People today are obsessed with zombies. There are thousands upon thousands of shows, movies, comic books, novels, video games, and more dedicated to the subject. They have become a crucial part of our culture. But did you know that the modern zombie is a fairly new concept t? Zombies have been around for a very long time, but the ones we are familiar with were created in 1968.
Zombies have existed in many generations. There are several cultures that have had the belief or existence of zombies for a very long time. They appear in the folklore from ancient Europe, Asia, and Africa. One, in particular, is the Haitian religion. According to the West African tenets of Vodou, a dead person can be reanimated by magical means. The living corpse would have no mind of their own and would only do what they were commanded to do by the sorcerer that resurrected them. It is also believed in some areas of South Africa that witches can turn a person into a zombie by killing and possessing the victim's body in order to force it into slave work.
Eventually authors like Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe started to adapt and modernize the zombie. Shelley with works such as “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus”, and Poe with stories such as “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Mary Shelley took a science fiction approach when she created the zombie known as Frankenstein’s Monster. Edgar Allan Poe is commonly referred to as the grandfather of the Modern Zombie genre. After Poe and Shelley, in the 1920s and early 1930s, the American horror writer HP Lovecraft took over the zombie genre. He wrote several novelettes that explored the undead theme from different angles, such as: "Cool Air", "In the Vault", and "The Outsider". All these stories dealt with the undead. The most definitive "zombie-type" story in Lovecraft's work was 1921's “Herbert West–Reanimator”, which helped define zombies in popular culture. “Reanimator” was a modern day take on “Frankenstein”. This work was directly inspired by Mary Shelley. The majority of Lovecraft’s work was directly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.
It wasn’t until 1968 when the Modern Zombie was born. The Modern Zombie does not have many connections to the original voodoo zombies. They are something else entirely. George A. Romero invented the Modern Zombie in his film “Night of the Living Dead”. This was the first appearance of today’s zombies in cinema. The new concept of zombies is very simple: “When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.” In our era, zombies act as a virus. If a zombie is to bite or scratch a human, that human will become a zombie. A zombie feeds on human flesh. They will not eat each other zombies or animals. (Today, there are some cases where they do eat animals.) They are completely brain dead. They have no thoughts or logic. They act purely on instinct. The only way to kill a zombie is to remove the head or destroy the brain. In a zombie apocalypse, if you are bitten by a zombie you will die and come back as a zombie. If you die of natural causes or any non-zombie related death, you will still come back as a zombie. When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth. These zombies are not controlled by a sorcerer. They were not brought back to life by means of science. They don’t originate from any type of religion or mythology.
This new zombie has only existed for forty-five years. The belief of zombies has existed for thousands of years, but the craze is fairly new. With the success of “The Walking Dead”, and other works of fiction, the zombie has taken our culture by storm. This obsession has become so extreme that the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) actually has published an emergency plan for a zombie apocalypse. They even have one for educators to teach to children. There are tons of zombie survival guides in bookstores. There is even a Zombie Research Society in existence. If you walk around today in stores or other social areas, you will hear people talking about what they would do if zombies took over the Earth. Everyone has come up with their own strategy for “when” zombies take over. If a zombie apocalypse were to happen, we’d be ready.
