Editor's note: Liam's theory about the appeal of zombies makes sense to me. The living dead provide a backdrop for human struggles that we can all relate to. I'll also take his analogy one step further, and say that someone should replace British soldiers from the Revolutionary War with zombies and make a game out of it. At least they wouldn't have to change the AI much. -Jay

They would also think that zombies inhabit Earth -- lots and lots of zombies. The leading cause of death on Earth is not heart disease, cancer, or Chuck Norris. It is being eaten alive by either the living dead, or victims of an infection that makes people act like the living dead.

This conjecture makes me scared whenever we come close to discovering life on Mars. I keep thinking they'll just mercy kill us as soon as they start receiving FX on their holoscreens.

America is obsessed with zombies, in case you haven't noticed. The only way that they could be more prevalent is if an actual zombie apocalypse occurred. Judging by what's on TV these days, this may have already happened.

The question is: why? Why is America so obsessed with zombies nowadays? People say that you can tell a lot about a culture from its monsters. Does that mean that we're all a bunch of mindless shuffling lumps of flesh? Well, this is partially true, but our fascination with zombies has many other sources.

First of all, we practically made the damn things. You can tell people about Haiti and zombi powder (yes, it is spelled like that), but when you say "zombie," what comes to mind is as American as Grandma eating Babe Ruth's brains.

George Romero, as most people know, made Night of the Living Dead, and created a new genre in the process. He introduced many of the common themes: kill the head and kill the ghoul, the whole "living dead" thing, and the part of zombie films that keeps us entranced to this very day: the struggles of the human survivors.

He put a group of survivors in an old, abandoned house, created tensions between them, and then made them try to fight off a pack of zombies on the front porch. We don't watch zombie movies for the zombies. We watch them for the human stories that arise out of the death of the world and society.

These relationships, which would normally be tenuous, are stressed and tested by the fact that everyone in the world is trying to eat you, and you're stuck with someone you wouldn't share a subway car with. Yes, in games like in Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil 5, the characters are supposed to collaborate, but you get the point.

Zombie plots regularly feature a plucky, outnumbered group of people up against a much larger force of zombies. These zombies we are told, are very stupid, usually shuffling along out in the open where anybody who can hold a gun still can shoot them in the head. Usually, the outnumbered group tends to win, whether by making it to the escape boat or helicopter, clearing the land of the foul beasts, or finding a cure. Roll credits.

Now, reread that last paragraph. Does that sound familiar?

Face it, the foundation of America mirrors a zombie story. Replace "zombies" with "British", "group of survivors" with "Colonists", and "abandoned house" with "America", and suddenly Night of the Living Dead is a lot more familiar.

Is it really any wonder that America is so fascinated with the stories of zombie survivors when the country practically is one? These stories appeal to us because they seem strangely familiar, and not just because we took a walk down Main Street.

Also, zombies are just plain fun to shoot, and we can kill them without the messy moral dilemmas in games like Call of Duty. Sure, this could be interpreted as a commentary on our consumerist society. However, when blasting away at the undead is so enjoyable, do we really care?