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Zombie Apocalypse: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''If thou openest not the gate to let me enter, I will break the door, I will wrench the lock, I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors. I will bring up the dead to eat the living. And the dead will outnumber the living.''|''[[The Epic of Gilgamesh]]''}}
Within the past couple days or hours, something very strange has happened. Maybe the [[Synthetic Plague]] the government was working on got unleashed. Maybe a [[Hollywood Voodoo|voodoo]] priest's spell [[Gone Horribly Wrong|went awry]]. Maybe [[Applied Phlebotinum|an alien space probe]] [[Plan 9 from Outer Space|broadcast a weird signal]] at the Earth, or [[Night of the Living Dead|fell to Earth and brought radiation with it]]. Maybe [[Dawn of the Dead (film)|there's just no more]] [[Doom (series)|room in Hell]].
Whatever the cause, the result is the same; the recently dead have risen, ''en masse'', to feed on the living. With each victim they claim, their numbers swell, and no force on Earth can contain them. As society collapses, it's up to the [[Big Damn Heroes]] to fight their way to safety or keep shooting until things blow over.
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Common to virtually all Zombie Apocalypse tales is that, regardless of the reason zombies attack living/non-infected people, they [[No Zombie Cannibals|never attack other zombies]]. Whether they'll attack animals other than humans varies, but it's rare for [[The Virus]] to affect other species, probably because it's cheaper to film humans in make-up than to work with animals, whether trained, animatronic, or CGI.
Due to the threat that zombies pose (they did just become the apocalypse, after all), protagonists of more serious works are required to become very genre savvy very quickly (but will demonstrate genre blindness with regard to the word "zombie" itself). [[Failure Is the Only Option|Failure is often the only option]] in these stories; [[Downer Ending|rarely do they have an ending]] that could be considered "happy" by typical standards, or indeed one where [[Inferred Holocaust|humanity survives]] as a species. Another main staple is that things will always, ''always'' [[It Got Worse|get worse]]. Either from the character's actions or circumstance which are out of their hands, no matter how improbable it is.
The collapse will also take place very quickly, over a period of weeks or months, instead of years. This prevents society and/or the main characters from adapting, and also makes [[Convenient Comas]] somewhat plausible. In the occasion where collapse occurs in a couple of months, a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier could realistically be expected to weather the entire outbreak start to finish in perfect isolation and safety. This will never be brought up. Characters will also assume that their portable radios have infinite reception and frequency range, and local dead air means a completely global collapse.
Subtrope of [[Our Zombies Are Different]]. A member of [[The Undead]] trope family. See [[Night of the Living Mooks]] for cases where zombies don't threaten the end of the world. See also [[Zombie Gait]], [[Everything's Deader with Zombies]]. [[Raising the Steaks]] is what happens when humans are not the only creatures that can be infected by [[The Virus]]. The Zombie apocalypse is almost always a case of [[Guilt-Free Extermination War]].
The trope Zombie Apocalypse refers to any kind of undead apocalypse — the common traits of this trope are that the undead spread rapidly, wipe out humans primarily by eating or biting them, and are usually highly infectious.
If you are looking for different types of Zombie, see [[Our Zombies Are Different]]. Not to be confused with [[Vampire Apocalypse the Series]] by Derek Gunn.
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* Parodied in the [[Monster Mash|Thriller Bark arc]] of ''[[One Piece]]'', where pretty much every single zombie convention is shattered. Here, zombies can move pretty quick, they get tired, they have resorted to fighting each other on a couple occasions, and bite from them has no effect; plus, the giant zombie is actually [[Lightning Bruiser|the fastest one of the bunch.]] However, this does make sense considering these zombie are made by implanting the personality and move set of a living person into a specially modified corpse.
** Thriller Bark zombies feel no pain, however. They feel ''fear'' just fine, but not pain.
* In ''[[Dorohedoro]]'', [[Crapsack World|Hole]] gets a Zombie Apocalypse every year, [[Genre Savvy|and surviving it is as simple as being inside behind locked doors after midnight]]. This has been going on long enough that the braver ([[Too Dumb to Live|or stupider]]) denizens of Hole have turned it into a ''game'', with prizes for killing a certain number of Zombies and everything.
* In a ''[[Naruto]]'' Shippuden filler arc, a group of ninja has a special jutsu that makes zombies. It turns out that the zombie apocalypse facing the leaf village is {{spoiler|actually a diversion, and the real goal is to revive 4 powerful ninja monks who can use a lightning jutsu to destroy the village in one shot.}}
** Chapter 515 shows a bunch of dead characters being revived by Kabuto to use as his personal army against the United Shinobi Alliance.
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' has a couple of variations:
** Manga: {{spoiler|The Cyclops Army, "lesser homunculi" released by Father. They behave a lot like zombies, but headshots don't kill them.}} They also eat people, beg for "mama" and "daddy", and [[Uncanny Valley|look like]] [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|MP-EVAs]].
** Anime: In [[The Movie]], the Gate inexplicably turns a group of Thule Society soldiers into zombies. They also have thick suits of armor. {{spoiler|The [[Big Bad]] has some knowledge of alchemy, and so she's able to control the zombies when she passes through the Gate. This results in armored, machine-gun-wielding zombies with militaristic capabilities.}} [[Badass|Badassity]] ensues. About their only real weakness is that they possess the zombie gait.
* Brutally subverted in ''[[Kara no Kyoukai:|Kara no Kyoukai]]'', the zombies are around for about a minute before [[Badass]] [[Knife Nut]] Shiki shows what happens when zombie meets [[Evil Eye|very well aimed]] knife.
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** They actually have to kill people to recharge their rings. One ripped out heart, filled with one of the seven emotions, equals 0.01% power restored to ''every'' ring. Not that they need the incentive.
** Worse yet, even though they're magic zombies revived by power rings, their bites still carry part of [[The Virus]]. Hope the rest of the universe is more [[Genre Savvy]] than {{spoiler|Donna Troy}}.
* The series ''[[Crossed]]'' is a 28-days series done with [[Garth Ennis]]'s subtle touch. The infected like to rape people to death and do other absolutely horrific things. They do not lose their intelligence and they can talk. Oh, boy do they talk. The crossed will prey on each other if there are no uninfected around, and they get bored. Ennis calls this the most fucked up thing he's ever done.
* ''[[2000 AD|Two Thousand AD]]'':
** ''Zombo'', had this as a background in the far future, where a zombie apolcalyse is sweeping through the galaxy, and being hushed up by the government. The eponymous Zombo is a human/zombie hybrid (DON'T TRY TO THINK ABOUT IT) created by the govenment to fight back. Zombies personalities are exactly the same as when they were alive, except they now crave human flesh. It's a weird story, even by 2000AD standards...
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* The comic ''[[Dead Eyes Open]]'' takes the Zombie Apocalypse and turns it on its head: people are rising again as the undead, yes, but the undead are intelligent, mostly want to be left alone, and are generally in more danger from the living than vice versa. {{spoiler|One character is also trying to invoke the Zombie Apocalypse in the most literal way possible -- ie, creating an apocalypse that will wipe out all the zombies.}}
* A UK-original story in the [[Marvel]] ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' comic involves a plague of reanimated Transformer corpses overrunning Kalis city-state under the command of rogue Autobot [[Mad Scientist|Flame]], which forced Autobot and Decepticon to [[Enemy Mine|join forces]] to defeat them.
* ''Impaler'' depicts the start of a [[Vampire Apocalypse]] which, by the end of the second volume, reached [[Apocalypse How|Class 0]] proportions, with no sign of stopping. Possessing the ability to become [[Made of Air]] [[Living Shadow]]s and manifest long shadow [[Combat Tentacles]], it only takes two days for what started as a few dozen vampires to become a few million and infest New York City to the point where it has to be nuked. It takes less time for them to wipe out Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
* ''Damn Nation'' takes place five years after a [[Vampire Apocalypse]] has mostly wiped out the United States. The government has abandoned the lower 48 states, and the rest of the world has put the country under quarantine.
* The [[Next Sunday AD|near-future]] "[[Apocalyptic Log|found journal]]" ''Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection'', which is presented as the journal of Seattle doctor Robert Twombly, has the western seaboard of the United States [[My Friends and Zoidberg|and some of Canada]] overcome with a zombie uprising in 2012 caused by, of all things, an [[Our Zombies Are Different|experimental food preservative]] gone bad. Although {{spoiler|Twombly is implied to have been killed at the end, since his journal cuts off with a blood splatter on the last page}} the fact it was found and published suggests (in the context of the journal's universe) the zombies were successfully stopped somehow.
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Night of the Living Dead]]'' and its sequels. Perhaps because the original film [[Unbuilt Trope|predates most of the zombie canon]], it actually avoids many of the "rules" it is credited with creating. Some zombies in the Romero canon can move quickly, use tools, and show problem-solving ability. These abilities are increasingly developed through the sequels. Also, the term "[[Not Using the Z Word|zombie]]" is never actually used. They are called "ghouls" instead.
** The sequels:
*** ''[[Dawn of the Dead (film)|Dawn of the Dead]]''
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*** ''[[Diary of the Dead]]''
*** ''[[Survival of the Dead]]''
* The 2004 remake ''[[Dawn of the Dead 2004]]'' updates the setting and has a much larger cast. Zombies are also distinguished from the original by being capable of sprinting.
* The ''[[Return of the Living Dead]]'' film series resulted from a dispute between John Russo and George Romero, which split the ''Night of the Living Dead'' sequels into two branches. Russo only lived to make the first film with his new partner Dan O'Bannon. The ''Return of the Living Dead'' series is more campy and humorous as well as more grotesque than Romero's more famous films. The zombies have human-level intelligence, specifically eat brains rather than just human flesh, and are much more difficult to kill. The first film lampshades its departures from the original by acknowledging the existence of ''Night of the Living Dead'' as a movie within its world. One character even exclaims, "You mean the movie lied?!"
** The sequels:
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*** ''Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis''
*** ''Return of the Living Dead: Rave from the Grave''
* ''[[28 Days Later]]'' is a zombie film with [[Technically Living Zombie|Technically Living Zombies]] who are afflicted with the "rage virus," something akin to super-rabies. Zombies are called "the infected", and can spread the condition through any bodily fluid transfer.
* In the Italian film ''[[Nightmare City]]'' (a.k.a. ''City of the Living Dead'') the zombies are radioactive,[[Blood Lust|drink blood]] instead of eating flesh, and can run.
* ''[[REC (film)|REC]]'', and the American remake ''[[Quarantine (film)|Quarantine]]'' document the first stage of a zombie apocalypse with an [[In-Universe Camera]]. In these films, the zombies are afflicted by a disease described as similar to rabies. It's hinted that a mysterious tenant intentionally created the disease.
* In Lamberto Bava's ''[[Demoni]]'', the creatures are more like monsters than zombies, but they work with zombie rules and may have been an inspiration for straight zombie films to follow.
* Blending Zombie Apocalypse with [[Our Werewolves Are Different]], ''Mulberry Street'' gives us a virus that's transmissible by rats as well as humans (''totally screwed'' was the phrase, wasn't it?), and turns infected people into rat-faced, rampaging cannibals. Subverted in that {{spoiler|the Virus goes into remission at sunrise, restoring victims to normal, albeit not until after the protagonists have killed off their loved ones in self-defense or mercy}}. Similarly, ''Reliquary'', the sequel to ''Relic'', has those affected by a watered-down virus (it turned you into a horrific cocktail of dinosaur/primate DNA in the original) turned into light-shunning, psychotic, rat/lizard faced things. The even more watered down version just turned you into something like a ''[[28 Days Later]]'' zombie.
* Italian director [[Lucio Fulci]]'s ''[[Zombi 2]]'' took the Romero concept and increased the gore factor with such novel touches as [[Everything Is Even Worse With Sharks|a zombie fighting a shark underwater]] and [[Eye Scream|a woman getting her eye gouged out with a sliver of wood]].
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* ''Colin'' (2008) plays the Zombie Apocalypse pretty much straight, with the eponymous zombie as the protagonist.
* ''[[Tokyo Zombie]]'' is a 2005 Japanese live-action Zom-Com about a pair of bumbling Jujitsu practitioners where zombies of the shambling variety first appear by popping out of a mountainous pile of garbage, toxic waste and discarded bodies called Black Fuji. Within 5 years all of Japan is covered in zombies except for a pyramid-shaped building inside a wall where rich people have gathered for safety and to amuse themselves with zombie-on-zombie as well as zombie-on-human fights to the undeath.
* ''Flight Of The Living Dead'' (2007) is a zombie movie which was clearly inspired by ''[[Snakes on a Plane]]'', since it takes place in the confines of a commercial airliner. The film's zombies follow the Russo mould, in that they can move faster than a shamble, but the incubation time for the virus varies wildly - some are infected and do not turn until a good while afterwards, whereas some are zombified almost as soon as they die. The most hilarious thing about the film is that [[Alien Geometries|the layout of said plane is completely screwed up]] (access tunnels and zombies clawing their way through the floor of the cabin are two of the most egregious examples). Also, the heroes are able to ''shoot guns inside the pressurised cabin'', which would be film-endingly disastrous if they hit a window.
** Unless the movie decided to be realistic in this regard, in which case the characters would just have to deal with an annoying whistling sound for the rest of the flight.
* The [[Zombie Blood Bath]] trilogy (1993, 1995, 2000) proves to be capable of bringing forth [[Narm Charm]] unlike anything you've ever seen.
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* [[Older Than Dirt]] invocations in [[Mesopotamian Mythology]]:
** In ''[[The Epic of Gilgamesh]]'', [[Jerkass Gods|the goddess]] [[I Have Many Names|Ishtar/Inanna]] tells her father that if he doesn't help her get revenge on Gilgamesh for turning down her proposition, she will break open the underworld and [[Disproportionate Retribution|bring up the dead to consume the living]], all of them. He, sensibly, agrees to her alternative. Had she gone through with it, it would probably have been the [[Ur Example]] by a couple of millennia.
** She does it again in ''[[Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld|Inannas Descent to The Netherworld]]'', sort of a [[Spin-Off]] of the ''Epic of Gilgamesh''. She uses the Zombie Apocalypse threat against the gatekeeper of the underworld, and after deliberating with Irkalla's queen (Inanna's sister Ereshkigal), he agrees to let her in, on the condition that she remove her clothing and jewelry at a series of checkpoints.
* Max Brooks' ''[[The Zombie Survival Guide]]'' is a handbook on how to survive a zombie apocalypse. Its advice is based around classic zombie behavior that is not quite rooted to any specific source. It breaks down the hazards and strategies in detail, from zombie strengths and weaknesses to effective combat tactics.
* Max Brooks' next effort, ''[[World War Z]]'' is a mockumentary of a past zombie invasion, conducted in a series of interviews with survivors from around the world. The interviews are ordered so as to take the reader through the war chronologically, from "Patient Zero" to the Zombie Apocalypse to the eventual human victory. The interviews are supposedly conducted by [[Author Avatar|Max Brooks himself]]. When ''The Zombie Survival Guide'' is mentioned and criticized, the "interviewer" says, "Oh really?"
* In [[Teresa Edgerton]]'s [[Celydonn]] novel ''The Moon and the Thorn'', Lord Cernach causes the Cauldron of Cerridwen to be recreated, which has the power to create an army of phantoms every twelve hours. Cernach's stated intention during the design phase of the work was to use it to extort concessions from Mochdreff's Governor, who preferred diplomacy to military action. {{spoiler|Cernach becomes [[Ax Crazy]], and uses the cauldron.}}
* Brian Keene's ''Dead Sea'' features a zombie plague that also affects cats, dogs, and rodents in addition to humans. After the characters flee the land for the sea, they discover that the plague is spreading to other mammals and eventually fish. By the end, the plague has reached the birds. Zombies do not result from demonic possession in this book as they do in his other books.
** It does contain a 'blink and you'll miss it' reference to an incident in ''The Rising'' so it may be a case of [[Unreliable Narrator]].
* ''The Rising'' and its sequel ''City of the Dead'' by Brian Keene play with several zombie tropes. As a result of a scientist messing with things he oughtn't to mess with, a portal to Dimension Hell is opened. Now, every time any animal above the level of "bug" dies it is possessed with a malignant, sadistic demon with one purpose: kill more creatures and let more of its buddies into the world. So we get zombie animals: zombie cats, zombie birds, zombie rats, zombie hump-backed camels, heck, zombie alligators in New York City's sewer system. As noted in the introduction above, zombie animals equals ''totally screwed''. At the end of the second novel, {{spoiler|the zombies win. They succeed in wiping out all higher animals and move on to bugs, plants and unicellular creatures. Their ultimate goal is to make Earth a lifeless hulk before moving on to other worlds and then to storm the gates of Heaven itself.}}
* Garry Kilworth's ''Welkin Weasels: Castle Storm'' features a being called a "ghoul", but effectively it's a zombie; the villain resurrects a badger corpse via (surprisingly disturbing for a kids' book) necromantic rituals. The resulting being obeys his every command, but displays a hint of personality in a [[Shout-Out]] to ''Frankenstein'' when it begs him not to call it a "monster".
* In the [[Stephen King]] short story ''Home Delivery'', an object orbiting the Earth (either an asteroid covered with seriously weird worm-like creatures, or [[Eldritch Abomination|it's worms all the way down...]]) is somehow causing the dead to reanimate. The story was originally published in a collection of Romero homages called The Book of the Dead.
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* Jonathan Maberry's book ''Zombie CSU The Forensics of the Living Dead'' is a [[What If]] scenario in book form. The author has interviewed [[Real Life]] Police, SWAT, doctors, hospitals, 911, and even DHS about what they would be doing to react if the Zombies began walking the earth. Delightfully enough, all the agencies and groups interviewed in the book had already given the question some consideration and had strategies formulated. [[Crazy Prepared|Yes, even the]] [[Dead Rising|DHS]].
** His novel ''Patient Zero'', has a genetically engineered version of [[The Virus]] (that infected unusually fast via parasites and prions along with the viral cocktail) that creates Zombies used as a weapon by jihadist terrorists who come up with a strain that allows for ''smart zombies''.
** His ''other'' novel ''Dead Of Night'' has an engineered version of [[The Virus]] that was meant to leave a serial killer awake in his own rotting corpse, [[Buried Alive]]. Unfortunately, instead, {{spoiler|it raised him as a zombie, and an ''intelligent'' one}}. The resulting Zombie Apocalypse got contained, but {{spoiler|they never found and stopped patient zero}}.
* Richard Matheson's 1954 book ''[[I Am Legend]]'', while it was about vampires and not zombies, is an important precursor to the genre. Matheson's novel was adapted into the films ''The Last Man on Earth'', the most faithful adaptation, and later into ''The Omega Man'', which apes the then-recent ''Night of the Living Dead'' to a degree and turns the vampires into Luddite photophobic albino mutants produced by biological warfare. The most 2007 adaptation, ''I Am Legend'', has the infected more like an odd cross between zombies and vampires.
* In [[Graham McNeill]]'s [[Warhammer 40000]] [[Horus Heresy]] novel ''False Gods'', the attack on [[Garden of Evil|Davin's moon]] is met by hordes of animated corpses.
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* The web-novel ''[[Domina]]'' is about a number of super-powered zombies called "screamers" attacking an island city. Hasn't hit the actual apocalypse stage yet, but the [[Reasonable Authority Figure]] is rightly worried.
* Rot and Ruin takes place about 15 years after an unexplained Zombie apocalypse, and while the zombies are relatively easy to kill (zombie hunters tend to make a game of it) the society is still kind of in shock, so the idea of any organised take-back-the-earth campaign fails to gain traction when it's brought up. Something of an unusual example in that while the main characters do kill Zombies, one of the main points of the book is that just because they're walking around doesn't mean they're not someone's dead relative who [[Due to the Dead|deserves respect]]
* ''[[Diario de un Zombi]]'' has this as the setting for a depopulated Barcelona. Add in unstoppable biomechanical horrors and cultists.
* Subverted in ''[[That Is All]]''; the Zombie Apocalypse is one of the few things that ''doesn't'' occur during [[The End of the World as We Know It|the Ragnarok of 2012]]. The only creatures that rise from the dead are taxidermied animals, and they are harmless because they are all mounted on wooden planks.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
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* Discovery's ''[[The Colony]]'' is a reality TV show that takes place after a simulated "viral catastrophe". It's basically a zombie apocalypse with the zombies cut out.
* An episode of ''Smallville'' dealt with a zombie apocalypse.
* Though not a classic example, the dark future of the ''[[Dollhouse]]'' resembles a Zombie Apocalypse. A signal was sent to all telephones on the planet that would wipe the listeners' minds, and program them to kill anybody who didn't hear the signal. In result rabid hordes of lunatics hunt down the few remaining normal people in the ruins of the civilization; a very strong similarity with this trope.
* ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'' features a recurring sketch about a game show taking place in a world where an unspecified, but clearly horrific and traumatising, "Event" has happened. Food is scarce, there are no more children, there are frequent exhortations to "Remain Indoors" and the survivors live in terror of a mysterious '''Them''', who look like us because they used to ''be'' us. {{spoiler|The latest episode has revealed that '''They''' are sephulchral voiced, red-eyed zombies with a taste for human flesh. Oh. ''And they've got in''.}} It's hinted that this is not the worst part of the "Event".
* The ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' episode "The End" has exactly this. It was more or less a [[Shout-Out]] to ''28 Days Later'' (rage virus infected, very fast Zombies, I mean Croates).
* AMC's [[The Walking Dead (TV series)|TV adaptation of]] ''[[The Walking Dead (comics)|The Walking Dead]]''.
* The [[Sliders]] had an alternate dimension Earth, where, get this, a {{spoiler|new "fat burning" medicine}} causes a Zombie Apocalypse. The {{spoiler|drug was meant to "eat away" fat}} and an antidote would be taken to end the effect... However something went horribly wrong and millions of people started to hunger for fat, even if that fat was of another human. For some reason these zombies also became very sensitive to light, possibly having something to do with the zombies becoming excessively pale. Also the zombies aren't of the risen dead variety, {{spoiler|but will die without feeding as the medicine - possibly an engineered virus considering it transfers with getting bitten - will simply eat them alive if they don't get fat to their system.}}.
* [[The X-Files]] episode "Millenium" deals with a zombie apocalypse with the advent of [[Y 2 K]]. Obviously, going back and watching this episode over a decade later, it doesn't hold nearly the same punch as it did when it first aired in 1999.
** The Halloween episode of ''[[Community]]'' deals with a zombie plague breaking out in the college. The group must try to escape, reach the thermostat to lower the temperature, and not be driven insane by the [[Soundtrack Dissonance|"Mama Mia!" soundtrack]].
* National Geographic program, ''[[How to Survive the End of the World (TV)|How to Survive the End of the World]]'', had an episode called '''Zombie Earth''', where an airborne strain of the rabies virus creates this kind of tropes.
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* In 2008, [[Rifts|Palladium Books]] debuted their own Zombie Apocalypse game: Dead Reign. Featuring a mish-mash of tropes and abilities. (The majority of the Zombies are tough, slow-moving ones, but there are also fast zombies, thinking zombies, zombies that don't believe they're zombies, and "half-dead".)
* The Corpse Factories in the ''[[Feng Shui]]'' supplement ''Glimpse of the Abyss'' are Buro-created superzombies that are markedly more intelligent than the non-infectious zombies that they create. Only five of these things exist in 2056, and if just one of them gets loose, it's Zombie Apocalypse time, particularly since the Necromantic Implanter, an arcanowave device that every corpse factory is equipped with, can be used to turn regular zombies into more corpse factories.
* In ''[[Exalted]]'', this is one of the favored tactics of the more militarily inclined Deathlords. High level Necromancy can raise corpses en masse, and certain spells can even corrupt an area to the point that the dead will rise of their own accord. Eye and Seven Despairs, one of the Deathlords, has even pioneered a zombie plague that works on its own accord, but is too busy [[Revenge Before Reason|tormenting the reincarnations of people who screwed with him in the First Age]] to actually deploy it.
* ''[[Deadlands]]'' has zombies, but these things are intelligent and cunning. Makes them hard to put down. Particularly if they're intact enough to be ''shooting back''.
* ''[[The World of Darkness]]'' games actually subvert the zombie apocalypse. While Zombies do exist, they're not exactly common, and aren't normally infectious.
** There was an adventure done by Thomas "Wanderer" Wilde (best known for his [[Resident Evil]] plot guide) that took this trope head-on, called ''The Last Escape''.
** While there isn't necessarily an ''infectious'' means of Zombie Apocalypse, certain ghosts and spirits in the ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' have a chain of Numina that allow them to jump into a corpse, then jump into any corpse ''that'' corpse kills, then possibly invite some friends along...
* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' zombies are simply mindless, reanimated corpses with no risk of infection, and are among the least dangerous of [[The Undead]]. However, there are quite a few undead with the "create spawn" ability, and several of them are ''[[Our Ghosts Are Different|incorporeal.]]''
** The "Infectious Zombie" template was provided in the 4th-edition supplement ''Open Grave''. Unfortunately, actual rules for the zombie plague were not, despite being alluded to in the template.
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** The ''Doom'' novelization had especially creepy scenes where zombies, still bearing an imprint of their former lives, would mindlessly shamble to the grocery store, pulling rotting food from the shelves, walking past the cash register, and so on.
** Quake's instruction manual explained that the Grunts had had cybernetics wired into their brain that stimulated their pleasure centers whenever they killed someone.
* In ''[[Halo]]'', the Flood, who originated from a galaxy outside of the Milky Way, are very capable of causing an apocalypse. The infection forms first turn any sentient lifeforms they come across into zombies. Eventually, the infected beings begin to deteriorate and bloat, releasing more infection forms, which go to infect other people and so on and so forth, until they gain enough biomass to form a variety of "Pure" Flood forms, including the Gravemind, a hyper-intelligent hive-mind containing the memories and knowledge of ''every single being in history'' to have been assimilated by the Flood. This intelligence manifests itself in the ability of the Flood to utilize complex technology, strategize, and fully communicate with non-infected beings (the last known Gravemind even had a tendency to speak in trochaic heptameter). They were so powerful, that the only way the highly-advanced [[Precursors|Forerunners]] managed to defeat them was {{spoiler|activating all 7 Halos in order to kill all sentient life in the galaxy and starve the Flood of their necessary nutrition}}. Even afterwards, they had a bad tendency of overrunning their holding facilities whenever outside interlopers stumbled upon them; they completely consumed the Halo in the first game, and end up doing the same to the Threshold research facilities, Delta Halo, and the Covenant capital city of High Charity in ''[[Halo 2]]''. They got to Earth in the third installment, and were only stopped by Covenant Separatists who glassed the much of the continent they landed on (to the chagrin of some of their newfound human allies). They also consumed the massive Forerunner instillation known as the Ark, where {{spoiler|the current Gravemind and presumably all other Flood from the Milky Way more advanced than an infection form were finally destroyed}}.
** The Flood are in fact {{spoiler|the creation of a species known only as the Precursors, made in order to test humanity's mettle. There is also no true cure for it; the Flood can simply choose whether it wants to infect someone or not}}. The only organic sentient beings that seem truly immune to infection are those lacking sufficient calcium reserves and/or a central nervous system.
** The third game also has a multiplayer mode where someone is "infected" and spreads it by killing people with the energy sword, and they come back to do the same. Eventually, you have a few regular people left heading for the high ground to snipe as much as they can before being overwhelmed. It is very unlikely (though possible with a few skilled players working together) for survivors to last until the end of the round. Infection variants on modified maps make up the ''Living Dead'' weekened event, which plays on random weekends as well as on Halloween.
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* ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'''s [[Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare|Undead Nightmare]] DLC has this as the main premise -- but like the rest of the game, it's set in the Old West. Yes, it's just as awesome as it sounds.
* PCRPG ''[[Dead State]]'' is set in central Texas during a zombie apocalypse.
* ''[[King's Quest IV]]'' is one of the earliest examples of the trope, which is even more disturbing because it takes place in a fairy tale country of princesses, fairies and magical talking creatures. It is, frankly, terrifying. Fortunately for most young players at the time of it's release, they came late in the game. Due to the general unforgiving hardness of a Roberta Williams title, it was uncommon for any player to get that far without help.
* ''[[Dead Island]]'' is about a zombie apocalypse in a tropical island resort in the South Pacific.
* The early 80's [[Edutainment Game]] ''[[Agent USA]]'' is a G-rated Zombie Apocalypse, with people turning into walking balls of TV static and infecting others.
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* In ''[[The Whiteboard]]'', the two weeks to either side of Halloween 2010 featured a zombie uprising that Doc and Roger had to take down. This story arc updated daily, instead of the strip's normal M/W/F schedule.
* Lampshaded in [http://www.xkcd.com/734/ this] ''XKCD'' comic.
* ''[[The Zombie Hunters]]'' [[Reconstructed Trope|reconstructs]] this against the backdrop of a [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|near-future]] [[After the End|Post-Apocolypse]]. It's been a few years since [[The Virus]] nearly [[Depopulation Bomb|wiped out]] the human race and turned Earth into a [[Crapsack World]], where [[Our Zombies Are Different|multiple]] [[Superpowered Mooks|subspecies]] of [[The Undead]] roam freely. The known [[Endangered Species|remnants]] of humanity and [[Government in Exile|government]] have settled on an [[Island Base|Island]] [[Police State|Military Base]], to attempt to [[Find the Cure]] and [[Fighting For a Homeland|rebuild society]], which would be fine if it weren't for the tensions between the two [[Fantastic Caste System|castes]], uninfected and Infected. The Infected are a minority population of [[Zombie Infectee]] [[Action Survivor|Action Survivors]] who contracted a dormant form of the virus due to low exposure [[Fighting for Survival|at close proximity]]. [[Typhoid Mary|Highly contagious]], they can infect others through their own bodily fluids, and will inevitably [[Came Back Wrong|reanimate]] after death. Consequently, Infected are both [[Fantastic Ghetto|segregated]] from and forbidden from [[No Sex Allowed|romancing]] the uninfected. They're also [[Dystopian Edict|required]] to wear [[Fantastic Racism|identifying armbands]] and ID tags, [[Big Brother Is Watching|pass through checkpoints]], and [[Fascists' Bed Time|obey curfews]] while among uninfected, and the young and unskilled are [[Fantastic Caste System|exploited]] as [[We Have Reserves|highly-expendable]], underequipped, yet vital [[Disaster Scavengers]]. The story revolves around a [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|motley]], [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|dysfunctional crew]] of these [[Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom|so-called]] "Zombie Hunters", living within the margins of their [[Dystopia|Dystopian]] society, and training in an [[Older Sidekick|older]] [[Half-Human Hybrid]] [[Token Heroic Orc]] (who's contempt for his station parallels their own) while trying not to get eaten on the job.
* ''[[Bob and George]]'', in a Halloween special.
* ''[[The Pocalypse]]'' has a Zombie Apocalypse, along with a [[AI Is a Crapshoot|Robot Apocalypse]], a [[When Trees Attack|Plant Apocalypse]]...
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* [http://zombiefit.org/ ZombieFit] is a parkour/fitness class designed to prepare participants for the ever-present threat of a zombie apocalypse.
* The [[Humans vs. Zombies]] massively multiplayer live-action tag game.
* Most nerds/geeks/etc. have put some amount of thought into the subject. Pretty much all of them have plans.
** While nearly every (pick your term) has put some amount of thought into it, there is now an entire nerd subculture dedicated to zombies in the same way trekkies are primarily dedicated to Star Trek, with the amount of thought put into their discussions making the Zombie Survival Guide look like Plan 9 From Outer Space.
* [http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf Mathematical modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection] produced by the University of Ottawa, published in the academic journal Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress, which basically comes to this conclusion unless the undead are eradicated quickly.
* [http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/21/night_of_the_living_wonks?page=full Foreign Policy] magazine had a feature article on how different schools of International Relations theorists would approach the Zombie problem.
** The author of the article, Dan Drezner of the Fletcher School for Diplomacy (aka the best foreign affairs school in America), has published a monograph called Theories of International Relations and Zombies. It covers the major paradigms of IR theory and the "corpus" of zombie literature and film. It's an excellent introductory text to IR theory for beginners, and the results show that while a zombie apocalypse would suck, it's unlikely to be the end of humanity. It's also really damned funny.
* [http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/02/2784139.htm Any day now...]
* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has dedicated a few lists to analyzing a possible zombie apocalypse in real life.
** [http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen.html This] article explains the ways it could happen and how likely it is.
** [http://www.cracked.com/article_18683_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly.html 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly)] debunks the lethality of a zombie apocalypse, showing how it would never get very far. A notable example is pointing out how rabies doesn't exactly sweep through the world, so why would zombie infections? That and maggots and gut flora would devour the undead.
** Covering all the bases: in the event that it does happen, [http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-famous-zombie-movie-weapons-that-would-get-you-killed/ this article] discusses how [[Hollywood Tactics]] would promptly get you zombified.
** [http://www.cracked.com/article/136_5-reasons-you-secretly-want-zombie-apocalypse/ This] article examines the appeal of zombie invasions.
* Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (aka the CDC) is getting into it, with its [http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05/preparedness-101-zombie-apocalypse/ warning the public about preparing for a zombie apocalypse], as a tongue-in-cheek way of getting people thinking about disaster preparedness.
** Other organizations have done the same as the spread of a zombie apocalypse apparently models highly infectious epidemics pretty well.
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[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:Zombie Apocalypse]]
[[Category:Apocalyptic Index]]
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