Running Tally of Walking Dead

Zombies were the most frequently killed “demo” on TV’s show with the highest body count, according to a study of television body counts by Funeralwise.com, an online funeral planning service, which says that the study is meant to “stimulate discussion about how people deal with death in real life vs. how they view death as fictionalized in the media.”The site found, not surprisingly, that The Walking Dead had the most bodies, with an average 38 per episode, with 91% of those zombies.

The report comes the same day a TV station was reportedly hacked and a “zombie alert” issued using its emergency warning system.

According to the study, gunshots were the cuase of 44% of TV deaths, with knives a distant second at 19%. But that did not apply across the board. For humans, gunshots were 52% of deaths, while that number was lower for zombies (and vampires, of course), where knives, arrows or other means of driving a pointed object into the undead predominated.

Media violence is in the spotlight, or more like the sidelight, of the Administration’s current focus on gun violence. The President has directed studies on the connection, if any, between fantasy violence and the real thing, though with more of an emphasis on video games.