After Starbucks obliterated the internet in its bidding war with Walmart, society tried its damnedest to maintain some kind of a hold on the economy, while simultaneously rediscovering the basics of social interaction.
Society failed.
Oddly enough, this collapse of commerce and basic human decency was not considered an apocalypse. The resulting riots, the swift and drastic increase in crime, the burning down of Sweden and Norway and the ensuing Torrent War, however, ended the world for the fifth time.
Some historians lumped the whole string of events together, but some historians were idiots.
“I can’t believe you rented your own body out to the spirit world,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Why the hell not?” replied William H. Taft XLII. “They were paying well.”
In the course of re-inventing the internet, Japan accidentally found a way to raise the dead. While most countries would have stopped what they were doing, prayed to various deities—as religion was still valid at this point—and then shit their pants, this was Japan.
The internet had been powered by ghosts ever since.
“Good god,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “These steaks are delicious.”
Due to the increasing frequencies of apocalypses, the various heavens had been forced to add cover charges and dress codes, as well as patrol their respective borders more thoroughly than before. As a result, a large number of atheists and other “undesirables”—not exactly evil enough for Hell, but not quite qualifying for this new, more stringent definition of good, either—were denied their eternal rewards and, instead, found themselves tethered to their decaying mortal frames for all time.
Luckily for them, Japan’s complete disregard for the established policies of the universe freed those spirits from that never-ending boredom. As a result, there were a large number of vacant corpses.
With ethics no longer an issue—seeing as how souls were now not only confirmed, but, most assuredly, otherwise occupied—these empty corpses were brought to life by a rejuvenated USSR. The Soviets almost immediately lost control of the experiment. This swiftly led to the Zombie Holocaust and ended the world for the sixth time.
Amidst the widespread death, the ensuing chaos, and the newfound efficiency of the internet, the idea of coupling free-ranging, mercenary spirits with the marauding hordes of zombies managed to escape the collective thinking of the world’s remaining populace.
“Yes,” said the reanimated, rotting cadaver of a police officer, held together by duct tape and staples and currently being possessed by the ghost of Jesse James, “they sure are.”
At least until Chester A. Arthur XVII realized there was good money to be made in it.