The Oxford Internet Institute produces some of the more engaging data-visualizations we seem to come across on Tumblr or Twitter. And today, we we're pointed by The Guardian's Datablog to a fun world map that data-crunched  references to zombies using information culled from Google maps. What we learned is that this type of walking undead is mostly an obsession of the United States, Europe and sprinkled about in Japan a bit. As you can see (even bigger image here) from the big rust red dots, it looks like the West and Northeast coasts--particularly California and New York--look like they make the most zombie references. France too. Since the map text is a bit small here's the description from the designers, with a a bit of dry humor at the end.

Using a keyword search for "zombies," the following map visualizes the absolute concentrations of references within the Google Maps database. The map reveals two important spatial patterns. First, much of the world lacks any content mentioning "zombies" whatsoever. Second, and related, the highest concentrations of zombies in the Geoweb are located in the Anglophone world, especially in large cities.The results either provide a rough proxy for the amount of English-language content indexed over our planet, or offer an early warning into the geographies of the impending zombie apocalypse

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at ehayden at nationaljournal dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
Erik Hayden