--- title: Jeff Alexander on Why Zombies Won't Die description: What's it going to take to kill zombies? I don't mean individual zombies, who of course can be brought down for good with a shot... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7134223/the-real-reason-zombies-never-die/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2011-10-17T09:30:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T09:42:21.051Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Jeff Alexander on Why Zombies Won't Die og:description: What's it going to take to kill zombies? I don't mean individual zombies, who of course can be brought down for good with a shot... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7134223/the-real-reason-zombies-never-die/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt52d64e4128ed1d51/698a920c457a52e140d7054b/thewalkingdead.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TheWalkingDead og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Jeff Alexander on Why Zombies Won't Die twitter:description: What's it going to take to kill zombies? I don't mean individual zombies, who of course can be brought down for good with a shot... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt52d64e4128ed1d51/698a920c457a52e140d7054b/thewalkingdead.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) # The Real Reason Zombies Never Die by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Oct 17, 2011 9:30 AM UTC  How did "The Walking Dead" make it to a second season? How did "The Walking Dead" make it to a second season?AMC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Oct 17, 2011 9:30 AM UTC What’s it going to take to kill zombies? I don’t mean individual zombies, who of course can be brought down for good with a shot to the head. I mean zombies as a pop-cultural force. If they were just a fad, they’d be gone by now. I date the current zombie renaissance (if that phrase isn’t in poor taste) to 2002’s _28 Days Later_, nearly a decade ago. Fads don’t last that long. Zombies don’t last that long. Yet with the second season of AMC’s _The_ _Walking Dead_ currently underway, the zombies of the screen and the page don’t seem to be going anywhere. Not even the mobile ones. Furthermore, zombies seem to be seeping into real life, with zombie pub crawls, zombie 5k runs, and CDC reports on how to survive a zombie attack. Normally all it takes to bring down a genre is a good parody, like _This Is Spinal Tap_ did with hair metal. Yet zombies have taken not one but two strong hits, in the form of _Shaun of the Dead_ and _Zombieland_, and they just keep on coming. Why won’t this phenomenon die already? Like it or not, zombie stories just plain _work_. They go hand in hand with the end of the world, always a fraught subject. They play on multiple fears, from our revulsion at decomposing human remains, to those remains coming at you with cannibalistic intent; to a potential fate worse than death, i.e. the permanent loss of self represented by zombification. There are the mostly immutable rules and internal logic of zombie tales, providing a framework for storytellers that allows them to spin a fast-moving, unlikely yarn without bogging down in explanations. And a zombie story is a ready-made allegory about anything you care to indict, from mob groupthink (_Night of the Living Dead_) to consumerism (both _Dawns of the Dead_) to the rape of the environment (the novel _World War Z_ by Max Brooks) to the unexamined life (_Shaun of the Dead_) to science and/or animal activism run amok (_28 Days Later_ with the twofer!). But I think it’s simpler than that. People like stories where they can see themselves. And people like to imagine that when the zombie apocalypse comes, they’ll be among the brave, resourceful few standing against the shambling — or, God forbid, sprinting — hordes of the undead. (**MORE:** [Let’s Talk Zombies: AMC to Air ‘Walking Dead’-Themed Talk Show](http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/29/lets-talk-zombies-amc-to-air-walking-dead-themed-talk-show/)) Stephen King, speaking of his killer-virus epic _The Stand_, once said that there’s something comforting about the end of the world. Everyone assumes they’ll survive; all of their current problems, which seem so daunting today, are suddenly, conveniently irrelevant; and all you ever wanted is just lying around waiting for you to pick it up, including everything you need to fight off the Army of Darkness. But let’s face it: if that were true of everyone, there wouldn’t _be_ a zombie apocalypse, would there? You couldn’t even get a decent zombie panic going with those kinds of numbers, let alone a full-blown Armageddon. Statistically, you and I and most of the people we know are likely to be eating brains with the rest of them pretty early on. Not as nice to think about as dropping zombies with well-aimed bullets and well-formed quips, but there it is. (**MORE:** [Zombie 101: Colson Whitehead’s Primer on the Apocalypse](http://search.time.com/results.html?N=0&Nty=1&p=0&cmd=tags&srchCat=Full+Archive&Ntt=zombies&x=0&y=0)) We’re all special and unique to ourselves and to those who love us, which is as it should be. Just like the inexorably shrinking casts of your average zombie story, we need each other to deal with the undifferentiated masses teeming beyond our walls. But the faceless strangers out there are thinking the same thing about themselves — and the converse about you. When enough people realize this, zombie stories may lose some of their deathgrip on us. But as a fan, I’m hoping that doesn’t happen any time soon. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7134223/the-real-reason-zombies-never-die/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7134223/the-real-reason-zombies-never-die/"},"headline":"The Real Reason Zombies Never Die","datePublished":"2011-10-17T09:30:57.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T09:42:21.051Z","description":"What's it going to take to kill zombies? 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