The Slow, Steady, 4,000-Year March Of The Zombie
Zombies are hard to kill. Not just as creatures, but as cultural phenomena. They first turned up in ancient Mesopotamian poetry four millennia ago, and Hollywood directors have been depicting their slow (though occasionally very fast) gait in films since 1929.
The myth of the zombie has been used to frighten audiences, satirize consumerism, promote disaster preparedness and even train the US military.
Indeed, the spread of zombies in popular culture — as evidenced by the massive hit TV show The Walking Dead — has been about as unstoppable as a zombie virus itself. Impressive for a lumbering, inarticulate monster incapable of thought.
A Poetic Debut
1800 BC · Sumer, Mesopotamia
The first recorded reference to a zombie-like creature is found in The Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem written as an ode to a Mesopotamian king in which a goddess proclaims:
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld, I will smash the doorposts, and leave the doors flat down and will let the dead go up toit eat the living! And the dead will outnumber the living!
The flesh-eating was omitted in some later versions of the zombie myth and didn't become a permanent part of zombie lore until filmmaker George Romero included it in the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.
Romero also invoked The Epic of Gilgamesh in his 1978 follow-up, Dawn of the Dead.
When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth.
— Tagline for George Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead'
Zombies Rise In Haiti
1685 · Haiti
French slave owners made African religions illegal, which pushed them underground — and a new religion was born.
The mythical Baron Samedi dug up freshly dead corpses and transported them to pan guinee — heaven, essentially. If a dead person offended Samedi, the baron would retrieve them from the grave as promised, but then refuse to transport them to the afterlife, leaving them stuck as a zonbi, or slave, for life.
Hollywood Takes Notice
1929 · California, US
Zombies may have remained in relative obscurity were it not for William Seabrook, an American journalist and travel writer. Seabrook traveled to Haiti in the late 1920s to research occult traditions on the island.
The resulting travel book, The Magic Island, included stories of the Haitian zonbi myth and introduced zombies to American audiences.
Three years later, Bela Lugosi starred in White Zombie — the first feature-length zombie film — based on Seabrook's work.
Reinventing The Undead
1968 · Pittsburgh, PA, US
Night of the Living Dead wasn't a hit when it was released. But it soon gained a cult following, and is now almost universally regarded as both an outstanding film and the spiritual ancestor to just about every zombie movie that followed.
The movie set a few key precedents for zombie fiction. It established zombies as slow-moving, mindless flesh-eaters, not sentient slaves to a deity. It was also heavy on social commentary. Many see the film as an allegory for 1960s anxiety in America, specifically regarding racial tensions, nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War.
Zombies Get Philosophical
1974 · Oxford, England
The zombie concept eventually spread beyond just fiction and folklore. In his 1974 essay "Sentience and Behavior," philosopher Robert Kirk asked readers to imagine somebody who looked and behaved exactly like a regular human, but in fact had no consciousness at all and no conscious experience.
Kirk referred to these hypothetical beings as "zombies," and used them to argue for the existence of human souls in epistemological discussions on mind, body and behavior.
Romero Goes Shopping
1978 · Monroeville, PA, US
While Night of the Living Dead took several years to achieve mainstream popularity, Romero's sequel, Dawn of the Dead, was an immediate hit.
The film centers on survivors of a zombie outbreak who take refuge in a mall. While they initially marvel at the abundance of material goods available to them in their hideout, "shopping" eventually leaves them unfulfilled. When the zombies gain access to the mall, they spend most of their time wandering around aimlessly in retail outlets.
For Romero, reanimating the undead was the perfect way to satirize mass consumerism.
Zombies Pick Up Speed
2002 · London
Zombie films stagnated for decades, but were resurrected with the release of 28 Days Later, a 2002 film depicting the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse in England.
The film was notable for introducing running zombies, which set off a debate among fans on whether fast zombies really qualify as zombies at all.
Zombies Get A Sense Of Humor
2004 · London
Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead wasn't the first zombie comedy (zombedy?), but it was one of the most influential. The film takes place against the backdrop of an early-stage zombie outbreak and suggests that a it might not change society all that much.
Like its best predecessors, Shaun redefined what a zombie story was capable of and spawned countless imitators. A rash of other zombie comedies — Zombieland, Fido and Zombie Strippers, among them — were made soon after Shaun, while 2009's Pride & Prejudice & Zombies became one of the first literary entries in the zom-com subgenre.
The US Government Acknowledges Zombie Threat
2011 · Washington, DC
In a policy paper known as "CONOP 8888," the Pentagon outlined the ideal US military response to a zombie invasion. In fact, it was a generic crisis-response document whose goal was to "take a dry, monotonous topic and turn it into something rather enjoyable," according to its author.
The paper treated a potential zombie invasion with the utmost sincerity, describing several different varieties of undead (including those created by pathogens, radiation, bioengineering and "evil magic"), and hypothesizing the average "lifespan" of a zombie as 30-40 days, based on the physical organ degeneration caused by dehydration.
It is important to note that zombies are not cognizant life forms. As such, they cannot be deterred or reasoned with in any way.
— CONOP 8888
Zombies Take Atlanta
AUGUST 23, 2015 · Hollywood, CA
Zombies can't spawn, but TV shows about them can. Fear of the Walking Dead debuted to more than 10 million viewers in the US and aired in 125 countries. The sixth season of the original, The Walking Dead, premiered seven weeks later, bringing in 20 million pairs of eyes. Ratings for the show's previous season jumped 65% across Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Zombies had finally taken over the world.
The Walking Dead, based on a comic book series, follows the grisly adventures of a Georgia sheriff's deputy and the band of survivors he picks up as they try to survive a zombie apocalypse on the US East Coast. A companion series, Fear of the Walking Dead, tracks a dysfunctional family facing the early days of the same zombie crisis, but on the West Coast.
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