Business of LifeIt may seem strange, but there's a resurgent market in Zombies, the walking dead.
Books, films and video games about zombies are speaking to the deep and pervasive fear many have.
Most zombie zealots seem to agree that the zombie renaissance has something to do with the anxieties of life after Sept. 11.
"People have apocalypse on the brain right now," Mr. Brooks said. "It's from terrorism, the war, natural disasters like Katrina." Several zombie aficionados said there was a zombielike quality to the spread of the bird flu.
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If you need to brush up on zombie lore, a little background. Zombies have their origin in Caribbean voodoo; they are thought to be reanimated corpses, under the control of the witch who reanimated them.
In modern literature and films, zombies are typically mindless, slow-moving creatures (due to the stiffness of necrotic tissue, Mr. Brooks writes) with but one aim: to eat flesh. And they're not particular about whose flesh they eat.
Seems to me, there's enough walking dead out there. What we need are more people waking up and becoming more responsible for the world around us.