> find terrifying stories to be interesting lead otherwise boring and risk-free lives Or maybe our lives are not as boring and risk-free as we would like to th

> find terrifying stories to be interesting lead otherwise boring and risk-free lives Or maybe our lives are not as boring and risk-free as we would like to think and our collective unconciouses draw us to these stories in order to process the dangers our egos pefer to avoid. I mean, even if no external danger existed, there are the perennial existential dangers of living a meaningless and empty life. Zombies come up a lot as the symbol of mindless mass action, looking for brains (wisdom?) in life. I don’t want this to come across as criticism of the lifestyle you painted but merely as a thought experiment to entertain; when you drive a safe car everyday between home and work, and write code for purposes that other people scoped out for you, and you know there are many others doing the same, maybe there is already a bit of zombie action going on to begin with and that is why the zombie flick is interesting? Which is not to say these are the only dangers. I mean right now we are in the middle of a pandemic, which doesn’t get much more biblical than that. I believe those terrifying stories has helped us do serious information processing and in turn created an adaptive evolutionary advantage in preparing for these eventualities.