The Bunker – News without the nonsense Best of 2025 – Zombie apocalypse! – How would the world react?
Dec 29, 2025
Daniel Drezner, a Tufts University professor and author known for blending international politics with pop culture, dives into a thrilling discussion about how the world might react to a zombie apocalypse. He explores how zombie narratives reflect societal fears, drawing parallels between pandemics and fictional outbreaks. Drezner highlights the paradox of public trust in crises and the varying responses based on culture and regime types. He also debates whether health agencies or militaries would lead response efforts, and why small states like New Zealand might have better survival odds.
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Zombies Reflect Changing Public Fears
- Zombies serve as a flexible metaphor for changing existential fears over time.
- Daniel Drezner links earlier nuclear anxieties to Cold War films and newer biological fears to post-9/11 cinema.
The Trust Paradox In Crises
- Publics rally behind governments at the start of a novel crisis but governments are often unprepared.
- Drezner calls this a paradox: trust peaks when bureaucracies are least ready, then falls as governments learn.
Categorisation Shapes Response And Sympathy
- How we classify infected people shapes policy and sympathy.
- Drezner notes family ties make treating reanimated loved ones as threats emotionally fraught.