Reading World War Z has got me thinking about a lot of different things, but the first thing I noticed was the way in which the modern Zombie tale has increasingly become a commentary on (and, generally, an endorsement of) modern public health and disease prevention principles. Of course, public health principles applied in the breach can ultimately lead to a huge dose of fascism, by which I’m not referring to the anti-smoking campaigns of the modern era, but the extremely draconian and almost-never used quarantine and control rules that governments reserve for the most severe disease outbreaks. And we see these being enacted in every zombie tale – or, if they’re not used, the society in question coming to regret it. In fact, the zombie tale can easily be read as a peon to the public health route not taken – on HIV, on SARs, etc.
In an interesting literary parallel, World War Z reminded me of the excellent oral histories of the early years of the HIV epidemic, which show a similar tone to the early parts of the book, with doctors and community activists trying desperately to work out what is happening before a previously unknown disease wipes out a community. Only the transmission method was a little different, though zombification and HIV show similar issues of incubation period and origin. We even have real life examples of HIV consuming societies, and modern history would have been very different if HIV had progressed through the West the way it did in Africa. I can’t believe that the modern resurgence of zombie stories is unrelated to our own recent development of public health consciousness, and a lot of that development stemmed from the HIV epidemic.
Compromise and Conceit 
February 16, 2011 at 2:22 am
I agree that it’s a public-health metaphor, but I think it’s about diseases less sexy than AIDS. Not that AIDS is in the least sexy in reality, but then, vampires shouldn’t be either. There are plenty of diseases that make you rot even more slowly, but you get them from poverty and/or terrible jobs. Necrotizing fasciitis, for instance (easy to get in fishpacking plants, in my corner of the world).
February 16, 2011 at 8:10 am
clew, thanks for your comment. I take your point, and a lot of people like to see the zombie as first and foremost a metaphor for the lumpen proletariat; but it’s worth remembering that the people most severely affected by HIV are in the third world, and are very much the oppressed underclass of the modern world. HIV was contained in the West by a combination of luck and good judgment, but even then some nasty suggestions about “public health in the breach” were being bandied about. Looking at the narrative of black drug users in the US in the 80s, how do you think the response would have looked if the disease had sprung up simultaneously in multiple inner city black communities?
I agree it’s not just about HIV, though I think HIV was most in the public consciousness when 28 Days Later was made. World War Z sets the origins of the zombie virus in China, and gives lots of SARS-like references (right down to China hiding the disease until it’s too late to control).