They're Coming to Get You, Barbara

Despite my extreme phobia I stayed up until 1:30am Sunday night watching “Dawn of the Dead”. Surprisingly, I didn’t have a single nightmare and I wasn’t scared at all. I think the difference is the speed of the zombies. In “Return of the Living Dead” the zombies are lumbering, awkward, moaning messes that somehow always get you. In Dawn of the Dead they just move at regular speed. When I have nightmares about zombies they are the slow ones and I run but I can never rest because eventually they’ll get there. In fact my zombie nightmares have less to do with the actual zombies and more to do with the anticipation of the monster and the never resting. I wonder what that says about me.

So Dawn of the Dead was scary but not like I thought it would be especially after staying up late by my self to watch it. It had a little Old Yeller theme running through it which got me thinking about rabies. Yeah, I know there’s some things to be said about Voodoo, but if you mix those stories in with stories of rabid people lumbering around with foaming mouths and twitching then you’ve got a good “swear to God this story is really true, it happened to my sister’s best friend’s cousin” story. I guess this is the basis for 28 Days which I haven’t seen but now that I know I can watch zombie movies a again (as long as they move at regular speed).

I googled Zombie & Rabies and found Real Zombies, and How They’re Theoretically Possible, an Argumentative Paper by Robert Ashkenes . I also found Zombie Infection Simulation which was pretty neat and the The Real Zombie Attack Survival Test which told me I’d last about 3 hours without other more experienced survivalists – so if a zombie virus is unleashed Mr. BlahZeeBlah better be handy.

and just in case you are wondering I really like the band White Zombie.