April 10th 2010 is undoubtedly one of the most important dates in modern Polish political history. 96 high Polish officials, including President Lech Kaczynski, died in an airplane crash in Smolensk. It can be assumed that this tragedy had a great impact on political attitudes. Unfortunately, very few authors in Poland conducted empirical research on this topic. The paper addressed the issue of probable psychological consequences of Smolensk Crash on political attitudes in the light of terror management theory. On this ground it can be said that arousing of mortality awareness after April 10th should result in a widespread feeling of terror. In other words, “threat of annihilation” should occur as a consequence of recalling those who died in Smolensk in the media. One of the major mechanisms to manage such anxiety is construction and maintenance of cultural worldviews, like ideologies. It leads to the hypothesis that when threatened, people are more likely to think and act in accordance with the cultural worldviews they share. Political leaders can be seen as guards of these cultural worldviews and if it is so, then trust and support for the politicians should increase when mortality salience occurs. Some of the public opinion research conducted in the first days after Smolensk crash are used to illustrate this hypothesis.
In recent years, zombies have made a stunning career, not only in literature and film, but also in scientific research. Zombies appear in scientific discourse as a reflection of fears connected with colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, consumerism, as well as metaphors for threats, like terrorism, asymmetric conflicts, epidemics and many more. It is also a useful concept for capturing ideas and theories remaining in scientific circulation which are in fact dead. So-called “zombie-categories” reflect theories that either explain nothing or the phenomena they refer to do not exist. Taking this into account, it is hard not to use zombies in political theory, especially as a useful category that enables the identification of “dead and alive” theories. Besides, zombie metaphors seem to be very promising in the political science teaching and a lot of research has already been undertaken in that field bringing unexpected and valuable results.