Writing at BBC.com, Nicholas Barber takes a shot at explaining why "there's no end of love of zombies": 

It can’t be a coincidence . . . that zombies are in vogue during a period when banks are failing, when climate change is playing havoc with weather patterns, and when both terrorist bombers and global corporations seem to be beyond the reach of any country’s jurisdiction. It can’t be a coincidence, either, that the fourth season of The Walking Dead got off to its hugely successful start just weeks after the United States federal government shut down.

Or it may be that a braindead U.S. federal government -- alive to power but not to the rules of freedom (the Constitution, the Declaration, unalienable rights "endowed" by the Creator, not by Washington, D.C., etc.) -- is of far greater concern to "The Walking Living" than is a merely temporary federal shutdown affecting only part of that nefarious creature from the Potomac lagoon.

Barber continues:

"We’re living in very uncertain times," says Max Brooks, who wrote the book on which the World War Z film is based. "People have a lot of anxiety about the future. They’re constantly being battered with these very scary, very global catastrophes. I think a lot of people think the system is breaking down and just like the 1970s, people need a 'safe place' to explore their apocalyptic worries. They can’t read stories about real plagues or nuclear war. That’s too scary. That’ll make them turn away. Zombie stories give people the opportunity to witness the end of the world they’ve been secretly wondering about while, at the same time, allowing themselves to sleep at night because the catalyst of that end is fictional."

"Zombies embody the great contemporary fear -- and, for some people, the great contemporary fantasy -- that we’ll soon be surrounded by ravenous strangers, with only a shotgun to defend ourselves," Barber concludes. "Compared to that, facing a werewolf or a vampire is a breeze."

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