zombie survival guide

I found the zombie survival guide a really fun read. What surprised me about the book was the matter of fact-ness of the literature; the book presented information in such a way as to portray zombies as factual entities that were known to inhabit our realm. At the time of reading this book I had never read such a fictional how to book, and I found the presentation very amusing. The author really committed to the presentation of his work; he did not tentatively assert the weakness of zombies, but boldly stated histories and facts regarding the monsters. This gave the book a more authoritative tone, imbuing it with a heightened sense of believability.

Aside from the presentation, I was amused as to how in depth and descriptive the book was. Zombie survival guide detailed zombie killing strategies, histories, and even debunked common zombie myths, all of which I found fascinating. What really interests me about this book is just the level of detail and effort that went into describing this phenomenon. This goes to show the level of fascination our culture has with zombies. Despite being a fictional creature, zombies have been an integral part of pop culture for such a great period of time that they are starting to gain a sense of respect or legibility. Our culture has become so familiar with the monsters that we now know there traits, how to deal with them, and even likely outcomes of their outbreak, based upon variables such as speed of outbreak, communicability, and zombie strength.

It is due in part to our cultures familiarity with the monsters that we are allowed to have books such as the zombie survival guide. Since we know how prevalent the zombie topic is within our society, one must begin to ask why are zombies so popular?

The zombie genre by no means originated in modern media such as television and video games, but one could easily state that a combination of zombie video games and movies are the main proponents of zombie’s recent popularity. The zombie genre is depicted in different lights depending on the source. In the classical resident evil school of thought, for instance, zombies are seen as lumbering beasts, only a threat due to helplessness therein of humanity. More modern adaptations within the resident evil universe however, paint zombies as the helpless beasts; hordes or the undead fall easily under the might of almost superhuman protagonists. The latter variety of the genre draws more appeal from male youths, garnering favor by playing off of the male love of carnage.

Other outlooks on the genre play off of other motifs. In both 28 days later, and 28 weeks later, the reoccurring theme is that humanity, not the infected are the beasts. The zombies are seen as thoughtless monsters, amoral and therefore blameless of the evils they commit. Humanity, on the other hand, possesses morals; this just makes it all the more harrowing when mankind perpetrates injustices more heinous than those committed by the real monsters.