Zombie Apocalypse

Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as carriers, radiation, mental diseases, vectors, pathogens, parasites, scientific accidents, etc. The English word "zombie" was first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi". One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was W. Seabrook's The Magic Island , the account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls. A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian folklore, emerged in popular culture during the latter half of the 20th century. After zombie films such as Dawn of the Dead and Michael Jackson's music video Thriller , the genre waned for some years. An evolution of the zombie archetype came with the video games Resident Evil and The House of the Dead in the late 1990s, with their more scientific and action-oriented approach and their introduction of fast-running zombies, leading to a resurgence of zombies in popular culture. Games were initially followed by a wave of low-budget Asian zombie films such as the zombie comedy Bio Zombie and action film Versus , and then a new wave of popular Western zombie films in the early 2000s, including films featuring fast-running zombies—such as 28 Days Later , the Resident Evil and House of the Dead films, and the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake—and the British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead . The "zombie apocalypse" concept, in which the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, has since become a staple of modern popular art, seen in such media as The Walking Dead franchise. The late 2000s and 2010s saw the humanization and romanticization of the zombie archetype, with the zombies increasingly portrayed as friends and love interests for humans. In this context, zombies are often seen as stand-ins for discriminated groups struggling for equality, and the human–zombie romantic relationship is interpreted as a metaphor for sexual liberation and taboo breaking . The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi", actually referring to the Afro-Brazilian rebel leader named Zumbi and the etymology of his name in "nzambi". The Oxford English Dictionary gives the origin of the word as Central African and compares it to the Kongo words "nzambi" and "zumbi" . In Haitian folklore, a zombie is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft. The concept has been popularly associated with the religion of voodoo, but it plays no part in that faith's formal practices. How the creatures in contemporary zombie films came to be called "zombies" is not fully clear. He eventually accepted this linkage, even though he remained convinced at the time that "zombies" corresponded to the undead slaves of Haitian voodoo as depicted in White Zombie with Bela Lugosi. Zombies are featured widely in Haitian rural folklore as dead persons physically revived by the act of necromancy of a bokor, a sorcerer or witch. The bokor is opposed by the houngan and the mambo of the formal voodoo religion.