Zombies will never be dead (merely undead), but they were never scary in a horror sense. The public goes through cycles in the manifestation of their monsters based largely upon the cultural zietgiest. What is happening within society directly effects the type of media consumed by individuals. Zombies are ever present due to the ease at which they can be adapted as a metaphor for other more latent fears (read: “fears” not horror). Zombies typically are stand-ins for real people and cause for you to fear what they represent not what they actually are. In many recent media of the past two decades fears of Communism, Consumerism, and other -isms which zombies have represented in the past they have been utilized to look upon us ourselves with zombies merely the disaster and the real antagonists being other humans as part of modern white guilt. So zombies as a monster are extremely malleable and for this reason they may wax and wane in popularity, but they will never die. Zombies are eternal.