I don't need to tell
you, Mr. Speaker,
that zombies don't
recognize borders and that
a zombie invasion in the United
States could easily turn into
a continent-wide
pandemic so on behalf of
concerned Canadians everywhere,
Mr. Speaker, I want to ask
the Minister of Foreign Affairs
is he working with
his American
counterparts to develop
an international zombie strategy
so that a zombie invasion
does not turn into a
zombie apocalypse?
(cheers and applause)
Coming up next on Action
News 7, a dog was found...
excuse me just one moment...
I see.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm
receiving a special broadcast
about something
that's happening.
Van Dorn Street is blocked
right now by overturned cars.
We are receiving news that the
bodies of the recently deceased
are returning to life and
attacking the living.
Officers are on their way right
now to take you to safety.
...A live reporter out
there on the scene.
(screaming)
There are millions,
millions of zombies
roaming the earth
chewing people up.
Is that crazy or what?
I suggest you find
the tallest building
in your town and jump off.
The zombie outbreak is
no longer an outbreak,
but a full-on pandemic.
Warning you to stay
indoors, to lock your doors,
to arm yourself with any
weapons that are available
and this is America
so you should have plenty.
Grab something heavy,
something that you could hit
very hard with, and let's party!
?
? The living dead are
keeping me up at night ?
? They're hanging around
outside ?
? They're probably mad
they've died ?
? The living dead are
gathering in the streets ?
? I'm buried beneath my sheets ?
? They're making it
hard to sleep ?
?
? I hear them shuffle
in the crowd ?
? But do they have
to be so loud ?
? It seems to me that all their
lives were spent being noisy ?
? And now they get to do it
twice just to annoy me ?
? The living dead are
keeping me up at night ?
? They're hanging
around outside ?
? They're probably
mad they've died ?
? The living dead are
keeping me up at night ?
? They're hanging around
outside ?
? They're probably
mad they've died ?
I'm Jonathan Leonard from
Geekscape and we're going to
find out what the average
person knows about zombies.
A zombie is someone who's dead
and came out of the ground
and is bleeding and is gross
looking and they'll kill you.
What do zombies want?
Brains.
What are the
zombie rules?
Zombie rules is that you
die, but you don't die.
If you want to be more like
angsty and metaphorical,
a zombie could be someone
trapped in a workday
who lives in a box
and doesn't have fun.
In Chinese tradition
a zombie just jumps.
It doesn't talk, it doesn't
walk, it just jumps.
What?
Arms out and then it
just hops like that.
The zombie is a relentlessly
aggressive, reanimated
human corpse driven by
a biological infection,
so there's kind of
three aspects to that.
You don't negotiate
with a zombie, right?
You can't talk a zombie
out of wanting to eat you.
You can't say, "Hey,
go around the corner,
there's a family of five
getting in a Winnebago.
You can eat all five of
them and leave me alone."
Secondly, it's a reanimated
human corpse, limited in
its ability so it's actually
a rotting corpse.
Thirdly, a biological
infection which is,
I think, what makes zombies
really, really scary.
MAN: They're us and
they're us having succumbed to
our worst fear
which is our own death.
You can't outstrip them even
though they're slower than you.
Eventually you have
to go to sleep.
They don't, so even if
you're a mile ahead of them,
when you're snoring
they'll catch up and meet you.
And that's like death itself.
You do everything
you can to stave it off.
You do the steps at Santa
Monica, you don't eat red meat.
They'll get you in the end.
Most famous monsters,
the big-screen monsters
have some kind of
long-standing tradition
where their stories have been
developed previously --
the vampire, the werewolf,
even the slasher,
the serial killer comes out
of a crime novel tradition.
The zombie comes kind of
directly out of folklore
and there really wasn't a
literary narrative tradition.
When you take a look at zombies
in cinema specifically,
you can technically go
back into the silent era.
There are, of course, classics
like "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,"
where you have the sleepwalking
character in there who is
very much zombie-like, and yet
for all intents and purposes,
we all have kind of
collectively agreed,
it all starts in 1932
with "White Zombie."
Zombies!
The filmmakers in the '30s
and '40s were kind of
making up these
stories out of nothing.
They weren't taking existing
material and adapting it.
If anything, they were
drawing on misconceptions
and misunderstandings of race
relations in the colonies,
sensational ideas of
what voodoo and folklore
really meant in Haiti.
They took that idea and
they kind of merged it with
the visual style
of Todd Browning
and the gothic tradition.
I thought that beauty
alone would satisfy,
but the soul is gone.
I can't bear those
empty, staring eyes.
So in "White Zombie," you get
a narrative that takes place
in Haiti and it involves
Haitian voodoo, but then there's
a gothic castle on the coast
of Haiti for some reason.
So it's this weird fusion
of a misunderstood,
sensationalized folklore with
an established and successful
cinematic tradition
for monsters.
The early films are always about
black people
menacing white women.
It's really the enslavement
by the former slaves
that makes that monster
initially so terrifying.
The next major step in sort of
the evolution of the zombies
of pop culture icon comes
when science fiction briefly
takes the lead over
horror in the 1950s
and then you get movies
like "Invisible Invaders..."
People of Earth,
this is your last warning.
...in which aliens resurrect
human corpses and use them
like puppets to try to take over
which is virtually the same plot
as "Plan 9 from Outer Space,"
one of the most infamous movies
of all time, and what's
interesting about those movies
is there we have it, we have
dead people coming back.
They're not
demonically possessed.
They're not impelled by
some desire to eat flesh
or something we don't know.
They're being puppeteered by
aliens, but they're zombies
and they're more like
the zombies we know today
than the ones that
preceded them.
But then what happened
was George Romero...
TV: The dead who live
on living flesh.
The dead whose haunted
souls hunt the living.
The living whose bodies
are the only food for these
ungodly creatures.
(screaming)
"Night of the Living Dead."
We were trying to
create a new creature,
somebody that was
dead but came back.
We didn't have a name
for that creature.
We called them ghouls.
I said, "George, who are these
characters chasing this girl?"
He said, "I don't know."
And I said, "Well,
when I was reading it,
it seemed to me they
could be dead people."
He said, "That's good."
I said, "But what do they do?
You don't say that either."
He said, "I don't know."
I said, "Why don't we use
my flesh-eating idea?"
GEORGE: There was an article
in "Cahiers du Cinema"
that called them zombies
for the first time.
I was clinging to the idea that
we had created something new
and when I read that article,
I said, this ain't new at all,
so that's when I started to
accept them as zombies.
(screaming)
"Night of the Living Dead"
did not create zombies
but it rewrote zombie lore.
I like to say that there
were zombie movies
before George Romero,
the same way there were
space movies before
George Lucas.
It changed everything.
It scrapped the old
voodoo zombie and gave us
the plague-driven flesh eater.
The idea of the end of the world
and zombies are around
and the world's been
overtaken by them
and it's people against zombies
and our population is dwindling
was introduced in that movie
and no one had ever really
taken zombies in that
direction before.
It's almost as if the zombie
as we know it was some sort of
like biblical figure
that's been around forever
and we can all
pick up and use it.
It's not, it was George's idea,
the whole biting thing,
the passing on the disease,
the waking up -- all George.
What's monumental to me about
that film was the fact that
in 1968, this film was
released with a black man
and a white woman, and
throughout the entire movie,
nobody made a big deal
out of the fact that
we had two different colors.
It was pure survival.
GEORGE: We thought we were
pushing the envelope a little.
We thought that some of
the scenes with the guts
and when the kids get
roasted in the truck...
we had actually one shot of
a naked zombie from behind.
Bold -- that's about
as bold as we went.
There were extreme audience
and media reactions.
Reviewers who thought that
we were satanically inspired,
that we were scourges, that
our film should be banned.
Horror movies were not
raw like that back then.
George's was almost like a
real thing, a documentary.
The reaction to that movie
is what really got me going
because it said people
were fainting in theatres
and I thought, I don't think
I want to see this movie.
It made me not want to see it
and then when I saw it,
I was like, yeah, that's why
I didn't want to see it.
I remember the first time I saw
it was at a midnight screening
and the audience was
absolutely terrified.
The sequence that blew people
away was the little girl
down in the basement
who we discover
is chewing on her
parents' intestines.
The entire audience flipped out.
People got up and left the
theatre during that scene.
Midway through the movie
I hear this "boom, boom, boom,"
and I'm wondering
what's going on?
Was this part of the movie?
And all of a sudden, I see
this guy go down the aisle...
He blasts through
the doors, out to the curb
and goes, blech...
all over Cambridge Avenue.
I said, okay,
I've got to meet this guy.
Whoever made this movie,
I've got to meet this guy.
?
? Driving slowly going home
to see their mother's grave ?
? Walking closely there's an old
man whose clothes are decayed ?
? John can see that
she's frightened ?
? So he tries to lighten
the mood ?
? They're coming to
get you, Barbara ?
? They're coming and
they'll be here soon ?
? Don't be afraid ?
? They just want your brain and
they're coming to get you ?
The greatest zombie film in my
opinion is "Dawn of the Dead."
Every time it's scary,
it becomes funny,
and every time it's funny
it becomes scary.
Zombies on an ice skating rink,
it doesn't get any
funnier than that.
It almost as if history
conspires to hand Romero
the absolute perfect
metaphor for the zombie.
You couldn't do any
better than that.
We're a nation that has become
the shambling consumers
that walk up and down the
hallways desperately wanting
to consume and we have
lost all individuality.
It's absolutely perfect.
For me, "Dawn of the Dead" was
kind of the seminal zombie movie
because it really
was the middle finger
to the death of
the baby boomers.
It was this generation that
started off so idealistic
and was so, "Hey man, don't
trust anyone over 30, man.
Don't trust anyone over 30!"
And then they turn 30!
(laughter)
I mean, that moment where
they say, "What is that?"
And he goes, "Looks like
a shopping center,
one of those new
indoor malls."
See, there were no
shopping centers.
That was the first shopping
center that we had ever seen.
With the dawn of the
death of the ideals.
Every time it's Black Friday,
how can you not think of
"Dawn of the Dead?"
It's chilling and disgusting
all at once, you know?
MAN: So there is this
evolutionary process that George
is going through and in "Day..."
what he does is he says,
okay, now we're going to
see the zombies evolve,
and that was groundbreaking.
That's what George's genius is,
I think, that he completely
swaps allegiances
with his films.
Often, you'll root for
the zombies which is, you know,
you never root for the zombies
in contemporary zombie films
because they're at our
protagonist's throats literally
and we don't want those
protagonists to die,
whereas, with, particularly
with "Day..." most of the human
characters are hideous,
monstrous, aggressive military
types who you just want
to see torn to pieces
and when Bob shoots
Captain Rhodes, you cheer.
It's all down to Howard Sherman
being just so sweet, you know,
when he's using the razor
and he's on the phone
and he's listening to the music
and he's hearing music
for the first time
and it's like a baby.
I just think it's one of the
most beautiful performances
since Karloff's "Frankenstein"
as a kind of adult newborn.
There's something
so deeply tragic
and sympathetic about him.
Oh, I don't feel that at all.
There's nothing tragic
in a reanimated corpse.
How can there be?
A reanimated corpse is
just a reanimated corpse.
There's nothing tragic about it.
You shoot it in the head.
Bob's your uncle.
HOWARD: Boris Karloff, with that
role, had the opportunity to do
a lot of very subtle intimate
things, most monsters don't.
In, as Bob, I did too.
I had a lot of very
interesting, subtle,
and by genre standards,
very unusual things to do
and the fact that I had the
opportunity to do something
like that is what brought
an element of humanity to it
that normally you just
don't find in the genre.
GEORGE: I don't think
zombies are intelligent.
I think that they just
remember what they used to do,
what they used to be.
My zombie characters that have
some personality, I think,
are just -- what they do
because of their memory
makes them a bit heroic,
but it's just memory.
It's just memory.
I mean, it's just like when
you first see Big Daddy
in "Land of the Dead,"
he's doing what he always did.
He's trying to fill gas.
He hears the bell, "ding-ding"
and he thinks a car came in,
so he comes out looking
to fill somebody's car.
I mean, that's how stupid
he is, but he's heroic.
(laughing)
(yawning)
What a perfectly
average morning,
nothing unusual about today
which makes it the perfect day
for a zombie apocalypse
to not happen.
(humming)
It's beautiful morning.
Mmm, I smell breakfast cooking.
Oh, what's this on the news?
But it has been
reported that the dead
are coming
back to life.
Oh my God!
The president is
declaring marshal law
for the state
of New York.
Betty? Is that you?
Is that blood all
over your jammy-jams?
Why are you just standing there?
Why is there a smoke machine
running in the hallway now?
Oh well.
Even though I've seen this
scene a million times
in every movie, I'm just
going to slowly start
walking towards you with
my arms outstretched,
asking if everything's
okay, even though
this looks highly suspicious and
at any moment you're going to...
Oh my God!
Zombies are the only horror
films that I know where
you're totally minding your own
business and you're not looking
for trouble and you're not the
hot girl or the token black guy.
You've broken no rules
to let you get killed
but they come for you anyway.
It's not about you,
that's the main thing.
If something is going to
eviscerate you, eat your guts,
you'd like it to be
about your guts, right?
You'd like your guts to be
special, but if I can just
step to the left and
he eats that guy's guts,
it's not about
me anymore.
Vampires are
all about me.
They make me feel sexy and
libidinal and all that.
Zombies, they could
care less about me
and that's actually
our biggest nightmare.
They don't sparkle.
Right.
(laughter)
Every time you look at a zombie
in pop culture, whether it's
a movie or a television show
or a comic book, anything,
it is ultimately just
a reflection of things
we're afraid of at that moment.
When you start with
"Night of the living Dead,"
1960s, late '60s,
we're afraid of Vietnam,
we're afraid of the death
we're seeing on television.
That's easy, but we're also
afraid about what's happening
to the home, the nuclear
family is breaking down.
So "Night of the Living Dead"
becomes a literal
siege on the home.
Jump ahead ten years --
"Dawn of the Dead,"
what are we afraid of now?
Consumerism, consumption.
Jump ahead --
"Day of the Dead,"
now we're afraid
of the Cold War,
we're afraid of the apocalypse,
of nuclear destruction.
As the culture changed,
zombies, to an extent,
changed along with it.
In the 1980s all of a sudden,
you see them starting to
get a little bit funny.
You had "Return of
the Living Dead,"
all of a sudden, you have
all this comedy going on.
The '80s were sort of a
little bit of a lighter time.
Brains!
But it's also desperately
frightening and depressing.
That is probably one of
the most, if not the most,
apocalyptic zombie
movies ever made.
They're also the most
indestructible and frightening
zombies in zombie movie history.
If you ever find yourself in
a zombie apocalypse, the key,
the first thing you should
look for is, are you in
the "Return of the Living Dead"
Universe or not,
because if you are, give up,
there's no hope.
Brains!
Another thing that's
interesting about
"Return of the Living Dead"
is it gives rise to one of
the longest-lasting aspects of
the zombie in pop culture...
More brains!
...and that's the idea
of the zombies
coming back wanting brains.
? Brains, brains, brains... ?
So the '90's were kind of,
I don't want to say they were
a dead era, but they were
definitely slow comparatively.
Party's over.
"Dead Alive," Peter Jackson's
Sumatran rat-monkey
family issue,
gore-fest insanity.
It was probably the most
important film of the '90s.
And then 9/11 came along
and all of a sudden,
everything felt up-ended.
I think it primed the
culture, the larger culture,
not the people who
already like zombies,
but the larger culture to
accept and entertain the idea
of apocalyptic scenarios
being a possibility.
A few years later when Katrina
happened, anyone who still had
faith, "don't worry, no matter
what happens, we can handle it,"
this was an aberration.
I think that shook it as well.
I don't think the zombie culture
would be where it was today
if it weren't for
those kind of things.
It brought death to
people's doorstep.
You have "28 Days Later" which
has plenty of imagery which is
evocative of an apocalypse
or a natural disaster.
This fear of disease, so we
start seeing more and more
of the infection narratives
and the invasion narratives
as a kind of a reflection of
the fears of the 21st century.
Zombies are very versatile as
metaphors because they are us.
They are the people among you,
and I think maybe that
preoccupation in society,
the lack of safety that
we're suddenly all feeling,
zombies are a good way to
cathartically act out that fear.
What I always find
fascinating about zombies
is the "Invasion of the
Body Snatchers" aspect.
The most horrific idea is
that your brother, your wife,
your sister, a loved one,
externally, on the outside,
that person is exactly the same,
but on the inside
everything is gone,
everything is erased.
KYLE: To me, what the zombie
narrative is really about
is losing friends and family.
Having your loved ones turn
against you, become monstrous,
but the biggest threat that
you face isn't some nameless,
faceless, other monster --
it's your mom,
it's your sister,
it's your wife.
That, to me, encapsulates
the real terror of the zombie,
the fact that we all have
the potential within us
to be monstrous.
?
There's that trailer,
it's called "Dead Island,"
it was a video game and you
see this kind of freaky girl
attacking an older man and then
it kind of all goes in reverse
ending with it being
like a family vacation
and they're taking
a photo together.
You realize it was his daughter
that he's beating with a bat.
(laughing)
It was pretty awesome.
I dreamt about them last night,
I dreamt about them.
I thought making "Shaun
of the Dead" would stop
my recurring dreams about
zombies, but it hasn't.
I still occasionally have
a dream where I'm in
that classic situation where
they're outside the house
and I can't get away
and it's fucking terrifying.
"Shaun" happened because
Edgar Wright and myself
were making a TV show, "Spaced."
The beginning of one of
the episodes starts with me
lost in the game "Resident Evil"
and it was just a very sort of
sneaky way to enable myself
to shoot some zombies.
They totally captured that
feeling of Romero's films,
that shambolic zombie.
It looked like they'd almost
watched those movies
to get the way those
creatures moved.
It really ignited that
sort of love in me again,
and Edgar as well, and
we started talking about
"Dawn of the Dead" and
how much we loved it
and then we had
"Dawn of the Dead" on set,
and we were like, we should
make a zombie film.
Well, I have to say that
"Shaun of the Dead" was probably
my favorite zombie film
that wasn't made by me.
I think "Shaun of the Dead"
is probably
the second most important
zombie film ever made
because of the
social commentary.
It encapsulates an
entire generation
of young English people
in the very same way
Kevin Smith's "Clerks"
encapsulated my generation.
Forget zombies, I think if
you just were going to look
at a movie that put that
generation through a lens,
that's "Shaun of the Dead."
The "Walking Dead" came about
because of my love
of George Romero films and
zombie movies in general.
Most zombie films end with
either all of the characters
dying or two or three of
the characters living,
while all of the others die
and they kind of ride off
into the sunset and you
never know where they go.
The "Walking Dead"
was devised as
the zombie movie
that never ends.
I will plainly say that Bram
Stoker is to Stephenie Meyer
as George Romero is
to Robert Kirkman.
There is no "Walking Dead"
without "Night of the Living
Dead," "Dawn of the Dead,"
"Day of the Dead."
I definitely owe that guy.
When Ben comes out of that house
at the end of
"Night of the Living Dead," and
you think he's getting rescued
and instead he gets shot...
Okay, he's dead.
Let's go get him.
That's another one
for the farm.
...the sinking feeling
that that gives you,
the sense of loss,
definitely inspires the way
that I want to mess
with expectations.
If characters weren't dying
constantly in a zombie story,
in an apocalyptic story,
it would be completely false
and fake and unrealistic and
it'd be complete bullshit
and there are times when I'm
writing a "Walking Dead" comic
where I'll go, wait a minute,
it's been like ten issues
and no one's died.
This sucks, someone's
got to die this issue.
People gots to die,
otherwise it's just dull.
Because the zombie was kind of
organically created by different
people, I think filmmakers and
authors and video game designers
feel they have a great deal of
liberty with what a zombie is,
so we can have
zombies that are dead,
but we can also have
zombies that are alive.
You can have zombies that drink
blood, but you can also have
zombies that eat flesh
or just eat brains.
You can have zombies
that are weak,
you can have zombies that are
super strong, some zombies talk,
most don't, some can
feel things, some can't.
That movie "Wall-E,"
you know, the Pixar movie,
I feel like that's kind of
a zombie movie, you know,
when he goes up and the robot
finds all the earthlings
that are just these fat blobs
hooked up to machines.
Those are G-rated,
benevolent zombies.
(screaming)
We got into this
idea in "Reanimator,"
that when they're reanimated,
that it somehow frees their
libido and so that's
kind of what Dr. Hill is.
This is a guy who is lusting
after the dean's daughter,
but never was able to really
act on it until he's reanimated
and in the course of the movie,
he converts himself as
the improved Dr. Hill.
In a way, it's a more
honest doctor.
He almost breaks the
rules of the zombie
because he has a stronger
idea of who he is.
Deadites and zombies are
from different families,
different species.
A deadite is someone
who isn't necessarily dead,
they just got possessed.
It's weird, in "Evil Dead,"
we have both.
In "Army of Darkness,"
we have an army of the dead,
skeletons coming back
and they get to talk.
I don't know how they do that
without a larynx, but you know.
Bring on the wench!
I think with like "Army of
Darkness," you didn't want
to be alive or dead, you didn't
even want to be in that movie
if you weren't Ash, because
everyone else is dead
or possessed ultimately.
Anybody that argues that because
something is alive can't be
a zombie, obviously doesn't
remember the history
about voodoo zombies
and how it all started.
So I count the infected.
Even though Danny Boyle
would say he didn't make
a zombie movie,
but I'm sorry, he's wrong.
He actually made a zombie movie.
So the word zombie, as we spell
it in English, is pretty close
to the Haitian/French "zombi,"
with just a terminal "I"
and it probably comes
from a Congolese word,
"Nzambi" with an "N."
WOMAN: In some places,
there is a God named Nzambi.
There was a revolutionary
hero named Nzambi.
Some people have associated it
with a type of bird.
Other people say there's
a plant called zombie.
The zombie is somebody who
was supposed to be dead,
but who's not.
The origin of the zombie
in Africa was a separation
of spirit from body and being
stuck in the mortal world.
WOMAN: Dutch slavers,
Portuguese slavers heard tales
of these fears that
the people had that
witch doctors were capable
of stealing their souls.
They would steal
a person's soul,
put it in some kind of vessel,
and then the body would keep
laboring for the witch doctor.
Somewhere around
the colony of San Domingue,
around the Haitian Revolution
of 1800, the word zombie
and the soul capture
mythology come together
and from that point on,
we're talking about
the zombie as
a walking corpse.
Zombification is just one of
the things they do as a form of
punishment, where you go into a
form of slavery never to return.
EMERANTE: Since he doesn't have
any life, they think he's dead.
They bury the person.
He has a certain
time to wake up.
They take the person
out of where he is buried.
He's still half awake and
half dead and that's a zombie.
If you want to understand what
is a zombie, it is somebody
who has one part of his identity
that has been torn down.
You have a part of your
intelligence that's like a
window and when it's torn down,
you lose your will,
and that will lead the will
of doing bad things to others,
and this is what Hollywood
has not understood
is he cannot do harm.
In other places, people who
commit crimes are usually put
in a gas chamber or they are
killed by the electric chair,
which to me is horrible.
In fact, it is desecrating
the human being because
a human being should be treated
with respect all the time.
To me, zombification
is something spiritual.
Wade Davis famously went down
from Harvard as an ethnobotanist
and he did some research into
what could possibly be
the scientific origins
of this tradition.
SARAH: Davis theorized that
it was actually possible
with a poison, it's called
tetrodotoxin, to poison someone,
give them the appearance of
death that was so believable
that you could then have them
buried, have a funeral for them,
dig them up later, and then keep
them in a kind of comatose state
so that they would only be able
to do the most basic commands,
so that, in effect, you could
keep them as a slave,
as a slave that people
would perceive to be
nothing but the walking dead.
KYLE: We have evidence that
people being turned into zombies
was a real problem in Haiti
because part of the Haitian
criminal code actually
has a law against
turning people into zombies.
It's actually on their books.
It is illegal to poison someone,
bring them back,
and sell them as slaves.
SARAH: Even though we think of
this as an American monster,
this is part of
a bigger mythology,
one that isn't uniquely ours,
but is more global, one that
really comes to us from Africa,
and from its inception,
is very much about slavery and
from its sort of pivotal turn
it makes in Haiti, becomes
a lot about slave rebellion.
Damn Zombies.
These nails cost me $2.49 a box.
It's a good thing I had all
this scrap wood though.
Well, that's that.
I wonder if these zombies are
going to be the fast ones
or the slow ones.
I hope they're the slow ones
because I'm an old man.
Oh, there's one now.
Oh great, they're
the fast zombies.
That's no good for me.
Oh, wait a minute,
it's just a jogger.
Whew...
Well, that's good, but that
still doesn't answer my question
whether or not
the zombies are fast ones.
Oh, I guess they're slow ones.
Well, that's good news for me
that they're slow ones, but
wait, if you could just run away
from slow zombies with ease,
then why aren't all new zombies
old people like me?
In fact, how does a slow zombie
outbreak even get out of control
in the first place?
Now I could maybe see a slow
zombie outbreak getting out of
control in a densely occupied
apartment building, but way out
in the country where there's
just so much distance
in between the infected
and the living?
Well, not so much.
STEVEN: The slow versus
fast debate is one of
my very favorites
in zombie worlds.
I'm partial to the slow zombies.
I actually think
they're way scarier.
If something's fast and
it's running after you,
you just got to run.
If someone is slow and shambling
towards you, you wait because
we have this desire that
it's still human, right?
Like you think, that looks like
my girlfriend, still looks like
my girlfriend, she's stumbling
a little bit, but maybe
it's my girlfriend with a broken
ankle, you don't know,
and you let her get just
a little bit too close.
All you've got to do is walk
slightly faster than her,
but you don't.
MAX: The slow zombie gives me
time to think about
how I'm going to die.
It's the difference between
getting shot and getting cancer.
It's about considering all
those horrific possibilities.
SIMON: The whole fast zombie
thing just misses the point.
By removing any aggression from
them, by stopping them from
being almost like screechy
and raptors running at you,
they've become something
you can project depth onto.
That's what's so great
about slow zombies is that
you're given time
to get to know them
before you shoot them
in the head.
I do have a whole new level of
respect for horror film actors,
but especially zombie horror
film actors because when they're
slow, you really have to sell
the fear, you know what I mean?
You have to sort of like create
scenarios in which you don't get
away from these people that are
moving at the pace of a snail.
Somebody once asked me,
would you write a zombie
survival guide for fast zombies?
I'm like, yeah, it would be
a pamphlet that we'd call
"Kiss your ass goodbye."
(laughter)
I would argue that potentially
"Shaun of the Dead" had a lot
of influence in kind of killing
the slow zombie in movies.
If you have two bumbling idiots
who can throw records at zombies
and sort of accidentally kill
them, it sort of causes problems
in terms of trying to make
the slow zombie really scary.
TOM: This makes me
think of when I directed
"Night of the Living Dead,"
we hired a movement instructor
because my idea was
if you're a zombie,
then you leave your body.
It's like if your body is hung
on a fence and something comes
and takes over the body, that's
never moved a human body before
and tries to move and walk,
but it was laughable.
People were doing all kinds
of stupid weird shit with it.
Just walk slow, okay,
just walk slow.
Because as you know, George
Romero believes in slow zombies.
He sells bumper stickers
that say, "Fast Zombies Suck."
My basic objection to fast
zombies is that it's impossible!
If they're dead,
if they're dead.
SIMON: You know, there's an
argument that Bill Hingmen,
who played the very first zombie
in "Night of the Living Dead,"
he was pretty spritely
as a zombie.
He wasn't moving
particularly slowly.
The beginning of zombie
evolution started with
quite a quick-footed zombie
to be honest.
GEORGE: When we were making
"Night of the Living Dead,"
we had no sense of rules.
It wasn't until I finally agreed
to do another one that I said,
well wait, we've got to have
a little process going in.
We have to have something.
I know that Bill moves pretty
quickly so I think I've sort of
violated my own rules there,
but I wasn't even...
I didn't even have rules then.
Zombie purists sometimes
can get quite adamant
about their feelings.
I had a woman one time chastise
me for making my living
in horror and not knowing
that zombies don't eat brains.
These movies come out and we get
these like really particular
zombie enthusiasts that will rip
them apart on a message board.
I'm like, come on guys,
it's a porno.
S.G.: The zombie purists want
their zombies to be slow and
shambling and I like to say that
they get kind of Dr. Seuss
"Green Eggs and Ham"
about their zombies...
They do not like them when
they run, they do not like them
when they're fun, they do not
like them with a heart,
they do not like them
to be smart.
They just want them to be slow
and shambling and mindless.
Fast zombies, slow zombies,
if zombies want to shoot lasers
out of their eyes and
it works in the story,
I think that's fantastic.
If you're a dead guy and you're
walking around, maybe you're
eating people, maybe you're not
eating people, I don't know.
If you're a dead guy walking
around, you're a zombie.
For me, "28 Days Later" was
the first time I saw them
sped up and I just thought
that was genius.
How did we not think
of this sooner?
Zombies have been around forever
and no one has ever thought
to just make them sprint.
I mean, why wouldn't they?
If they want the food,
they just fucking go get it.
So that was truly terrifying.
I don't think there was anything
charming about those zombies.
Fuck fast zombies.
I fucking hate fast zombies.
I hate them.
Now "28 Days Later" --
not a zombie movie.
Infection, those people were
infected, they aren't dead,
so not a zombie movie,
just for the record.
Slow zombies don't cut it
for us often anymore.
Our fears are more intense.
The world is faster.
Our technology is faster.
We need a faster zombie and
I think a great example of it
is bringing us all the way
up to the present day
and the "World War Z" film
adaptation, where you see
a virtual tsunami of zombie
bodies just rushing mindlessly,
they're not even human anymore,
they're not even distinguishable
as individuals.
They're just a mass of flesh
just washing over us.
So I was asked to be
a scientific consultant
on "World War Z."
I had to remit to think
about zombies as if
they were the product
of natural selection.
If natural selection is at play,
we should expect to see very,
very different things.
We should expect to see
cooperative behavior
among zombies.
So before they get bitten,
they're individual humans
with individual interests and
different genetic relatedness,
so they should be selfish.
Once they're bitten, it doesn't
matter which zombie bites
the next human, so long as
the virus gets there.
We see many examples in nature
of groups of organisms
moving more quickly when the
individual desire is subjugated
to the success of the group.
You know, the milestone in
zombie culture is the failure
of the producer of
"Night of the Living Dead"
to renew the copyright because
what that did is it put
the picture in public domain and
meant that it was going to play
on every cable TV station and
every midnight movie possible.
Anybody who had a videotape of
that film could put it on
their local television station
and play it on Halloween
or at midnight, and they did,
and so many other imitators
came along and parody
filmmakers came along.
Kill the brain,
kill the brain.
Lock and load.
And even great filmmakers
like David Cronenberg
owe an enormous debt to Romero,
an enormous debt to the
"Night of the Living Dead."
Zombies are definitely part
of mainstream culture now.
I mean, there can hardly
be anybody left,
at least in the
English speaking world,
who hasn't seen a
zombie movie by now.
I think the advent of video
games and third-person
shoot 'em up games
did more for the zombie genre
than a couple movies even.
I mean, I bought a Sega just
so I could have one of those
shitty orange guns and
I could shoot at zombies.
Zombies have even infected
video games that are not
zombie video games.
The "Call of Duty" franchise
is probably the most famous
which has banked through
its last few iterations
on zombie mode as being
one of its big draws.
When zombies are so popular
that they're going to shoehorn
zombies into non-zombie games,
we know that we've reached
a point of saturation in our
culture, triumph of the zombies.
GEORGE: You could put on
"Sesame Street," a zombie,
and kids would know what it was.
Kids would know what it was,
a zombie, oh yeah.
Zombies don't eat meat
because they can't have meat.
They only eat your brains.
When they eat your brains,
the human brains
come in their brains.
STEVEN: So in the last probably
two and a half, three years,
they've gone from an underground
rabid cult following --
people love them --
to this huge pop culture
mainstream following.
You just got to put the word
zombie on something
and it sells.
What if say technically
you were not alive,
like maybe you
were undead?
Like a zombie?
Whoa, let's not go
putting labels on people.
I'm a zombie.
I'm here to tell you
how to best prepare
for the zombie apocalypse.
Don't be afraid to
bash our heads in.
We could easily be taken out
with a well-thrown rock...
or a two-by-four.
You want to know the best way
to survive the apocalypse?
Get the right health insurance.
This interview with a zombie
brought to you by the good folks
at Rocky Mountain Health Plans.
You see them in commercials now,
you see them in movie
theatre ads, I mean,
zombies are everywhere, man.
You want to talk about when is
the zombie apocalypse coming?
It's here.
No! It's Zombie-Con weekend!
(screaming)
There's got to be
more of us out there.
No! No!
The number one show on cable
that beat our show,
"Burn Notice," which was
the number one show on cable,
is zombies.
How we got to be so
popular is blind luck.
It's as simple as that.
Somehow we managed to tap in
on some sort of public zeitgeist
that wanted this sort of product
at that sort of time.
I'll meet somebody on the street
and a guy will come up and say,
oh my God, I love "The Walking
Dead," stay right here,
and he'll run over and he'll
bring his wife over and his wife
will be more excited about
"The Walking Dead" than he is!
I've always been uncomfortable
with the success of
"The Walking Dead."
When it debuted as a comic, it
was like, oh wait, this thing is
way more popular than it should
be and it just kept getting more
and more popular and then when
the show happened, I honestly
didn't think the show was
going to be successful at all.
I was hoping and praying
that the show would be
just successful enough
to continue.
It honestly makes no
sense to me whatsoever.
I don't know how this show
is as popular as it is.
They're joining the ranks of
the blockbuster pop culture
icons, like superheroes
and action heroes.
S.G.: Werewolves are kind of
like the jocks of monsters.
They're full of testosterone
and sprouting hair all over
the place and full of rage and
screaming and running around.
Vampires are kind of
like the fraternity boys.
They're always sort of suave and
slick and trying to convince you
to get into bed with them
so they can drink your blood,
and zombies are kind of like
the nerds and the geeks,
you know, they don't
get the girls,
but they don't have
any ulterior motives.
They wear their emotions
on their sleeves.
They say, I am a zombie and
I want to eat your brains.
It's a monster that's
completely honest.
A vampire seduces, a zombie
feeds, a zombie goes after you,
and some people,
they're turned on by that.
They're turned on by
relentless desire.
They want to be desired
like nothing else.
You know, nobody wants to be
raped in real life but a lot of
people have rape fantasies
and sex with the zombie
is probably the ultimate rape.
Shit, another walker.
Don't worry,
I got this one.
No Glenn, put
your dick away.
It is tough to make a zombie
porn because you kind of
have to violate every law of
porn and then you're also,
at the same time, violating
all these zombie laws.
It's been some day,
hasn't it, son?
Yeah.
You got lost and then united,
had a threesome with your mom
and my best friend.
Now Carl, I've got to know,
do you have it in you to go over
there and fuck that girl,
and kill her with your cum?
JOANNA: "Walking Dead"
definitely sold the most
out of probably any other porno
we've ever made.
People love playing the role and
I think it is also an element
of domesticating it,
making it safer, making it fun.
Zombie culture has
really blossomed.
You have zombie walks or
zombie crawls, if you prefer,
zombie runs, zombie fashion
shows, zombie beauty shows,
zombie weddings,
zombie engagements,
zombie birthday parties,
zombie car washes.
I would never have let
a zombie wash my car.
(laughter)
Are you ready to
meet your maker?
You're not gonna because
you're gonna come back
to be a flesh eating beast!
Are you ready?
Get ready to tread or die today!
Runners, take your mark,
set, banzai!
Suckers!
?
?
I made it! I made it!
I made it! I made it!
I was coming to the first annual
Seattle Zombie-Con and a couple
approached me who were
going to the convention.
They wanted to be married by me
as zombies, and I'm like,
"But you want this
to count, right?"
And I thought, you know,
their poor family.
This is a sacred thing,
getting married, you know?
And they're doing this as
zombies and getting the idiot
guy who played Ash to marry them
but then you see their family!
Who gives this zombie woman
to be married to
this lucky zombie man?
(growling)
Alright, dad,
go take a nap.
The father couldn't sit down
because he came as a guy who had
a spike that had impaled him and
all the family came as zombies.
Zombies don't think
about what they're doing,
they just do it.
Am I right, zombies?
(cheering)
Come on, you freaks!
Now shut up,
I'm still talking.
Anybody needs zombies married,
I guess I'm your go-to guy,
but I've only performed one
because they're going to get
really expensive now because
it's just too weird.
Zombie fans, I think,
are, I don't know,
I can't identify
who zombie fans are.
Who are zombie fans?
Are they fans of the genre?
Are they fans of horror movies?
All these people that come out
for zombie walks, what is it?
What is it that
appeals to zombie fans?
I think that anyone that made
"Dawn of the Dead" would have to
understand what zombie
culture is about.
There is so much in that movie
that's just about humans
and human nature.
You have to know, like,
you have to see that.
I don't know.
That doesn't make sense.
Don't put that in there.
(laughter)
TOM: I've seen a crowd of people
go into the middle of a square
as zombies and then all of
a sudden, "Thriller" will blast
and they all do
the "Thriller" dance,
that I would like to participate
in, but not the zombie walk.
I don't get it,
I'm sorry.
Well done to you people
dressed as zombies.
Good for you.
I don't get it.
That would be like me dressing
up as someone with Ebola.
(laughter)
It'd be like, come on.
There's going to be 16,000
people in Denver all walking,
pretending that they have
testicular cancer, come on!
(laughter)
WOMAN: It's nothing new
that zombies walk,
that's just what they do.
And I never say that anyone
ever invented the zombie walk
because that's their kind of
monster character.
I think maybe the very first
time I ever dressed up as
a zombie was for the first
annual Denver Zombie Crawl.
There's probably like 15
or 20 people, and I was like,
God, this is so cool!
What a great idea.
We're all going to dress like
zombies and pound on the windows
while people are eating dinner
and this is the coolest thing
ever, and then the next year,
it was like, oh my God,
there's like 50, 75 people --
cool!
And then the next year,
it was hundreds and I think
last year was 15
or 17,000 people --
families, professionals,
children.
It's amazing.
It's a punk thing,
it's almost punk, right?
Making a statement, saying,
I don't want to be part of
this life, I'll be
a part of that life,
but I don't want to be
a part of this life.
I think that's
really what it is.
It's frustration, man.
SARAH:
I mean, it's all in good fun.
It's play, but I feel like
underneath that is a little bit
of danger and there's a message
that's being sent that says,
you know, if we wanted to, we
have the capacity to organize.
Here we just got 10,000 zombies
out in this public square
so I felt like it's a kind of
tacit message to our government.
DR. BLOCK: If you're into
zombies, the zombie walk
is like date night.
If you're dressed as a zombie,
sometimes that helps,
especially if you're a
little looks challenged.
It's very liberating to
be purposefully ugly.
You can let your Id out.
WOMAN: I do think corpses
are a little bit attractive.
I was sitting next
to one earlier
and I'm going to tell you,
he was pretty handsome.
I liked holding his hand.
He was big, kind of buff,
even though he was bony.
I think people are thinking
too hard these days about,
"Whoa, what's this
zombie phenomenon?"
People love to dress up, they
love to be other characters,
they love to escape
from themselves.
The costumes are amazing,
they're cinematic,
there's incredible gore.
There's incredible creativity.
Where else can you
see a Lego zombie?
I don't know why people
come out and do it.
I have to pay union wages
to get them to come.
(laughter and applause)
I think it's about
getting connected again.
It's so interesting to me,
like, I see these zombie walks
and nobody is tweeting
or emailing or texting.
They're actually talking to
each other and I know that
sounds a little too peace
and love and all that,
but it actually reminds me --
I used to follow Grateful Dead
around when I was in college
and it reminds me the most
of a Grateful Dead show.
Not in the way that people are
checked out, but in the way that
people are actually
nice to each other.
That doesn't happen very often.
It doesn't happen at a ballgame,
but it happens when people
dress up like the walking dead
and walk down the street.
KYLE: Sometimes it's more fun
to watch the audience
than the participants because
whether they know it or not,
the audience just
became participants.
The great thing about the zombie
is, you get bit by a zombie,
then you're one of them and
you're part of this collective,
you're part of this hoard.
Well, zombie fandom
works the same way.
I think that's kind of
the cool thing that's coming
from all of this.
Maybe people are getting a
skinned knee when they're doing
the zombie obstacle course,
but they're having fun,
they're having a good time,
so to a very small degree,
they're improving
people's lives.
(laughing)
Bravo 2 to Bravo 1,
switch has been pulled.
Any change in
situation upstairs?
That is a negative.
Carry on your search, over.
Keep looking down
there, gentlemen.
(gunshot)
Bravo 2 to Bravo 1...
(screaming)
Bravo 2 to Bravo 1,
come in, over.
Bravo 1 to Bravo 2,
get your ass up here now!
Move! Let's go!
Stay low, watch your heads.
Single file up the
stairs, gentleman.
Guys, I need two eyes
on this doorway behind me.
Make sure it's clear.
Holy shit!
What the fuck is that?
The armor that that thing
has got built into it
will take a 50 caliber.
Our shotguns are gonna
do dick and squat.
Anything happens, you go
there as fast as you can.
No dicking around, yeah?
?
Move!
(screaming)
This is an event where we
provide a total immersive
zombie experience.
From the minute they
arrive at the event,
they are thrown into basically
a narrative storyline.
Everyone's got an idea
of how they would handle
a zombie apocalypse.
We're giving people the
opportunity to try that out.
(screaming)
MAX: "The Zombie Survival Guide"
came about during the Y2K scare
of the late '90s.
That was a time when people were
starting to prepare for this
sort of nebulous apocalypse that
they didn't really understand.
America specifically had been
experiencing the largest
post-war boom in its history
and times were good, but there
was this feeling that times were
about to change and all these
survival guides were coming out
and I noticed that none of them
were addressing my fears.
Granted, zombies are not real,
but that certainly didn't stop
anybody else from publishing
survival guides about all
the other things that were going
to happen that were not real.
Zombie movies are essentially
disaster movies and I think
there has been a sense from 9/11
on, that the system is breaking
down, and we want to know what
the end game is psychologically.
We want to know what is all this
leading to and the problem is
if you watch a movie where the
catalyst for that disaster is
real, like a real nuclear war
or a real plague or a real
global financial meltdown,
you will not sleep that night.
So if the catalyst is something
like zombies, then you can say,
oh wow, look, neighbors are
stabbing each other and there
are no services and FEMA is
incompetent and the president
is flying over going,
"That's peculiar."
(laughter)
But it's zombies,
so that's totally okay
and then I'm going
to go to sleep.
What would be your first
order of business
in a zombie apocalypse?
Find some place that's fortified
that I can control what comes in
and what comes out
because if I can stop them
before they even come in...
Would it be a boat?
What do you think?
I don't know, never
thought about the boat.
You've got to think
about these things.
Right.
Everyone has their chance
today to be prepared.
You make the choice now
whether you're going to be
prepped to live
or prepped to die.
Top five things that you would
suggest people prioritize
when they're
creating a prep kit.
Water purification and
filtration equipment,
first aid if you get injured,
security hugely important,
shelter and warmth,
and shortwave radio, ham radio.
What is your motto at
Atlas Survival Shelters?
Better prepared than scared.
I build long-term survival
shelters for private individuals
so that their family
has a chance to survive
what's coming
down the road.
And is something
coming down the road?
I believe something is
coming down the road.
a lot of people do.
What would you say
if somebody said that
one of those threats
was zombies?
Say that again.
What would you say if one of
those threats was zombies?
What if they're fast?
If they're fast, you could
spend upwards of $10,000.
So you're fucked
if they're fast.
Yeah...
you're fucked.
Your shelters are nuclear,
biological, and chemical class
survival shelters,
but are they zombie proof?
From the television zombies?
Yeah, are your
shelters --
From the television zombies,
they're zombie proof,
100 percent.
There are people who
are always asking me,
do you have a zombie
survival plan?
And I'm like, no,
I live in San Francisco.
I don't even have an
earthquake survival kit,
so I'm not exactly on
Darwin's short list
for making it through this.
I always think getting to the
attic would be a good thing to
do because they can't climb and
you could lift up the ladder
and they wouldn't know you were
up there if you were real quiet
but you're going
to starve to death.
People make noise.
I've got a little girl now and
I can't keep her quiet anywhere,
let alone in an attic
in a house full of zombies,
so I think you'd have to get up,
I think you'd go north.
Once I'm sure that civilization
is as screwed up as, you know,
it would be in
a zombie apocalypse,
I would jump off
the tallest building.
I don't want to live like that.
I don't like being hungry.
You ever been hungry?
It's not fun.
I would hang on as long as I
thought I could protect my wife
and kids, and then once that
didn't pan out because
I'm pretty sure it wouldn't
pan out, then I would go.
I think I would just have to
run away and call my children
and wish them luck.
Do the best you can
where you are.
I'll do what I can where I am.
I ain't coming to get you.
Sorry dude, you had a good life.
(laughing)
I love my family more than
Bruce Campbell loves his family,
it's official.
I'm not a very good shot,
I certainly can't shoot
a crossbow, I'm not
a very good fisherman.
I would be like Homer.
Homer was blind and wandered
around a really dangerous
landscape with a bunch of futile
lords and somehow stayed alive
by telling people stories and
was smart enough never to
have them end, right?
Because if then ended,
then they'd kill him.
I would drive here, I would
do zombie makeup on myself
and then just walk around.
The only problem would be if
some dude with a shotgun saw me,
he'd shoot me in the head
and then it would kind of
defeat the purpose.
Are zombies on the news coming?
Did I miss something?
Are zombies walking
up and down my alley
and I need to be ready for them?
I'm sure you've seen examples
of people where there is
no separation and this is
something that's real to them.
Wrestling is real to them!
What's up Zed Heads?
The zombie apocalypse is coming
whether you like it or not.
It's not a matter of if, it's
a matter of when, and our homies
at Zombie Industries are
going to help us prepare.
They've got the bleeding targets
that you can use
to armor yourself up
and protect your family.
Here at Zombie Industries,
we're going to teach you firearm
safety, hand-to-hand combat,
and how to put a bullet
right through a zombie's brain
because it's your patriotic duty
to prepare yourself
for the zombie hoards.
It's the end of the world
and I feel fine.
We're going to
train you up solid.
Ladies, show them what you got!
(yelling)
We're coming for you, zombies!
We understand that it's not
a matter of if the zombies come,
but more of a matter of when
and when they do,
we want people to be ready.
We're all about preparedness
here and it really is
something that we think
is a family activity.
Everybody in the house
should be prepared
for when the zombies come.
We really want to instill
for our customers to actually
have an avenue basically to
come out and give them products
to train with.
Our targets basically have
been shot in testing up to
about 2500 times,
maybe a little bit more.
We've shot them with everything
from a .22 all the way up to
a 50 BMG, so anything
you want to throw at it.
All of our bleeding targets have
500 individual cells of blood
inside distributed through the
center mass and through the face
so it's not one large bladder
where you shoot it once
and everything runs out
and the fun's over.
Our targets are designed
to last all day.
Firearm safety is
a very serious thing.
When you start talking about
shooting three-dimensional
realistic human beings,
people get uneasy about that,
but as soon as you make it
a zombie, then it's okay.
We came out with
the Chris zombie,
who is the quintessential
zombie.
He still, to this day, remains
our number one seller.
We did quickly move into
the terrorist and the Nazi.
Zombies don't really
discriminate
so we came out with
an ex-girlfriend.
When people ask us all the
time, how do you have a female
shooting target and I have to
tell them, look, if it comes
right down to it, if my
mother becomes a zombie,
it's going to break my heart,
but I'm not going to hesitate.
I'm going to have
to double tap her.
When the zombie apocalypse
arrives, will you survive?
Zombie go boom!
Kick undead ass!
The USA-made Ka-Bar Zombie
Killer Swabbie was created
to ensure you are prepared in
the most extreme of situations.
Holy shit!
Holy shit!
I didn't know if that was
actually a possibility
to take somebody's face off.
The layers are ridiculous,
crystal skull, extremely hard.
The crystal skull is actually
probably harder than
a human skull and
this was just easy.
How easy was that?
That was just as easy
as the first strike.
ZGB approved!
Oh my God!
Calm down,
it's okay.
I love that thing!
A common phrase in
zombie circles is
"blades don't need reloading."
I always say, yeah but,
blades need sharpening.
Have you ever tried to hit
someone with the back end
of a machete?
Like the parts that aren't sharp
or the flat end of a machete?
They'd be like, ah,
why'd you do that?
You slapped me.
Pack of dogs, I'd have a big
pack of dogs, big vicious
and small vicious dogs
as long as there was dog food.
I guess the zombies would
provide the dog food but then
the dogs, you know how dogs like
to get into corpses and stuff
and they throw up.
I'd have to be letting the dog
out in the middle of the night
so they could vomit
and then the zombies
might get into the house.
It's interesting because if it
did happen, people would think,
okay, so it's like Romero
movies, but it might not be.
It might not necessarily
be George's vision.
It might be something else.
You might cut their head off or
smash it in and the body still
comes after you or something
like that, you know?
(laughing)
I think, you know,
movies show that there really
is no good weapon,
they always find a way.
You're going to
run out of bullets.
There's too many to hold off
with a sword or a blunt object.
Fire doesn't stop them.
I mean, we're screwed.
I have never seen a zombie
movie where someone dies of
dehydration, but that's going
to kill a lot more people
than zombie bites.
I've never seen a zombie movie
where someone has drunk from
a puddle and crapped themselves
to death, but that's going to
kill a lot more people
than zombie bites.
Starvation, disease, friendly
fire, accidents, infections,
all these things are going
to kill people a lot faster.
Liberals will
become your zombies.
They're going to be the first
ones to cry and moan and die
and they're going to be the
first ones to do the looting,
the pillaging, and they're
going to be the zombies.
Like a lot of liberal Americans,
I was excited when Barack Obama
took office four years ago, but
it's a very different world now,
and Mitt Romney is a very
different candidate, one with
the vision and determination to
cut through business as usual
politics, and finally put this
country back on the path
to the zombie apocalypse.
He's not afraid to face
a ravening grasping hoard of
sub-humans because that's how
he sees poor people already.
Paid for by the Committee to
Learn Parkour, like really soon,
like maybe take a class
or something.
We talked to a lot of
survivalists and preppers,
each of them stressing
at the top of their list
the most important thing
during any catastrophe --
you know, like
a zombie apocalypse --
the need for clean water and
water filters like this one.
So in the name of survival,
I'm going to pee into this cup,
filter it, and then drink it,
because if this filter works,
it's not really my
pee anymore, right?
You ready for this?
Okay, here it goes.
I'm thinking like I'm
at a doctor's office.
Alright, here we go.
Zombies are coming.
It doesn't help
that it's fizzy.
It's warm.
It kind of tastes
like water, yeah.
I think that was safe to drink.
We're good.
MATT I've tried to break down
every state in the United States
based on zombie survivability
and I used 20 or 30 different
factors -- topography, climate,
public health infrastructure,
natural resources, military
presence, on and on and on,
the most important one is
population density, by far.
Up there also is
gun ownership rate.
New Jersey ranks the lowest
in zombie survivability.
Population density of 1,000
people per square mile
and a gun ownership rate
of 12.3 percent.
Then we look at Wyoming --
population density of 5.6 people
per square mile and a gun
ownership rate of 68 percent,
so it's like one dude with a gun
sitting on a farm going,
"Hey buddy, do you see
a zombie over there?"
And the other guy yelling over,
"No, I don't see one!"
Five people per square mile
makes very few zombies.
The entire northeast
is totally screwed.
If you ever want a reason
not to move to New York City,
that's a reason.
When zombies come,
everybody's dead.
New York is the hero
city, it just is.
Like I was in New York for 9/11,
I was there for the blackout,
and look what happened with
this horrific storm?
New Yorkers freaking came
together, they kept calm,
they carried on, and they're
dealing, so New York can handle
anything and it's the most
densely populated place
in North America.
L.A., where I'm from, gone.
(laughter)
I think one of the greatest
misconceptions in zombie
survival is that zombies are
what you need to worry about
when you're trying to survive.
Zombies are only one of a whole
host of threats that you really
need to face and I would argue
that humans are as great
or maybe even a greater threat
than zombies, right?
I'm not a horror fan.
I don't seek out fear.
I think that most horror fans,
in their core, feel safe.
I don't.
I naturally feel scared
so my writing is to exercise
an anxiety that I already have.
I base my zombies on AIDS.
Now AIDS is insanely
hard to get.
It's not waterborne, it's not
foodborne, it's not airborne.
How in the world did it kill
millions and millions of people
and still killing millions
and millions of people?
Because we, as people,
were stupid.
If the President of the United
States had gone on national
television in say 1981 and said
look, there's a really, really
horrible disease, hard to get,
but if you do get it, you're
doomed, so there's going to be
a national education campaign,
we could have cured AIDS with
a pamphlet and so it's easy to
imagine something like a zombie
plague getting out of control.
MATT: Absolutely, a zombie
pandemic is possible.
This new wave of zombies, this
living zombie, that is created
by some sort of infection or
virus that gets out of hand.
I really do think that
it's more plausible now
than I did, say, five years ago.
Could a zombie
apocalypse happen?
Well, let's examine what we mean
or what the storytellers mean
when they say this.
They mean a parasite jumping
from one organism to another.
This happens routinely.
60 percent of all human diseases
come from the animals
that we eat or live with.
AIDS has infected
75 billion people
and killed 35 million people.
Bird flu and Swine flu,
the Bubonic Plague in Europe
killed half of the population
at the time.
The Spanish Epidemic in 1918
killed more people
than the First World War.
STEVEN: ANSD is the abbreviation
for the disease I made up,
it stands for Ataxic
Neurodegenerative Satiety
Deficiency Syndrome.
Ataxic means you
don't walk well.
Neurodegenerative means that
your brain is being degraded,
it's degenerating.
Satiety is a sense that you're
full, the sense that you've
eaten enough and that's
in your brain, too.
Your brain is what tells you
you've eaten enough and it's
a syndrome because we don't
know what causes it.
There is one thing
that we can't ever do,
we can't raise the dead.
In the book I wrote,
we philosophically decided
that they were dead because
I realized medically speaking,
I can't have anything that makes
the dead come back to life,
but other than that aspect,
you can have brain pathology.
You can have neurobiological
insults that will yield
a kind of presentation
of a person who acts like
the zombies we see
in the movies.
There are many splendid examples
of parasites that control
behavior and often times, these
examples are as fantastical
or even more fantastical than we
can see in Hollywood creations.
So we have examples of fungi
controlling ant behavior.
We have emerald jeweled wasps
injecting a very specific mind
manipulator into the brains
of cockroaches,
lots of examples of parasites
controlling behavior.
We call them zombies and
we even think about it now
in the context of
zombie biology.
In the case of the ants,
the case of the zombie ants,
what happens is that a regular
colony of ants is living in
a tropical rain forest and
in the course of foraging,
they walk through a patch of
fungal spores in the ground
and these fungal spores attach
tightly and start replicating
inside its body...and then
at a particular moment when
the fungus needs to complete
the rest of its life cycle,
it controls the behavior of this
ant, making it leave the colony
and go out into the
understory vegetation
and go to the underside
of the leaf, deeply imbed
those mandibles into the leaf,
because on the underside of
this leaf, on the platform,
the fungus is going to grow
a large stalk from the back of
the ant's head to produce spores
which are shot down
into the forest floor
and the cycle continues again.
Why doesn't it
happen for humans?
It really comes down
to a numbers game.
There are almost a million
species of insects
and there are roughly 5,500,
6,000 species of mammals.
So evolution just hasn't had
the opportunity to play with our
minds, but despite that, we do
see some really cool examples
in mammals of
controlled behavior.
Rabies is something that really
springs to people's minds.
MATT: When I was growing up,
no one ever talked about Mad Cow
Disease, but Mad Cow Disease
is in the news a lot now.
Here's the problem with Mad
Cow Disease, it's created by
a protein and it's called a
Prion, it's a mutated protein.
This protein, if it gets into
your brain, it causes all
the other proteins in your
brain to mutate also.
The new strain of this protein
is showing evidence that
it can be transferred
from blood to blood.
On top of that, the new symptoms
are it causes you to go insane
and often violently insane.
Mad Cow Disease turned
into Mad Human Disease
turned into Mad Zombie Disease.
We already have Mad Cow,
we already have Mad Human,
and we're halfway to Mad Zombie,
but the problem is
once it happens, it's too late.
There's no more polite
discussion about what it's
going to be like and debating
about the best way to survive.
It's run and scream time.
There's no more making movies,
there's no more watching TV,
there's just, oh my God,
I'm being eaten.
It appears the dead have risen
and are walking among us.
These zombies have a certain
sexual preference
by attacking only men.
Officials at the Pentagon
are not sure if this is
a biological attack or
if the zombies are simply
doing this by choice.
ALEX: In every town, in America
pretty much, or any town of any
reasonable size, there's a group
of young people engaged,
even as we speak, making their
independent zombie film.
MAX: I don't know when
the zombie craze is going to
die out, I don't think it'll
ever die out completely.
I think they're,
in some element,
they're going to
be here to stay.
I didn't expect it
to go on this long.
I happen to write "The Zombie
Paper" and then later the book,
just at the right time and then
it just keeps flying forward,
or shambling forward, I should
say, this whole zombie thing.
There's probably a ceiling on
zombie popularity, but I don't
know if we've seen it yet and
I don't know when we will see it
but as long as things
are fucked up.
?
?
I've heard a number of people
say, this is it, zombies have
run their course and now we're
going to see vampires again
or we're going to see werewolves
or we're going to see tapeworms.
I don't know.
DR. BLUMBERG: "World War Z," the
movie, is a perfect case study
of not just how mainstream
zombies have become,
but how much more mainstream
they might become.
Because that film is a PG-13,
it is sort of a new frontier
in a sense.
KYLE: And that was scooped
just a little bit by
the "Warm Bodies" film because
the "Warm Bodies" film
was kind of the first
zombie date movie.
Now we have a zombie movie you
can bring your girlfriend to.
GREG: You know, to me, zombie
movies aren't zombie movies
without gore.
That's like doing a gangster
movie, but nobody has any guns.
Part of the whole culture of it
is the idea that you are being
devoured literally
by another human being.
FRAN: From "Night of the Living
Dead" to "World War Z,"
we've covered a lot of ground
so it'll be interesting to see
zombies in space or something.
Not only do we have
PG-13 zombie movies,
we have kid zombie movies now.
Hollywood is banking on zombies
being that big, and to me,
zombies have always been
small, little guys.
THEA: I really believe that it's
something that connects us all
and it's going to get bigger.
ROBERT: They're gonna be on your
streets, they're gonna be in
your stores, they're gonna be
coming at you, whether they're
fast or slow or whatever the
hell they are, but it's here to
stay, and you know what, if you
don't like it, get used to it
because it's not going anywhere.
?
? Our love story could be
kinda gory, far from boring ?
? We'd meet at a post...
apocalypse ?
? Yeah, I'd be slowly walking
in a group stalking you ?
? You'd be the only man alive
that I could not resist ?
? Then all of your friends
they'd try to kill us ?
? But only because
they'd be jealous ?
? That our love is deeper
than Edward and Bella's ?
? If I were a zombie
I'd never eat your brain ?
? I'd just want your heart ?
? Yeah, I'd want your heart
I'd just want your heart ?
? Yeah oh, if I were a zombie
I'd never eat your brain ?
? I'd just want your heart ?
? Yeah, I'd want your heart
I'd just want your heart ?
? 'Cause I want ya ?
? You'd be hiding in
a second floor apartment ?
? Knocking all the stairs down
to save your life... ?
? From the undead ?
? Double-barrel shotgun
taking out the slow ones ?
? Then you'd see the passion
burning in my eye ?
? And I'd keep my head ?
? Then all of your friends
they'd try to kill us ?
? But only because
they'd be jealous ?
? That our love is deeper
than Edward and Bella's ?
? Oh...if I were a zombie
I'd never eat your brain ?
? I'd just want your heart ?
? Yeah, I'd want your heart
I'd just want your heart ?
? Yeah oh, if I were a zombie
I'd never eat your brain ?
? I'd just want your heart ?
? Yeah, I'd want your heart
I'd just want your heart ?
? 'Cause I want ya ?
? And I'd try not to
bite and infect you ?
? Because I'd respect you
too much ?
? Yeah, that's why I'd wait
until we got married ?
? Oh, and our happiest days
would be spent ?
? Picking off all your friends ?
? And they'd see a love this
deep won't stay buried ?
? If I were a zombie
I'd never eat your brain ?
? I'd just want your heart ?
? Yeah, I'd want your heart
I'd just want your heart ?
? Yeah oh, if I were a zombie
I'd never eat your brain ?
? I'd just want your heart ?
? Yeah, I'd want your heart
I'd just want your heart ?