Prejudice and The Reanimated

I'm trying to figure out why we, as a people, are afraid of zombies.

It makes sense that you're going to be cautious around anything that wants to eat your brain, but I think we fear them in principle. Just the idea of them is enough to make us shiver and hide.

It's weird. There are other things, things more likely than a zombie to kill or mutilate us that we don't fear.

Let's take hippos (the natural foil of the zombie) as a counterpoint. I like hippos. They're cool. They star in many of the books I read to my toddler son as he sits on my lap. I would seek out baby hippos and hug them if I thought I wouldn't immediately be trampled to death by their mother. And that's the thing. Hippos are dangerous. They're responsible for more human deaths in Africa than any other animal (except humans). That's got to be way more than the "death-by-zombie" figure.

But still we shudder at the animated dead, leaving them out of the lucrative plush toy market.

Shouldn't we be happy to see our loved ones revivified? Or, probably more likely, sad that they aren't quite the same conversationalists they were before the change? Nope. We aren't happy or sad. We're creeped out, freaked out, or screaming.

Well, I've got no problem with them, as long as they're on the other side of a stout metal door. Or in a gladiatorial pit, fighting other zombies for my amusement.

Now zombie hippos would be another matter. 3,000 pounds of angry rotting meat. That would be something to really be afraid of.

Yesiree.

Zombie. Hippos.