Two weeks ago I wrote a list of five doomsday films ranked by plausibility. The response to this piece made me realize that I overlooked the most pressing apocalyptic threat of all: zombies.

The onslaught of the living dead has been a mainstay of horror cinema for decades, beginning with the Bela Lugosi vehicle White Zombie in 1932. Over the following years zombies popped up in movies as one of many monstrous villains, often filling the minion role. It wasn’t until George Romero’s groundbreaking 1968 film Night of the Living Dead that the idea of a zombie apocalypse was introduced. Romero’s cannibalistic zombies have since become the archetype used in countless films, books, and video games. The cause of the virulent plague of the walking dead varies, however. Everything from spiritual curses, viruses, chemical weapons, and alien microorganisms have been used to explain the origin of zombies. Below the jump we examine the real-world evidence behind some of these threats, and which ones you should be most worried about.

…Read more