Death in Life: Chronicle of a Zombification

It doesn't take a viral apocalypse, a parasitic fungus breaking through the cerebral cortex, or magical radiation reanimating corpses. Zombification already happens silently and methodically, being documented daily in feeds that no one questions anymore.

Observing the pattern, one sees beings who move without real purpose and merely replicate learned behaviors. They are hands that mechanically reach for phones and opaque eyes fixed on screens, devouring content just as the undead in The Walking Dead devour flesh. It's a cycle of consumption that never ends, without satisfaction or satiety, precisely defining our world.

We know well the metaphor of the rat race, in which millions run frantically in a giant wheel generating total exhaustion and zero displacement. That's exactly what we became when waking up early, working twelve hours, paying bills, and sleeping, repeating the process forever.

In 28 Days Later, the infected are bodies operating under one instruction only: spread the infection. Today our programming is different, but equally compulsory, focused on productivity, growth, and consumption. The race continues because someone profits from our fatigue, leading multitudes to run believing this routine is life itself. There's no space to question or stop, as any pause generates guilt and critical thinking is read as laziness. The wheel continues and we continue with it.

In Resident Evil, monsters lose identity and become replicas without free will. This reflects in the people around us, who dress, eat, think, and desire exactly the same. The algorithm chooses what we love before we even realize it, creating identical smartphones, ideas, and fears.

Fashion changes, but conformity remains, with everyone chasing the same car and the same dream house. It's an objective that costs decades of existence and leaves most empty in the end.

In the game Plants vs. Zombies, the enemy advances eternally and hypnotically. This dynamic translates to life in big cities, trapped in the loop of employment, housing, consumption, and debt. The game never ends and the player just gets more tired.

The true horror isn't being devoured, but ceasing to desire anything beyond what we've been programmed to want. Cinema creatures don't suffer because they don't think, while we think and know there's a chain around our neck, yet still wonder why we can't escape. That's the true curse.

We spend hours navigating social networks, buying what we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like. We work in purposeless jobs and finance machines that make us obsolete, criticizing the system while reinforcing each of its gears.

The game Half-Life presents the vortigaunts, enslaved creatures that can think but have been subdued. Today we act as voluntary vortigaunts who accept the yoke because they sold it as freedom. They say we can be whatever we want, except they only let us choose from already-offered options. Choosing between university and precarious work isn't a real choice, but submission in disguise.

The infected in The Last of Us lost autonomy and attack without knowing why. We, meanwhile, know exactly what's happening after reading articles and watching documentaries about exploitation, but keep doing the same thing.

Maybe that's even worse. Zombification isn't sudden, as there's no flash of light or coordinated attack. It's so gradual that no one notices when they stopped living and started just existing. Thirty years later, you're still trapped in the same race and realize you died along the way, becoming what fiction tried to warn us about.

The only difference is that, unlike movie, game, and book monsters, you can still wake up. The question nobody asks is when that will happen, because the true zombie apocalypse is one where the victim believes they're alive.