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The nearest you can get to experiencing a zombie apocalypse isn’t by sitting in front of a screen, but by attending one of the social events generally referred to as “zombie walks”. These gatherings are an extension of the zombie subculture that depicts a future in which civilisation is collapsing due to a virus that turns humans into brainless flesh-eating monsters. The echo of videogames and films depicting this particular scenario proves that what started as an underground subculture is becoming more popular nowadays, thus hordes of zombies are, quite literally, marching through towns and cities all over the world.

You’ll find zombie mobs in Brisbane, Toronto, San Diego, Sitges (Spain), Detroit, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Prague, Paris, Glasgow, Bristol or London. They’re organised through social networks like Facebook or MySpace, with little or no support from mainstream media, and yet they can reach thousands of participants with the desire to dress up and behave as the undead. According to Guinn­ess World Records, the largest zombie gathering united 4,026 people at the 2009 Big Chill Festival in Nottingham. For insiders, the experience is immensely enjoyable, almost cathartic. But what makes zombies the unlikely protagonists of a network of social events?

Despite the continued popularity of vampires, it’s clear that zombies are becoming the monster that defines our time. There is no other creature that better captures the apocalyptic fears of climate change or the economical turmoil of recent history – the erratic behaviour of a crowd of zombies could be seen as a metaphor for the collapse of civil society.

Participants in a zombie walk follow a pre-arranged route through city centres, made publicly available through flyers, networking websites or word of mouth. Any larger than average concentration of individuals draws attention to itself, but adding the litres of fake blood, the gruesome make-up and the orchestrated zombie behaviour multiplies the effect. Passers-by are often shocked by what in most cases (given the absence of information in mainstream media) is an unannounced takeover of the city by a group of zombies. Adopting catatonic behaviour, the participants of a zombie walk seem to enter an auto-induced trance state, appropriating such zombie traits as grunting and groaning, calling for brains and absently banging the windows of moving cars and buses, leaving traces of synthetic blood around the city centre.

There’s no doubt that zombie walks constitute a political manifest­ation of sorts. To start with, they reproduce the characteristics of an eventual zombie apocalypse, which, as we’ve learnt from numerous films, is a democratic one. Participants seem especially careful to represent all segments of society: zombie priests, soldiers, cleaners, aristocrats, Goths, pirates, librarians and office workers mix with Hitler, Michael Jackson or Little Red Riding Hood.

As in medieval times, they are united in the Dance of Death, a subject represented by dancing skele­tons luring the living into a danse macabre. In the context of post­modernity, though, zombies remind us not only of our mortality, but lurch one ungainly step beyond to present us with an image of living death, an alienated, mindless, meaningless existence that will ultimately lead to the collapse of society.

But does this peculiar form of political theatre have a real social impact? As in the Dance of Death, social satire is underpinned by protest, and during a parade that usually lasts for a couple of hours, the zombie becomes a kind of shaman, a figure between the realms of life and death, bringing awareness to us mere mortals. By indicating a path we shouldn’t follow, zombie mobs become an inverted version of psycho­pomps, the guides of souls. And, as in the Dance of Death, we are all invited to join in.