On the most recent episode of The Human Echoes Podcast, we were asked ‘What makes zombies so scary?’

The question is more complicated than it sounds. Cannibal corpses risen from the dead seem like they would be terrifying enough as they are. This moaning menace bears down on its prey with fetid breath and near ravenous desire. Why would we need more than that? Let’s take a deeper look.

So often, horror isn’t actually about the monster at the end of the street or hidden in a closet. It’s a reflection of our very real fears and insecurities. Zombies represent the mob mentality. It is the idea that we can be infected by insidious influences beyond our control, and that this will tear our individuality away.

Becoming a zombie is the complete loss of autonomy. The individual loses the ability to choose for themselves, and is overtaken by the need to consume. They become part of the horde, a mindless drone, and no longer living for anything but consumption. This is essentially the undeath of the self.

So many of us wile away the years working jobs we hate to attain that which we don’t really need. We give up our time to be a replaceable cog in a pre-packaged plastic cased world while our voices and dreams become a little less each day.

Zombies are terrifying not because they are undead cannibals, but because we fear that we are becoming them. We fear them because the apocalypse of the individual has already happened and that we never even noticed.

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Tony Southcotte hails from the Rocky Mountains somewhere around the state of Colorado. Possibly raised by grizzly bears, this gritty denizen of the arena now spends most of his time grappling with Java updates and dysfunctional RAM. With not much fiction under his belt, it might seem tempting to bet against Mister Southcotte, but an impressive knowledge of everything from PVC pipe to psychedelic drugs makes Tony a storehouse of fiction waiting to hit the paper. Plus, you know, there’s the possibility of him ripping you apart like a grizzly bear.