FROM ZOMBIE TO ZOMBIES, OR HOW THE ATOMIC ERA CHANGED THE POST-APOCALYPTIC

Zombies are an ancient representation of afterlife, and are built upon a rich philosophical substrate that seems to transcend time and cultural context, being easily translated into current readings. A paradigm shift would turn, progressively but visibly, the notion of singular zombie to pluralistic zombie - transforming the isolated mythical or folkloric ‘draugr’,’strigoi’, ‘jiangshi’, etc. into a mass of nameless zombies. The paper investigates this transition and attempts to explain its implications for the American Post-Apocalyptic, a literary subgenre that seems to have a number of common points with zombies as an event.