100%. Zombies are allegory for the mob mentality of society at its worst. It’s difficult to portray good people killing otherwise healthy but unthinking leaches that demand conformity to their collective actions...so we make them something else.
It could be societal collapse, it could be public lynch mob mentality, it could simply be a defense of independent thinkers. What it has never been about is the literal resurrection of the dead and spread via bite.
ETA: I also think there is some manner of giving normal, moral, loving human beings an outlet for a very primal urge to have a defined enemy that can be slaughtered wholesale without the bad juju that as a species and culture we’ve generally learned is evil. But the desire for a cut and dry sense of good and evil where evil is dealt with in an extremely violent fashion is no doubt sitting dormant in most people from our ancient history and prehistory.
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