Everything zombie

The term zombie has become so popular that it has been used to describe objects or persons that behave accordingly.

The Zombie cocktail includes three different kinds of rum, lime juice, falernum, Angostura bitters, Pernod, grenadine, and “Don’s Mix”, a combination of cinnamon syrup and grapefruit juice.

Chicken zombies are old egg-laying hens that are no longer profitable for poultry farmers to feed and house. The cheapest way to dispose of these birds is to euthanize them and turn them into compost. Farmers gas birds with carbon monoxide to kill them, but survivors are sometimes seen struggling out of piles of dead chickens. A 2006 Associated Press article described the phenomenon and the response from animal-cruelty organizations.

“CZs are simply terrifying to behold and are likely only to make people become vegetarians to protest animal cruelty,” a military report notes.

A smartphone zombie is a pedestrian who walks slowly and without attention to their surroundings because they are focused upon their smartphone. The field of vision of a smartphone user is estimated to be just 5% of a normal pedestrian’s. Safety hazards have been noted due to such distracted pedestrians. Cities such as Chongqing and Antwerp have introduced special lanes for smartphone users to help direct and manage them. Texting pedestrians may trip over curbs, walk out in front of cars and bump into other walkers.

A zombie computer is a computer or personal computer (PC) connected to the Internet and taken over by a computer worm, virus, or other “malware.” Groups of such machines, called botnets (from a combination of robot and network), often carry out criminal actions for their master without their owners’ detecting any unusual activity.

A zombie company is a company that earn just enough money to continue operating and service debt but are unable to pay off their debt. Such companies, given that they just scrape by meeting overheads (wages, rent, interest payments on debt, for example), have no excess capital to invest to spur growth. Zombie companies are typically subject to higher borrowing costs and may be one just event—market disruption or a poor quarter performance—away from insolvency or a bailout. Zombies are especially dependent on banks for financing, which is fundamentally their life support. Zombie companies are also known as the “living dead” or “zombie stocks.”