While in the middle of something else entirely, I started wondering about how and when “zombie apocalypse” entered the lexicon—or, more precisely, when it started showing up in major newspapers and magazines in contexts other than entertainment reviews or the CDC’s zombie apocalypse survival guide. So I looked it up! Like the CDC guide itself, it seems to have made it to major media after the premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead in 2010—though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t in use before that in other media & in society.
The New York Times: October 24, 2012, “Peanut Butter Takes on an Unlikely Best Friend” (food section story about peanut butter and pickle sandwiches)
Mr. Zalben was overjoyed to find another human being with whom he could geek out over the PB&P. We were like the last two survivors of a zombie apocalypse, accidentally finding each other while raiding a Whole Foods for supplies, and ecstatically dancing around for a little while.
(Bonus disturbing content: a plan to build a zombie theme park in Detroit in 2010.)
The Economist: November 3, 2014, “Of warming and warnings: Climate change,” about the 2014 IPCC climate future overview
Bill McKibben, an American climate campaigner, went for broke, calling the report "just short of announcing that climate change will produce a zombie apocalypse, plus random beheadings, plus Ebola.”
The Wall Street Journal: December 4, 2013, “Arm-in-Arm, Millennials March Into the Future of Knitting”
"Whoever figured out how to knit with just her arms is going to do way better than I will once the zombie apocalypse comes," says Ms. Morgan.
The New Yorker: October 26, 2015, “Food and Drink: Tropica 128,” bar review
When it's not jumping, the bar evokes a Rainforest Cafe post-zombie apocalypse (cloudy fish tank, drooping plants, crooked dolphin painting).
New York (Intelligencer, maybe online-only), May 29, 2012, “Four Signs That the Zombie Apocalypse Has Already Begun,” a guy in Florida ate someone’s face
The zombie apocalypse — the one we’ve all feared for the past couple of years or so, whenever Walking Dead premiered — has finally begun.
London Review of Books: September 10, 2015, "Let’s all go to Mars,” about SpaceX
This means that, as Musk1 points out, ‘even if there is some zombie apocalypse, you’ll still be able to travel throughout the country using the Tesla Supercharger system.’
The New York Review of Books: May 29, 2014, “The Road to the Zombie Office,” a book review about the workplace
A somewhat darker view of the contemporary corporate workplace is projected on the Internet by The Zombie Office, a webcomic-cum-merchandising-site with the slogan “The zombie apocalypse is here, now get back to work.”
The Financial Times: June 28, 2011, “Since you asked: How to ringfence a casino marriage,” about finances and marriage (and the prospect of divorce, I guess)
"Yes. And the ATMs and debit cards. The kind of stuff that if it all went away, civilisation would collapse into some sort of zombie apocalypse. This is all utility banking."
So there you have it. I’m resisting the urge to write an extensive series of footnotes with links to books and articles about the cultural history of zombies. Well, maybe I’ll just leave one.
See you Monday!
Ed. note: lmaooooooooo
Nice, thanks for collecting these references to "zombie apocalypse" together. The common meaning appears to be as a synonym for "sh*t hits the fan" on a global scale, in an indescript manner, but also with this weird, underlying disbelief that a global systemic breakdown would actually happen. Or maybe that's my personal opinion coloring my interpretation of how the phrase is being used.
Interesting! More data: 28 Days Later is 2002, Google Ngram shows an inflection point in 2005 and World War Z comes out in 2006. Also my kid showed me the Halloween episode of Community this morning.