latimes.com 12.18.2012
Let's get one thing straight right away: Zombies aren't real. The government knows it, the police know it and even so-called "zombie preppers," the subject of Discovery Channel's new special "Zombie Apocalypse," premiering Tuesday night, know it. But that doesn't mean they aren't all taking steps to prepare for the onslaught anyway.
"Something is coming down the road," says Shawn Beatty, a Missouri high school teacher and zombie prepper who appears in the special, stockpiling supplies and weapons. "I don't think the Earth is supposed to have 12 billion people on it.
Preparing for the zombie apocalypse is really preparing for almost everything. Earthquake. Flood. Zombie apocalypse." The current population is actually around 7 billion, but Beatty's precautions would seem justified based on a glance at the media.
In pop culture terms, zombies are having their moment in the sun. AMC's "The Walking Dead" is grabbing record ratings and several zombie-themed movies are on the horizon, from the romantic comedy "Warm Bodies" to the Brad Pitt actioner "World War Z." But unlike other fantasy monsters that have grabbed popular attention, such as those lovelorn, sparkly vampires, the zombie fad is having a disturbing ripple effect on the public consciousness.
There were the spate of cannibal attacks early this summer, which started with a man chewing another man's face off on the MacArthur Causeway in Miami. Though a designer drug known as bath salts was initially believed to be a factor in the attack, that was eventually ruled out by the medical examiner and the ultimate cause of the cannibal attack remains unknown. This event and similarly disturbing incidents led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue an official statement denying the existence of any virus or condition that would reanimate the dead or cause zombie-like symptoms.
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