It’s all about a contagion nowadays. Zombies sprout from a fatal plague released on an unsuspecting nation bent on its own destruction. A cough, a sneeze, a scratch and everyone runs for cover. But what if the zombie virus doesn’t come from a genetic mutation of the common cold?
Just sayin’.
Monday Mayhem has featured many end-of-days scenarios.What if the plague everyone’s waiting for is not the catalyst that jumpstarts the zombie apocalypse? What if it’s something else?
Legend has it that Haitian voodoo doctors had the ability to raise the dead. In some cases, raise the dead and make the undead their slaves. Cases exist indicating supposed resurrections took place soon after death, which in turn caused residents to question the veracity of such claims. It wasn’t until sometime had passed that authorities had discovered witch doctors had used psychoactive drugs to render victims unconscious to the point where they appeared dead. Village medical doctors could not detect a pulse therefore their declaration on the death certificate rang true. However, soon after burial, the witch doctors would order exhumations so as to use the dead for working on sugar plantations.
A hundred years ago, everyone thought the zombie apocalypse would happen from voodoo doctors gone wild, hypnotizing a whole generation of folks into believing they would become the undead. My, how times have changed.
Then came George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the director’s 1968 anthem to the zombie apocalypse. The premise is an easy one. A radioactive space probe from Venus explodes in Earth’s atmosphere rendering those caught in the debris, zombies. No plague here. The zombies go on a rampage to secure food for which they can feast. Unfortunately, the only food they have in mind is ingesting human. Romero’s film singlehandedly created the zombie genre we know today. However, the one factor separating Romero’s zombie apocalypse with today’s undead story makers is in Romero’s zombie origins—they came from space.
Seems quite a great deal comes from space nowadays. Transformers, Independence Day aliens, Predator, E.T., Cloverfield aliens, Close Encounters of the Third Kind aliens, Invasion of the Body Snatcher aliens, Super 8 aliens.
See a pattern here?
Who’s to say zombies will not come from space?
Just sayin’.
Do you still believe a plague will cause the zombie apocalypse?
Looking to God 
i still would put money on a plague causing a zombie apocalypse. but the idea of it coming from outer space is interesting. i suppose it could be both. a super-virus that came from out of space. man – we would be so dead if that ever happened. literally. :p
So glad you mentioned this. It’s one of my best-loved and most-overlooked bits of trivia from zombie lore.
You might like the horrible but hilarious Plan 9 From Outerspace in which aliens come to earth and reanimate the dead as part of their plan to take over. Ed Wood at his best.
Good post. I’m currently working my way through ‘Falling Skies’, and there’s definitely a good post-apocalyptic feel to it which is reminiscant of many zombie stories. And then there’s the film ‘District 9’ film (a favourite of mine) which has a human being turned into some sort of monster by contact with an alien device. All of these makes me think there’s a lot of ground for combining alien invasion and zombie apocalypse scenarios. In fact, in ‘Falling Skies’, the harnessed kids could be viewed as zombies controlled by the alien invaders.
Reblogged this on The TV Media Junkie ReBlog Blog.
I think it would be pretty cool if someone made a movie about an alternate dimension where Zombies are the only inhabitants on Earth, and the twist would be that the Zombies would behave as Humans would in our dimension. And instead of wondering about the Zombie Apocalypse, they’d be wondering about the Human Apocalypse. If someone were to make a movie like that, it would probably be the first Zombie movie I ever watch. 🙂
Nice idea, fits with the many worlds/multiverse scenario favoured by some cosmologists which states that somewhere there in a parallel universe where everything possible is actually happening – and that includes zombies living in fear of the human apocalypse. Come to think of it, this was also one of the main premises of the original ‘I Am Legend’ book (ignore all the film adaptations!).
My money is on the rapidly evolving and often antibiotic resistant MRSA viruses.
Great post! I think that would be terrifying! And Romero was a genius, in my opinion, for doing that, having the virus come from outer space.
Well someone better warn those people moving to Mars because that has Dead Space written all over it. (Dead Space is a game about space zombies…)
I think someone should bring back the Witch Doctor’s Gone Wild source. Even for a few movies because that would be interesting in this day and age. Also, I’m chuckling that in the short list of aliens, you didn’t mention the Xenomorphs. I wonder what would happen if aliens came to Earth and found it infested with zombies. Would they try to figure out what happened or blow the planet up? Could the infestation go universal?
The only way to make zombies cooler is to give them lasers and spaceships, like the Borg from Star Trek.