Well, not by the Zombies themselves, but by the sudden fascination we have with them. Even though the trope has been around for decades (George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) was by no means their first manifestation on the screen), it is hard to explain their sudden ubiquity. Zombies are everywhere, books, TV, video, films, even games.

Obviously some deep chord in the public psyche has been struck here. The idea of slow-moving, unkillable, mindless and eternally ravenous monsters not only pursuing and consuming us, but also spreading their contagion to others, seems to have caught on and will not let go.

What do the walking dead represent? What external threat or enemy is this really all about? The growing legions of the poor, ethnic or racial communities, foreigners, criminals, religious cults or extremist ideologies, or just a changing culture we find it increasingly difficult to adapt to? All these threats seem to be condensed and reduced into one symbol, the walking dead, rotting, corrupt, unstoppable, and of course, always hungry. They cannot be reasoned with, or even fought off. Only total annihilation with extreme violence seems to work with them. We all seem to have this fantasy that any problem can be solved if we just have a powerful enough weapon and are not afraid to use it. You seem to suggest that to you the Walking Dead are Socialists. Funny you should say that. In my fever dreams I visualize Christian Right-wing militias, instead. Meanwhile, all over the world, vast hordes of refugees, whole populations, flee war and hunger and pour across borders seeking safety and peace. We may wish them well, but we don't want them here.

I am suspect of pop psychology and its interpretations, and I appreciate the ability of art and literature to explore and illuminate mass psychology can easily be overestimated. The grade B alien invasion films of the 1950s have often been pointed to as a subconscious public reaction to the Red Menace and the Cold War. But something must account for the sudden explosion into the public consciousness of what had been formerly only a fringe sub-genre of apocalyptic fiction. After all, many more credible and realistic end-of-the-world scenarios exist; why have the walking dead caught on? The modern Zombie invasion is everywhere, and not all the literary and cinematic treatments of it can be dismissed as "grade-B". Some are, artistically at least, first-rate.

Perhaps, deep down, at some very fundamental and primal level, we have a vague but shared feeling that winter is coming.