And the AP is not amused. Except that it gives them a chance to write a story
(NJ.com) First came Miami: the case of a naked man eating most of another man’s face. Then Maryland, a college student telling police he killed a man, then ate his heart and part of his brain.
It was different in New Jersey, where a man stabbed himself 50 times and threw bits of his own intestines at police. They pepper-sprayed him, but he was not easily subdued. He remains in critical condition.
He was, people started saying, acting like a zombie. And the whole discussion just kept growing, becoming a topic that the Internet couldn’t seem to stop talking about.
The actual incidents are horrifying — and, if how people are talking about them is any indication, fascinating. In an America where zombie imagery is used to peddle everything from tools and weapons to garden gnomes, they all but beg the comparison.
I’ll admit I read quite a few zombie and zombie style books. They’ve become popular over the past 10 years or so. What they tend to be about is people, and how they survive apocalyptic events. Zombies are just a convenient vehicle. In the past it might have been about aliens or nuclear war. Though there are some like that (see John Birmingham’s After America).
Zombies represent America’s fears of bioterrorism, a fear that strengthened after the 9/11 attacks, says Patrick Hamilton, an English professor at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pa., who studies how we process comic-book narratives.
No, not really. Nothing to do with that. Nice try, though. But, many of the books, and some movies, incorporate elements where the zombies/zombie-like creatures are created by Mankind intentionally or by accident. One series had them being created by a major hurricane destroying Galveston and the toxic chemical soup caused the dead to rise. Another (A New World by John O’Brien) has “night runners” (aren’t quite zombies) being created due to a faulty flu vaccine. Another I read was about a zombie apocalypse caused by an accident by terrorists. Authors use sometimes use the bioterrorism theme as a mode, but zombies aren’t popular because of it. The ability to web-publish gives many authors a great chance.
Mort is about zombies and vampires (I’m writing these off the top of my head, writing post with Droid phone). White Flag Of The Dead is about what one man will do to protect his newborn in a zombie world, where there are also really bad people. One was about aliens trying to cut the Earths population down with zombies and vampires. They all share the notion “how do people survive?”
Just like bacon suddenly went viral, so have zombies.
On the lighter wside from the island of Vanuato.
… and here I thought it was about Extreme Anthropogenic Extreme Climate Change of the Extremes?
Glad to hear its just about “bio”terrorism that we had back in the 60s. YEP.