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Zombies versus Locusts

For some time now, I’ve been fond of the idea that consumers are like zombies, and that during recessions, they are scarier than big capitalists (vampires). A few years ago, there was a vigorous online debate about the relationship between the state of the economy and the relative popularity of vampire and zombie movies.

Apparently, zombie movies are more popular during recessions.

It’s not hard to see why the analogy is so attractive. The identification of mindless consumerism with zombie behavior is very tempting. I offered my own related spin a few years back (The Gollum Effect).

But locusts bring a whole new level of detail, real-world precedent and seriousness to this class of metaphors. Because unlike fictional zombies, locusts aren’t the dumb instruments of a witch doctor or a mutant virus. They are actually smart and self-interested automatons, which makes them more scary.

In 19th century America, huge Rocky Mountain locust plagues were a feature of agricultural life. One swarm was recorded at 198,000 square miles (larger than California) and over 12 trillion insects, the “greatest concentration of animals ever speculatively guessed” according to the Guinness Book of World Records (via Wikipedia).

The economic devastation was big enough ($200 million between 1873 to 1877) to measurably impact the national economy during the plague years.

Then they suddenly and rather mysteriously went extinct. More on that later, let’s cover the basics first.