Why Do I Find Zombies Fascinating?

It's pretty much summed up in these two articles: One by William Grassie and a response by Robin Hanson.

I particularly like this part of Grassie's introduction:

Like the White Queen in Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass, I find it useful to practice imagining these "impossibilities" a little bit each day. "When I was younger I always did it for a half an hour a day," the Queen tells Alice. "Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."¹ It is not bad to think of these impossibly dark possibilities. [...] A little bit each day is a great way to focus life on really important matters.

The point of this thought experiment, however, is not to contemplate death and disaster, but to imagine survivors and continued life.

That's pretty much what zombies are all about for me: what becomes important when the darkest catastrophe conceivable happens. And the end of civilized society, combined with the possibility that everyone you love could come back as your enemy, is about as dark a catastrophe as is conceivable, at least by me. Plus, there's the undisputed fact that survivor stories are fascinating.