People Over Profit: World War Z and Our Love for Zombies

Why do we love zombies? A fascinating #longform zombie apocalypse theory.

Why do we, as humans, love zombies so much? Through the tremendous popularity of zombie movies, zombie TV shows, zombie books, and zombie video games, we’ve created an obsessive culture over the inarticulate, heinously unattractive, violent undead. Quoted in a 2009 CNN article, World War Z author Max Brooks attributed the popularity to its simple danger, in contrast to the ambiguity and complexity of real world epidemics; 

“You can’t shoot the financial meltdown in the head – you can do that with a zombie… all the other problems are too big. As much as Al Gore tries, you can’t picture global warming. You can’t picture the meltdown of financial institutions. But you can picture a slouching zombie coming down the street.”

Yes, this comment was given close to four years ago, but I plainly disagree with Brooks – on both why we love zombies and on his explanation. 

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