sometimes it's just fun to shoot people to bits without the moral quandry - you can't kill what's already (un)dead, and they are after your brains, so it's pure self-defense. I think the current Romero-Zombie story model has appeal for a number of reasons. First, they are politically and socially safe villians that have a simple motivation, and can be "killed" in awful ways without angering an ethnic/religious group. The second thing making the Romero Zombie popular is the timing. We're just eleven years out from 9/11, and pop-culture is hyping the Mayan calander nonsense so the end of the world is rolling around in the collective mind-set. Finally I think they reflect a recognition of the dying off of Victorian social models which framed the 20th century. So much of western culture is sustained by people simpley going through the motions without thinking about why they're doing things. Like the walking dead converging on the shopping mall people are doing things out of reflex instead of rational thought...like zombies. Like  the alien invasion movies of the 1950s, zombies reflect a subconcious fear that our world has already ended, but we don't know it yet. Zombies are great. The concept of losing control and being turned into a monster is something that I think a lot of people fear, but most of all they fear being forced to survive alone. It is scary to think about your loved ones being transformed into monsters. My favorite thing about zombie books is