This is a repost from last year, because zombies are still going strong, and the final episode of The Walking Dead is this weekend (although I will miss it, because I’ll be in the recording studio all day)! 

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I recently read an article in the New York Times about the state of zombie literature, and it made me wonder why we are way more obsessed with zombies these days. The climate is ripe for it, of course, with the economic collapse and many people rethinking what really, truly matters. Here are the reasons I think we are all secretly wishing for a zombie attack.

1) We’re all feeling a bit crowded.

We’re increasing in numbers as the decades go on, causing more traffic, pollution, building and waste. A major zombie attack would reduce the population significantly. There’s likely a part of our collective group consciousness that is saying, “Enough!” How the hell else are we going to whittle down the overbearing population of people we bump into in the supermarket, on the sidewalk and in our cars? Our only other options are a meteor striking (very rare) or a nuclear war. A zombie attack would at least give us a tiny chance of survival as a species, while simultaneously paring down the excess.

2) Zombies are the perfect monster to our modern society.

In this day and age, everything is buy, buy, buy, consume, consume, consume. The baby boom and the post-war production boom have left their mark. Now we are just perpetuating the same old wheel because we know no other solution. You can’t even drive down the street without seeing a bumper sticker, billboard or sign post telling you what to think, who to listen to or what else you need to buy. Zombies would simply consume us. The only thing we would now need to focus on would be survival. What a relief!

3) We would get to use guns.

The best part of any zombie movie is when the group of surviving humans pool together their resources and distribute the guns. If zombies were roaming free, we would have every excuse to get that Glock, Kalashnikov or bazooka we’ve always been wanting to lock and load and blow some virus-infected brains to high heaven.

4) The society we live in is one many of us did not create and many of us feel we have no control over.

I think deep down we wish that shit would hit the fan. We want to be able to tear everything down and start from scratch. All this cheap material we’ve used to build forgettable buildings, faceless apartment complexes and subdivisions – a zombie attack would put all of the industry, politics and social hierarchy on hold. There would be no more rock star celebrities to focus on at the expense of happiness in our seemingly insignificant lives. We would all be insignificant at once.

5) Fighting off zombies would give us a sense of purpose

A lot of us are feeling a bit of the old ennui. We look at the same roads on the way to work, shop at the same stores, visit the same online websites. With zombies on the loose, life would suddenly become exciting, visceral, carpe diem (at least at first). We would drop all the minutiae and focus on life again. Suddenly everything would seem very, very important. We might even make new friends, finding solace in those around us and the simple things in life we’ve been neglecting for so long.

Hungry for more “five things” posts on the stifled artist? Check out 5 Observations About Bacon or 5 Links for Reading, Writing and Productivity.