>>i never understood how people get killed by zombies..<<

Much to the distress of my parents, I had a strong infatuation with "monster movies" somewhere between the ages of 9 and 13- now too many decades ago.

The entire time was not spent in mindless fascination, though. I can, just as if it were ever called for, discourse in pseudo-learned fashion on possible relationships between our reaction to almost-human monsters (always the most popular) and evolutionary memories of competition with Neanderthals and the like, or how monsters change over time to reflect real contemporary fears that we don't want to face directly.

The real upshot of my contemplations over those years though, was the insight that any monster less intelligent than we are is essentially boring- and that, of course, applies strongly to zombies. Any threat in that category would probably kill a few unsuspecting folks taken by surprise, but... we're essentially at the top of the food chain because we're capable of being pretty nasty, as required, to stay there... and any *stupid* threat is pretty easily disposed of, once we grasp it's nature.

And that, IMHO, is a large part of the secret of our continuing cultural fascination with vampires. In the persistent mythos of vampires we face very explicitly being put down a notch in the food chain by something with the potential for more intelligence- or at least equal intelligence and vastly more experience- than we possess. That was evident at the very beginning, in Bram Stoker's original book, which turns into sort of a vast chess game between Van Helsing and the 400 year-old Count, using human beings as pieces. Fundamentally different than any other genre I can think of.