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.
yeah, the first USE was generally much earlier—post-28 Days Later—but the uptake of it as a descriptive phrase for something ostensibly not zombie related was much later.
I wonder how the Z.A. tracks with metaphoric uses of "zombie" on its own. E.g. back in the High Blog Era one of the Crooked Timber guys wrote a book called "zombie economics" about undead ideas in heavy use.
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.
i really liked the “Rainforest Cafe post-zombie apocalypse,” very evocative
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.
yeah, the first USE was generally much earlier—post-28 Days Later—but the uptake of it as a descriptive phrase for something ostensibly not zombie related was much later.
I wonder how the Z.A. tracks with metaphoric uses of "zombie" on its own. E.g. back in the High Blog Era one of the Crooked Timber guys wrote a book called "zombie economics" about undead ideas in heavy use.