Table of Contents
1. Introduction… of the Living Dead
The truth: zombies have always been among us. From the chewed-open skull fossil records and indigenous artwork found at archeological sites, we know they came across the Bering Straight with the first living humans into North America. From there on, the living dead were to play a pivotal - though routinely covered-up and overlooked - role in American history. This is the real story that your textbooks didn’t tell you.
2. New World, Old Monsters
We all know that "in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," and that the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, but little is remembered of the role zombies played in the conquest of the New World. From the mystery of America’s first settlement, Roanoke (hint, the settlers didn’t exactly “disappear”), to the Native Americans helping the Mayflower settlers ward off undead attacks, zombies had their teeth marks all over Colonial history.
3. Revolting Revolution
As much as we may hate zombies, there likely would not be a United States of America without them. In one of the rebellion’s key inciting events, the Boston Massacre, it was in fact zombies the British soldiers were firing at, not living Bostonians; it was zombies that caused the Great New York Fire of 1776; General Washington utilized zombies in several key battles; and Thomas Jefferson was rumored to have kept a zombie mistress at Monticello.
4. Corpse of Discovery
There are few stories more uniquely American than the journey of Lewis&Clark, so it is only rightly so that zombies figured dramatically in the tale. Lewis&Clark scholars have long speculated why there are lengthy passages missing from Lewis’ otherwise detailed journals. The pages were in fact removed by President Jefferson, wanting to conceal the fact that Lewis&Clark had encountered throngs of the living dead on their way to the Pacific, for fear that it would impede Easterners’ desires to migrate west. Alas, Lewis himself was bitten and never made it back home.
5. Dismember the Alamo
The battle at the Alamo school children are taught is a myth. The Texians were not in fact fighting Santa Anna’s army, but rather a legion of hungry zombies. The leaders of the Texas Revolution saw a chance to turn tragedy to their advantage, and thus spun the modern legend of the Alamo to bolster sympathy and support against the Mexican Army.
6. The Emaciation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln wasn’t just a champion for the end of African slave labor; he was also a strong proponent to end the even more questionable practice of undead labor (often utilizing a delicious looking young boy as bait, zombies harnessed to a plow could easily be used to till soil). Lincoln’s abolishment of undead labor earned him many enemies, some even believing the President himself to be a zombie (a theory which is supported by some evidence). This is why John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the head, and in fact yelled not, “Sic semper tyrannis,” but “ Sic semper victus mortuus.” Thus always to the living dead.
7. Bury My Brain At Wounded Knee
The expansion into the Western frontier is an iconic period in American history to anyone who has played Cowboys&Indians as a child. No one, of course, plays Cowboys&Zombies. A sad disregard to the brave men and women who encountered the teams of zombies pushed westward by the Eastern colonies’ slow encroachment. It is also a disregard to the no-doubt misunderstood undead, either outright killed or pushed further onto reservations where they were forced to devour each other for lack of prey.
8. V is for Victory, Z is for Zombie
We may not want to admit it, but the Greatest Generation also included zombies. Though it may be hyperbole to claim Hitler might have won the war, were it not for the aid of American zombies, zombies did nonetheless play a role in the Second World War. Zombies were not allowed to openly serve in the military, but the few that were able to pass for living joined up (though many met unfortunate ends after devouring unit-mates). They were also used as a weapon in the Pacific, where the Navy would deploy a platoon of undead onto an island to infect and eat Japanese soldiers.
9. The Dead Menace
Despite their service and exploitation during the War, zombies simply didn’t fit into America’s idealistic post-war vision. Already suspicious of Communist influences, living Americans viewed zombies and their groupthink mentalities (not to mention hunger for flesh) as a danger to American values. It’s no wonder that HUAC, originally standing for the House Un-Dead Activities Committee, soon took up the mantle of anti-American paranoia. Zombies were also the cause of the Bay of Pigs debacle in Cuba.
10. New Frontiers of the Living Dead
Mercury Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr was the first American in space. Or so we are told. But Jeffery Kassel, undead, went up before Shepard in an unpublicized launch – part of NASA’s secret Pluto program, which was compromised entirely of zombies.
