I’ve never really been a fan of zombie apocalypse movies and such. “Night of the Living Dead” was a midnight movie cult classic when I was in college, for the same reason as “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”: it was an excuse to get out of the dorm late at night, meet girls, make them squeal and get them drunk.
Medically speaking, the entire concept of a zombie is just freakin ridiculous at first glance. The brain deteriorates to the point of not functioning after ten minutes without oxygen. So the idea of shooting, bashing or stabbing a zombie in the head to destroy it — I refuse to say “kill,” since you can’t kill something that’s already dead — compounds the ridiculous nature of this. A zombie brain isn’t functioning in the first place, so it’s kind of like appealing to a Hollywood Democrat’s sense of decency.
The two most recent efforts in this genre, however, have been a pleasant surprise. “World War Z” posits a zombie virus that animates the corpse after ten seconds — which is certainly a timespan that’s brief enough to keep the brain alive. And “The Walking Dead” posits a zombie which is controlled from the brain stem, which can survive much longer than the rest of the brain without oxygen.
Both of these works exhibit real plots, quality character development and relationships among survivors, and group dynamics that were either pitiful or simply nonexistent in earlier shows, such as “Night of the Living Dead.”
Enough criticism of “the cinema” such as it is ... let’s take a look at the DoD plan. The zombie apocalypse idea is so far-fetched: even assuming that a WWZ or TWD type virus could develop or be developed, it would have to spread and the contagion would have to be rapid.
This is what leads me to believe that “zombie” might be a code word for something else.
It’s just a useful scenario to war game. Really if you throw out the fantastical element what you have in a zombie scenario is this:
80% of the people are gone
about half of them have been “replaced” with highly contagious psychopaths
the infrastructure is gone
command structure has become nearly impossible to maintain
there will be no resupply
What do you do?
It’s an excellent worst case scenario to study. Made more useful by the large quantity of movies, books and now even TV shows that have worked in that ground, giving you a lot reasons why things that seem like good ideas might not actually work. All the best stuff within the genre is focused a lot more on how humans deal with this situation and how the situation changes them than on the zombies. There’s a lot of fertile ground for people who are in charge of people to consider.
You didn't watch the same classic ... in all senses of the word and not just horror or B-movie categories ... that I did.
There was plenty of interpersonal dynamic between the characters and there was a profound message weaved throughout.
Same with "Dawn of the Dead". Another instant classic.
"Day of the Dead" is a different story.