What Not To Fear

Zombies. As monsters go, they aren't particularly interesting. As evidenced by the cast of The Walking Dead, stumbling on a stumbling member of the not-so-alive no longer tends to bring a lot of terror to the fore. Instead, the zombie in question is dispatched in some nasty but hum-drum way: a petty annoyance and all a part of daily existence in a world after the Apocalypse. The thing about zombies is that they don't tend to show up one at a time. In this way, they are like Republican Presidential Candidates. Come to think of it, there are a lot of ways that zombies and Republican Presidential Candidates are alike, but I leave that for you to figure out.
I'm telling you that zombies, once you've gotten past that whole dead-but-not-quite thing, you're left with some pretty smelly, boring pests. They're easier to manage than rats, since they tend to be pretty easy to spot, and they don't have a lot of scurry in them like rodents do either. When they made up the word "shambling," they probably had these guys in mind. The folks on TV show refer to them as "Walkers," but that is being way too charitable. They don't tend to rush about, but the limb-dragging shuffle that most of them seem to have surrendered to is not going to cause much of a stir in the speed-walking community. You can outrun a zombie. It would behoove you to keep an eye out for other rotting corpses looking to make you part of their menu, but keeping a clear mind and a lookout for the rest of the herd will put you in good stead.
It is the rest of the herd that makes zombies a problem. All that moaning and hissing and, well, the smell. It can be a little disconcerting. That's how they get you, you know. It's that living dead conundrum that makes most of us shake our heads and try to rationalize: living or dead? It's neither fish nor fowl. For example, it could be concluded that by not being dead, I am a member of the undead. But we save that category for those in limbo, with a foot or what's left of it in both worlds. How do we distinguish? Well, the zombies are the dumb ones, that's for sure. Maybe that's why they seem to crave brains so much, lacking much of their own. See above for GOP comparison.
Zombies are the ones we run away from. Until they get so decayed that they end up in bits and pieces, clawing at the ground in vain hopes of getting back upright. But it's the still mobile version that holds the most potential fear. My son, at one point, had a zombie apocalypse plan for a hasty exit from any and all places that he would frequent: school, friends' houses, neighborhood gathering spots. He wasn't going to be one of those slow-witted victims left flailing helplessly at the onrushing mob of shamblers. He was going to be a survivor. Now that he's moved off to college, I expect he's got a whole new set of plans for how to avoid what for most of the extras in those TV shows and movies is inevitable. You don't have to get eaten, you just have to get mad.