Times may be tough, but if you happen to be a zombie, the future looks bright. Never have the undead seemed more alive.

In television series like “The Walking Dead” and video games like Zombie Panic, lurching corpses swarm the land, feasting on flesh. The zombie apocalypse, an end-of-days fantasy in which the dead hunt the living and consume their brains, has infected the popular imagination the way the threat of a nuclear holocaust did in the 1950s.

Writers like Max Brooks have filled in the grim details in “The Zombie Survival Guide,” and even the Centers for Disease Control and Preparedness, spotting an educational opportunity, have decided to address the zombie threat. Last May, as a teaching aid for real disease outbreaks, they issued a graphic novel showing how to deal with a zombie pandemic.