🧟‍♀️ Zombies: Humans are the real monsters

Zombies are simple, except when they're not. As monsters, zombies are simple—they are reanimated human corpses motivated by braaaaaaaaains. As metaphor though, they’re incredibly complex. Zombies have a centuries-long history of embodying our deepest fears and serving as a vessel for exploring societal unease. Today, amidst a world of overpopulation, political polarization, and climate crisis, the zombie story is often one of individual survival, and presents itself as an apocalypse—humanity intent on consuming itself. But zombies are versatile horrors. They can serve as handy reflections of the [difficulties of day-to-day living]( or carry a [holiday musical]( with shambling gusto. In fact, the ubiquity of the zombie has even become a critique of itself. Is it possible the zombie as a metaphor has peaked? Nah. For better or worse, zombies will never die. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( [Quartz Weekly Obsession] Zombies October 27, 2021 Zombies are never about zombies --------------------------------------------------------------- As monsters, zombies are simple—they are reanimated human corpses motivated by braaaaaaaaains. As metaphor though, they’re incredibly complex. Zombies have a centuries-long history of embodying our deepest fears and serving as a vessel for exploring societal unease. Today, amidst a world of overpopulation, political polarization, and climate crisis, the zombie story is often one of individual survival, and presents itself as an apocalypse—humanity intent on consuming itself. But zombies are versatile horrors. They can serve as handy reflections of the [difficulties of day-to-day living]( or carry a [holiday musical]( with shambling gusto. In fact, the ubiquity of the zombie has even become a critique of itself. Is it possible the zombie as a metaphor has peaked? Nah. For better or worse, zombies will never die. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( By the digits [3:]( Clinical cases of zombification examined in 1997 by medical journal The Lancet, in order to further understand Haitian beliefs around death [550+:]( Zombie movies listed in Wikipedia’s database of the genre, from White Zombie (1932) to Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead (2021)—excellent spooky viewing fodder if you’re so inclined [~5%:]( Share of those movies that also involve Nazis [13,597:]( Dancers who performed the zombie routine from Thriller at a Mexico City event in 2009, a Guinness World Record [U+1F9DF:]( The unicode character for the zombie emoji 🧟, added to the emoji lexicon in 2017 [14.4 million:]( Viewers per episode, on average, of The Walking Dead’s fifth season Origin story The evolution of the zombie --------------------------------------------------------------- In the 16th century, enslaved Africans in Haiti first imagined zombies as representative of the horror of dehumanization; [no fate could be worse]( than returning from the dead, a slave for all time. The myth evolved to become an important tenet of Haitian Voodoo. Sorcerers, called bokors, had the power to [create and control]( zombies. Some beliefs in zombism [persist to this day]( in Haiti. The zombie arrived in the US at the beginning of the 20th century in step with the American occupation of Haiti in 1915. It then began its transformation into the monster we know today, ultimately [losing most connection with its origins](. Early[depictions in the US]( reflected a fear of others, and primarily of Blackness. The form has since mirrored [each era’s cardinal anxieties](. In the 1960s, the film Night of the Living Dead echoed American [race relations](, and its horde of ghouls were an uncontrollable, mindless mass. A decade later, Dawn of the Dead critiqued [capitalist consumption and conformity](. As the form stumbled into the 80s and 90s, a [fear of contagion]( kicked off by HIV and SARs found itself spreading out of control through zombie pop culture, as seen in the Resident Evil franchise, followed by 28 Days Later. Present day zombie metaphors, like those highlighted in the long-running TV show The Walking Dead, often explore [survivalism, polarization, and individualism](. Where early zombie pop culture reflected loss of control, it is now often about gaining back that agency. Quotable “The zombies you kill today will merely be replaced by the zombies of tomorrow. But you can do this, my friend… Keep your finger on the trigger. Continue the termination. Don’t stop believing. Don’t stop deleting. Return your voicemails and nod your agreements.” —Chuck Klosterman, [My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead]( Giphy Explain it like I’m 5! The model outbreak --------------------------------------------------------------- University of Ottawa professor [Stacey Smith]( published the first [mathematical modeling of a zombie outbreak]( in 2009. The research, which was used to demonstrate flexibility in modeling unusual outbreaks, built on Smith’s work on HIV and human papillomavirus (HPV). It took cues from traditional zombie movies to model the effect of an attack on human society, concluding: “A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.” Since Smith’s work, the use of pop culture zombie content in academia, and particularly in the worlds of medicine and epidemiology, has exploded. Many come with cute names, like “[28 Models Later: Model Competition and the Zombie Apocalypse](,” while others stick to the clinical. In 2015, The British Medical Journal [published an article]( titled “Zombie infections: epidemiology, treatment, and prevention,” complete with an imagined zombie history and Latin name for the pathogen. Naturally, the piece received thoughtful retorts from other academics, including one which suggests replacing the term zombie with “the neutral term Person with Non-normative Post Mortem Experience.” Another suggested further research “from the field of health and safety in the built environment regarding the tendency of zombies to colonize shopping malls and other enclosed spaces.” Giphy Pop quiz Which of the following is NOT a real book? Schrodinger’s Zombie: Don’t Close Your Eyes, It’s Neither Dead nor AliveTheories of International Politics and ZombiesDo Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie BrainParenting in the Zombie Apocalypse: The Psychology of Raising Children in a Time of Horror Correct. Unfortunately, this theoretical volume on quantum mechanics doesn’t exist. The rest, however, are all real books. In fact, a quick search at your local bookstore will reveal writing on romance, economics, cooking, and coding, all through an undead lens. Incorrect. Nope, this is real. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. Brief history [5th to 3rd century BCE:]( Graves found with skeletons pinned down suggest ancient Greeks may have had zombie-adjacent fears. [1804:]( Following the Haitian Revolution, the zombie myth evolves and becomes a staple of the Voodoo religion. [1929:]( William Seabrook, an American researching Voodoo in Haiti, publishes a book that includes his encounter with zombies on a sugar farm, introducing the idea to the US. What he saw was almost certainly enslaved people, traumatized by inhumane conditions. [1932:]( White Zombie, the first feature-length zombie film, inspired by Seabrook’s writings, staggers into American theaters. [1939:]( The Zombie—[a rum based drink](—is a hit at the World’s Fair in New York. [1968:]( George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead hits the big screen, setting the tone for decades of movies to come and kicking off the contemporary zombie craze. [1984:]( Zombie Zombie launches on the ZX Spectrum. It is considered the first electronic zombie game, preceding good ol’ [Plants vs Zombies]( (2009) by 25 years. [1996:]( Resident Evil sets the standard for immersive, survival zombie video games and, by expanding into films, comics, novels and action figures, becomes one of the largest horror franchises of all time. [2011:]( The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes their tongue-in-cheek zombie preparedness website. [2012:]( Zombies, Run!, a zombies-focused running app, [launches](. [2021:]( In his vague way, Nostradamus may (or may not) have predicted that zombies will rise this year. Pod people 🎧 Did you know: We have a podcast! --------------------------------------------------------------- The Quartz Obsession podcast has everything you love about this email, but in [podcast form](. Catch up on episodes that dive even deeper into [Afrobeats](, [CAPTCHA](, [randomness](, and [cash](. [Click here to listen](, or subscribe on [Spotify](, [Apple](, [Google](, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sponsored by American Express [Listen the Quartz Obsession podcast]( Fun fact! The US military has a [detailed plan]( for surviving a zombie apocalypse. CONOP 8888 is a how-to guide for military planners hoping to “preserve ‘non-zombie’ humans from the threats posed by a zombie horde.” It was devised as a creative training tool for teaching the basic concepts of dealing with and preventing any type of attack. Reuters/Luisa Gonzalez take me down this 🐰 hole! If you live in a major city, you may have run into a very-much-alive hoard of otherwise ordinary citizens dressed as zombies, moaning and stumbling their way through an intersection. You’ve found a zombie walk. It’s more or less what it sounds like—an organized group of people, meeting up, dressed as the undead, to roam the city. Some are complex escapist fantasies, including participants dressed as soldiers to contain the outbreak, while others have an altruistic purpose, like raising awareness of world hunger. The largest of these events have included tens of thousands of participants. In the US, a critical mass of zombie walks are taking place on Oct. 30, 2021. Giphy Poll How would you survive a zombie apocalypse? [Click here to vote]( I’d band together with other humans and hope they’ve got my back when the you-know-what hits the fanI’d head out on my own; the living are more dangerous than the deadIt all sounds exhausting; just let the hoard take me 💬 let's talk! In our most recent poll on [Afrobeats](, 58% of you said that you planned on listening to our [Afrobeats playlist]( after reading the email, 21% of you were going to check out the [Quartz Obsession podcast](, and another 21% of you were about to learn some Afrobeats dances on TikTok. 🤔 [What did you think of today’s email?](mailto:obsession%2Bfeedback@qz.com?cc=&subject=Thoughts%20about%20zombies&body=) 💡 [What should we obsess over next?](mailto:obsession%2Bideas@qz.com?cc=&subject=Obsess%20over%20this%20next.&body=) 🎲 [Show me a random Obsession]( Today’s email was written by [Amanda Shendruk](, edited by [Annaliese Griffin](, and produced by [Jordan Weinstock](. 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