"A preliminary entry into the 'practical' canon of zombie fiction," OR "Know your zombie : The survivalist's guide to the living dead"

Okay, so -- final zomblog post. Semester's winding down to a close and final projects are looming overhead. That being said, I'm going to take advantage of this last entry to (hopefully) solicit some help from you all for my final project. No I'm not looking for any human subjects to test out any zombie serums on or fresh brains for some new and experimental zombie cooking techniques; I just want some feedback from the class if you'd all be kind enough to share it to me.

Over the course of the semester we have encountered the zombie in a number of different (kinds of) texts, ranging from choose-your-own-adventure stories to Jane Austen-zombie mash-up fiction to more speculative realist works like World War Z or Zone One. Yet in this class, we have not simply encountered the zombie in a variety of different narrative forms, but zombies--walkers, runners, stricken, Satan's servants, Zack, hostiles, spoilers, unmentionables, and many, many more. All of these manifestations of the living dead can be said to adhere to a few basic tenets of zombiism, chief among them re-animation after (something like) death and the reduction of desire to the most basic level of the most elementary need, the pursuit of food (more specifically, human flesh). But beyond these basic characteristics (and perhaps overlooking a few others), clearly if the texts we've encountered and our own zombie knowledge can teach us anything it's that there exists a wide range when it comes to the walking dead. Knowing what kind of zombie(s) you're dealing with is essential for survival, as different 'brands' of zombie require different considerations from a survivor's perspective. (Consider, for example, the critical importance of knowing whether a simple blow to the head will suffice to lay your zombie out [as in something like the original Night of the Living Dead or Zombieland] or if more drastic measures need to be taken to ensure the things won't keep coming back [think of the pair of intestines that pursue the Lionel throughout the final showdown in Dead Alive, or the severed hands that continue to scamper about Clio's garden in "The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home"]. Even knowing the basic signs of you medical-biological zombie versus that of your religico-spiritual undead can be life-saving information -- theoretically the former can be cured, whereas in the case of the latter such a remedy decidedly unlikely if not outright impossible.)

My original idea for this project was to make a preliminary entry into what I hoped would eventually develop into a serious canon of zombie lore and fiction. Within the space of my contribution specifically, I had hoped to direct my attention toward those texts that I felt taught us something about zombies, those texts that contained the most interesting (re)workings of the classic zombie figure alongside those texts in which we first see those 'classic' zombie figures emerge. Then I got to thinking about survival. Thus, the idea for the 'suvivalist's' canon of 'practical' (zombie) literature was born. Because let's face it: we all by now have a pretty good sense of just how prolific the idea of the zombie and the zombie outbreak scenario have become in our culture. Knowing your zombie -- as such a practical/survivalist's canon of lit would (I hope) enable one to do -- is not just fun and interesting; when push comes to shove, possessing this kind of knowledge can save your life and, should you choose, the lives of those around you. Constructing a kind of zombie taxonomy based on our encounters with the zombie seems a first practical step toward educating ourselves.

So, what I'm looking for from you all: What kinds of zombies constitute important entries into such a canon and where (lit, film, etc.) do we find them? You're trying to survive the zombie apocalypse: What do you want to know about your enemy? What previously encountered undead paradigms are you basing your knowledge and assumptions off of? What kinds of behavioral patterns do you look for? I've been wracking my brain thinking of different zombie texts we've come across this semester as well as those I came across at some point or another on my own and asking myself: What implications do the innumerable variations on the zombie figure carry for the survivor trying to work out a long-term plan for survival? Questions like what kinds of motor skills the creatures possess (in Zone One, for example, we are told that the undead are in fact capable of opening doors: the four office ladies were trapped in the room Spitz finds them in on account of a broken lock, not their lack of motor skills); whether or not their appetites can be (temporarily) sated and whether or not it is only human meat that can satiate them (think the "Happy Zombie Sunrise Home" and the frozen minnie weenie's Clio is always keen to have on hand).

This post is already growing lengthy, so in the interest of not deterring too many people from reading it based on length alone (I get it -- sometimes you just have to post a comment to post a comment) I'm going to omit the list I've come up with so far. If anyone is interested I'd be more than happy to exchange ideas. But it seems to me that if the question (to you all and myself) is What kinds of zombies would you want to have knowledge of should you find yourself in a zombie outbreak situation, repeated answers would only serve to reinforce the importance of a particular form of zombie to the canon and mark it as a candidate for more detailed analysis and explication. I thank anyone who comments on this post immensely in advance. Anything you are willing to offer is greatly, greatly appreciated by myself as well as the countless future lives you will have no doubt saved via your contribution to this most worthy and practical survivalist's tool.