Somewhere around a year ago my best friend recommended that I read through World War Z by Max Brooks. In the beginning I had been extremely reluctant. Zombie genre stuff simply wasn’t for me. Promptly after much pleading, I came around and picked up a copy. A section into it and I could hardly put the book down; I had become absolutely hooked. Shortly afterwards, I rushed through a number of other equivalent books and movies. What undoubtedly got me infatuated with Zombie Apocalypse fictional works was the likeness amongst real life situations and what multiple writers like Max Brooks have been birthing. Finally it struck me precisely why a large number of people in and around survival communities all too often had an a fixation with Zombie Apocalypse Fiction and would mention ridiculous expressions including, “When the Zombie Apocalypse comes.” I now realize that for these individuals, and currently for me, Zombies are actually a metaphor.

If you merely supplant Zombie Apocalypse with financial failure, pandemic, or natural disaster you can easily still have pretty much the same story. This is the reason why Zombie Fiction tends to make such a engaging metaphor for modern-day survival, and especially Urban Survival. It does not matter if we are debating about undead hordes or rioting mobs, the concepts are all the same. It has develop into a means for a couple of people to share the same fundamental concept about two relatively different topics of survival.

The euphemism of Zombies makes having a dialogue less complicated. It’s far easier to say, “When the Zombies Apocalypse comes” and sound like a goof than it is to say, “When X happens” and appear like a tin foil hat-wearing maniac. We can hypothesize about it, play with it, and it’s all in jest. Hypothesizing about real world issues that can happen is far more disconcerting. You eradicate the passion from the conversation when you’re conversing euphemistically.

Zombie Apocalypse Fiction gives modern Preppers the chance to get close to their worries without coming in contact with them downright. It’s one thing to read a horrifying story about Zombies becoming the dominant species and mankind caught in a struggle for our very survival. It is quite another to read a saga about the failure of a country and its residents engulfed in a fight for their existence. When you shut the Zombie book, the war is over or at least put on hold. It’s easy to state, “That could never happen” and discount the narrative enough to sleep effortless. This is a lot trickier to do when the tale is closer to home. Ultimately, Zombie Fiction enables its readers to voyage through a hypothetical series of events without the fear of getting consumed by them.