Zombies are big business, worth around US $5 billion to the US economy and rising. Products range from video games and top rating television shows through to special ammunition and weapons to dispatch zombies. However, social critics have agreed that zombies and the zombie apocalypse are symbols for the existential fragility of contemporary civilization. Bestselling zombie genre author Max Brooks has said on his website that zombies represent social anxieties about our "crazy scary times," and that through the medium of the zombie people are able to confront "societal breakdown, famine, disease, chaos in the streets" and still sleep.
This work is a contribution to collective insomnia. It is argued that the zombie apocalypse is an apt metaphor for the real, coming collapse of techno-industrial civilization - our world. There is a considerable body of scientific literature indicating that our world is not sustainable, as reflected in the existence of an environmental crisis embracing problems such as resource depletion, global climate change, water shortages and degradation, peak oil and "peak everything." The collapse of civilization-thought to be as close as 2030-will lead to the great die off of the bulk of the human race. The runaway meltdown of the Earth's nuclear reactors may seal the fate of life on the planet.
This book presents the case that the zombie apocalypse is already underway and is unstoppable. Although the human race in general may be ultimately doomed, individuals and tribal groups may still strive to survive to the bitter, radioactive end.
