It may be the latest to swarm the field, but the new movie “World War Z” is symptomatic of a larger zombie viral infection. One, say experts of the lore, that bespeaks discomfort with overconsumption and a mass-produced way of life.

We're in the middle of an outbreak — of zombie lit, zombie walks, zombie apocalypse survival guides.

While the vampires of "True Blood," and "Twilight" represent celebrity culture — "the person on a pedestal" and exaltation of self — zombies signify "the everyman, the person who slogs into work everyday and slogs home," says Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Oakland, Calif.-based author of "Dead Love" (Stone Bridge Press, 2010), a zombie novel set in Asia.

From its possible West African origins in "zumbi" — a word for "fetish" — and "nzambi," meaning "god," to the popular AMC zombie drama "The Walking Dead," she says the zombie myth may carry different anxieties, but its essence remains the same: Fear of the loss of self to the collective.

Being stripped of one's creativity, adds Murali Balaji, assistant professor of media studies at Temple University and editor of forthcoming anthology "The Thinking Dead: What the Zombie Apocalypse Means" (Lexington Books, September).

This "white-collar anxiety," he says, means one thing: "We are the zombies we are afraid of." Overreliant on technology and fearing its collapse, we lose our minds without a cell phone.

Xbox One's 'Dead Rising 3' is among the latest entries to the zombie-video game pantheon.

"Zombies, because they are a collective monster, we can then project onto that all kinds of fears we might have," says John Ulrich, professor of English at Mansfield University in Mansfield, Pa.

He teaches Max Brooks' 2006 novel "World War Z" as part of a class called "Monsters in Literature and Film." Composed of accounts from global survivors of a zombie war, Ulrich says it's a work of geopolitical significance. The modern concept of zombies, he says, also contains a certain universal dread about consuming the planet out of existence.

He says another book adapted for film this year, Isaac Marion's "Warm Bodies" — a romance told from a zombie's point of view — is about human relationships, "The way in which we might view ourselves as losing touch with one another," Ulrich says. "Losing, really, a sense of love."

There's been zombie additions to the "mash-up" lit genre, like 2009's "Pride and Prejuidce and Zombies." Video game franchise "Resident Evil," once adapted for film, is approaching two decades of sequels. On June 10, Microsoft announced the latest entry set to join the pantheon this Christmas: Xbox One's "Dead Rising 3." The Monster High series of children's dolls includes bespectacled zombie character "Ghoulia Yelps," azure girlfriend to the googly-eyed "Slow-Moe" Deadovitch.

The horde at the New Jersey Zombie Walk in Asbury Park.

Ready for an invasion

Having skulked over from the realm of film, zombies are far from confined to toys, books and games.

One government body, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, famously showed it was not immune to the invasion when it began using zombie apocalypse to teach disaster readiness. An entire section of the CDC's website is reserved for "zombie preparedness." It offers widgets with a message: "If you're ready for a zombie apocalypse, then you're ready for any emergency." There's also a CDC zombie graphic novel and zombie blog with "teachable moments" from "The Walking Dead."

However, the federal agency was prompted to issue an official refutation of zombie existence after several incidents that happened in curious succession last May. Perhaps the most memorable occurred in Florida on May 26, 2012, when a naked man tried to eat another man's face, an attack thought to be related to use of mind-altering bath salts, though no evidence of the substance was found.

The next day, in Hackensack, a man stabbed himself and hurled his intestines at police officers. Outside Baltimore, another man killed his roommate, then said he made a meal of both his heart and part of his brain.

The Run For Your Lives 5K recently brought its zombie menace to New Jersey.

A similar story emerged from Canada after a man dubbed a "cannibal killer" murdered a college student with an ice pick, cut away the victim's flesh in video posted online and mailed away some of the body parts.

All of the flesh-lust amounted to too much of a coincidence for some, enough for "zombie apocalypse" to trend on Google and Twitter.

Embracing the likelihood that Brad Pitt probably won't be there to whisk you away should there actually be a zombie assault, there's always the "Zombie Will" (zombiewills.com ... $19.99 plus shipping).

Eric Gullotta, 37, an estate lawyer in California's Bay area, came up with the idea in thinking about how assets would be handled in the event of zombie takeover.

"Say 90 percent of the world's people are dead, how do you referee that?" he asks. (Gullotta concedes the document is a novelty and would not be legally binding.)

Stalk this way

And zombie walks — mass reenactments of the zombies we seen on screen — aren't just for Halloween anymore, including the annual October New Jersey Zombie Walk, a healthy display of gore on the Asbury Park boardwalk.

Rowan University hosted a zombie run last month, while Run For Your Lives, a zombie-ridden 5K obstacle run, infested Medford in Burlington County last week. The attraction started in 2011, with 15,000 people — and a "blood" pit — in Maryland.

"I think I just stumbled into something, essentially," muses Bill Ward, vice president of marketing for the run.

Participants can sign up to be chased by zombies or enter the "transformation center" to become one, airbrushed and painted with crusted blood. Adding a little terror to your average mud run, each runner gets a series of flags. Cross the finish line with one and your heart's still beating. Flagless, and you've joined the wretched horde.

Following the seeming rash of zombie-esque incidents last spring, Suzanne Scelza witnessed a tangible spike in interest for Zombie Survival Course, a preparedness exercise she runs near the Pine Barrens with her husband, Mark, an NRA-certified firearm instructor.

"We definitely had people that contacted us after those happened," says Scelza, 49.

Five years ago, the Scelzas organized what amounts to a real, armed class in self-defense aimed at slow-moving menaces, their instruction making use of handguns and rifles, but also knife-throwing and crossbows.

Participants sign up online, paying $179 for a day of zombie education, or $450 for a weekend immersion. They aim at paper zombie targets and try their hand at the improvised martial art of "zombitsu" — handy should a flesh-hungry ghoul cross their path. As for the course's actual location, Scelza will only say it's a hunting facility near Whiting in Ocean County.

After Hurricane Sandy, she received calls from Zombie Survival alumni who said the tips about first aid, having a supplies bag and food in the house, helped them when phones weren't working and travel wasn't possible. The most valuable lesson, she says, was the basic notion of working together and getting along with neighbors.

Simple, but maybe not one to scoff at. When it comes to walking dead-related apocalypses, it's not zombies, but the survivors who need to check themselves, says Dave DeVries, 47, an illustrator from Budd Lake who "chain smokes" zombie novels on his Kindle.

"People who are basically bad won't have anything stopping them anymore," he says. DeVries' images of zombified mummies can be found in "The Mummy Returns" ride at Universal Studios.

As for a zombie massacre, "People are almost expecting it to happen," says DeVries, "and that's a really weird place to be."

The artist's work is also on display at an art exhibit called "zombie" at Last Rites Gallery in Manhattan, up through June 26.

"The zombie genre's not going to go away," he says. "Even if 'World War Z' tanks at the box office."