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Despite some behind-the-scenes turmoil over the past few months, The Walking Dead returned this past Sunday with a vengeance, delivering a record rating for a basic cable drama, 7.3 million viewers, not to mention positive, if not glowing reviews. Despite their lack of hotness, zombies are even bigger than vampires now in the world of monsters.

Thing is, from a mythology standpoint, there’s really not much more to say about zombies that I didn’t cover the last time I talked Dead. There are variations on the mythology over the years, but Dead represents a return to the traditions of the classic Romero zombies as established in Night of the Living Dead, with one major exception. Walking Dead seems to have embraced the zompocalypse-as-plague trend of the last decade or so.

See, zombies are a sub-genre, not only of horror, but of apocalypse stories. Over the years we’ve seen warpocalypses, apepocalypses, alienpocalypses and so on. But the pocalypse that seems to have taken hold over the past little while seems to be the plaguepocalypse, and the zompocalypse sub-genre has adapted to fit right in.

In the Romero original, pretty much anyone who dies will rise again to feed on their still-living counterparts. If a zombie were to bite you, you’re pretty much doomed to die. However, to zombify, you aren’t limited to zom chomps. A heart attack’ll zombify you. As will a stroke. Pretty much any sort of death not involving brain destruction will turn you undead and cannibalistic.

Nowadays, it seems zombification is limited to the bite. It spreads like a virus, through undead saliva. Now I don’t know if this is the result of our cultural fear of SARS, AIDS, terrorist anthrax threats, what have you, but I think it has a diminishing effect on zomythology.

You see, if zombites are the only way to turn, then all you have to do is pretty much avoid the bite. I don’t mean to say that this would be an easy task, but it does make the problem more manageable. However, if your rag tag team of survivors could potentially go zombie from choking to death on a piece of hotdog, well mister, your problem just got a hell of a lot more difficult.

Zomovies and shows have shown us that, in the wake of a zompocalypse, mankind will be reduced to a smattering of such rag tag teams, holed up in abandoned farm houses, shopping malls, and other such confined places. Last thing you need is one of your fellow survivors dying on you. Sure a blow to the brain’ll end the problem, but what if he dies while everyone’s asleep? Yeah, that’s right, you and your pals will be unwitting zombie sandwiches.

In addition to that, the bite’ll only turn you if you somehow get away from the zombie biting you. No self respecting zombie is concerned with growing the population. No, he just wants lunch. He’s gonna keep on eating you until there’s not much left to turn into a new zombie. So, over time, the zombie population will decrease as more and more of the rag tag teams reject that one asshole member that each rag tag team seems to have, unify, and conquer the zombie threat.

In addition to that, the biting thing really further blurs the line between zombie and vampire. See, in many vampire mythologies, just the bite alone is enough to turn you. This may seem silly, because it really would lead to a spread of vampirism so quickly that we’d have a vampocalypse on our hands in no time. This is my so many vampire mythologies complicate the turning process.

Nevertheless, just the vamp bite is one of the old standbys. So, vampires are undead, feed on the living, and turn you with a bite. So pretty much the only difference is that they’re classier. I don’t know about you, but I like my monster mythologies clearly defined, making it easy for me to tell one from another. We have to consider these things, with the potential for so many pocalypses just around the corner.

The Walking Dead is nothing short of a phenomenon. I’m glad. I love the show. And by no means am I opposed to exploring alternate variations on the mythology. I just don’t think zombie-as-virus does much for the genre. It makes zombies less threatening. When you’re dealing with a genre like horror, threatening is all you’ve got.