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Zombie Survival – A Universal Metaphor

How did zombies become so prevalent in the survivalist community?

Roughly a year ago my best friend insisted I read World War Z by Max Brooks. At first, I was very reluctant. Zombie genre stuff just wasn’t me. After some prodding, I came around and picked up a copy…

A chapter into it and I could not put the book down; I was hooked. Soon after, I plowed through several other related titles. What really got me infatuated with Zombie Apocalypse fiction was the similarity between real-world scenarios and what various writers like Max Brooks and JL Bourne were churning out. I realized why so many people in and around survival communities often had an interest in Zombie books and would say goofy expressions like, “When the Zombies come.” I now understand that for them, and now for me, Zombies have become a metaphor.

If you simply replace Zombie with economic collapse, pandemic, or natural disaster you could still have virtually the same story. This is why Zombie Fiction makes such a compelling metaphor for modern-day survival, and especially Urban Survival. It does not matter if we are talking about undead hordes or rioting mobs, the basics are all the same. It has become a way for two people to express the same fundamental idea about two seemingly different issues of survival.

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