Zombies: A Living History
Caught a bit of the History Channel show last night. It’s quite entertaining. Apparently, almost all cultures came up with some sort of zombie in their literature or beliefs. The early Irish were so afraid of being eaten by the walking dead that the buried the dead with bricks or rocks shoved into their mouths. And there’s a decent narrative about why cultures have and fear zombies that I hadn’t considered before. It features a lot of people that I’ve read on the internet talking about zombies and the apocalypse. Not gonna ruin it in case you watch it.
Also, interesting tidbit from the show: Over 50% of all zombie movies were made after 9/11/01.
October 28th, 2011 at 9:51 am
I’m watching that right now. I’m loving the bits on fighting zombies.
October 28th, 2011 at 10:11 am
I was happy to see JL Bourne on the show. As mentioned in earlier threads, the Day By Day books seem to make the most sense of any story I have seen or read in terms of valid survival strategies, though admittedly, here is a lot out there I have not consumed.
I don’t know if I agree that all cultures had “Zombies” as they say in the show. They seem to be using “Zombie” as a category to include nearly any kind of corporeal undead. That is a little too broad for my tastes. This is 15 years of Dungeons and Dragons talking…though, they may have changed all their definitions since the 80’s.
October 28th, 2011 at 10:29 am
One of the groups they talked with for that show was the Zombie Squad. Good folks that also do some good work for the community and sharing disaster survival/relief knowledge. I recently learned that there’s a local chapter and am planning on joining.
October 28th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
There’s a interesting short about the history of Zombies up at PennyArcade right now, too.
October 28th, 2011 at 6:41 pm
“Apparently, almost all cultures came up with some sort of zombie in their literature or beliefs.”
Just shows that liberals have been around longer than most people think.