with the same title written by Max Brooks and released in 2006, seven years before the film was made.  A video game called “World War Z” soon followed based on the novel and movie furthering the magnitude that is zombies. 

Photo via Amazon

There have also been a number of zombie survival guidebooks released in recent years, one of the most popular being The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead published in 2003 was also written by Max Brooks. According to Amazon, the book is “fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive [and covers] everything you need to know, including how to understand physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain”.

One of the most recent well-known video games “Call of Duty”, published by Activision, is a first and third person shooter game and has grown in popularity over the years and has several installments.  In 2012 it was stated that there would be a ninth instillation of the popular game titled “Call of Duty: Black Ops II”.  This game would be the first game in the Call of Duty franchise to feature sci-fi settings and weapons. This game featured an entirely new game separate from the regular live Call of Duty shooter format, they now included zombies; you could now play against zombies, by yourself or with friends, in a post zombie apocalyptic world in different map locations. The game proved to be popular and successful, with its biggest success being the new inclusion of zombies.

Photo via steamcommunity.com

My roommate is interested in all things zombie. She watches the movies, the TV shows, reads the books, and plays the games.  She was the one who introduced me to Call of Duty zombies when she was looking for someone who would play Xbox with her. She likes to believe in the idea of the zombie apocalypse and thinks that by absorbing all this zombie information she is now, some how, better prepared for when the zombie apocalypse occurs, if that ever may be.  I know she is not alone in feeling that way and that is what draws people’s attention is their already existing interest with zombies.

Photo via nazizombieplus.wikia.com

I personally do not obsessively watch anything that deals with zombies, purely for the reason that I don’t like horror genre anything. Even if the story is not scary, like the comedies Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland I mentioned before, the make up of the zombies is unpleasant to look at, just because it is so realistic it freaks me out and I find myself looking away from the screen for most of the movie. Shaun of the Dead was the first movie I saw dealing with zombies, but not I did not watch it willingly. One of my best friends who just graduated from NYU wanted to watch a movie and chose Shaun of the Dead and told me it was about zombies but that it was comedy and I did not believe him but he made me watch it anyway. Of course after watching the movie I did in fact like it, but zombie or horror movies are never my first choice when choosing a movie to watch. It is clear that fascination with zombies and the apocalypse have been around for years and is continuing to grow in popularity and will be around for more years to come. So if you want to be prepared for any zombie apocalypse that may or may not occur, pull up a chair and start watching, reading and playing anything with zombies that you can get your hands on and study up!