Zombie History, Myth and Reality

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Who doesn’t love a good zombie story? Every Sunday, for instance, many devoted Walking Dead fans tune in to see what happens to Rick, Carl, Darryl, Glen, Maggie, Carol and the rest of the currently surviving cast. Perhaps it’s because we’ve often fantasized about what we would actually do in a similar situation, or it’s simply our curiosity about life and death that attract us to zombie creatures. Either way you look at it, you can’t deny that zombies have become a staple in our popular culture.

Aside from The Walking Dead, there are numerous zombie films that are even cult favorites—like White Zombie (the first zombie film), Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Idle Hands and many others. But have you ever stopped to question how the notion of a zombie ever came into being?

The whole idea of a zombie creature originates with West African Voodoo religion. It’s believed that Voodoo priests could reanimate a corpse to exact their revenge or do their personal bidding. With the emergence of the slave trade to the New World, these beliefs spread into Haiti and North America. It wasn’t until 1932 that the term zombie ever appeared in print (in a short story called, The Unknown Painter).

Today, we can largely thank George Romero for the concept of the modern zombie creature. His numerous films depict the often seen flesh-craving zombie that has to be taken down by damaging the brain or severing the head.

In the event of a real-life zombie apocalypse, what would you do? Where would you run? And what tools would you use? This info graphic not only shares the interesting history behind zombies in Voodoo religion and popular culture, but it also shows what actual cities are the most/least likely to be affected & what survival tools you should use.

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