(CNN) -- Should zombies rise up someday soon and take over the world because of an unidentified plague or virus that's caused the collapse of modern society as we know it, how would you react?





Such is the fundamental question of AMC's widely successful show "The Walking Dead," which returns this Sunday for its second season.





Based on Robert Kirkman's comic book, the series is one of the more odd yet complex dramas on television today. At its core, it's about survival and the psychological stress that spending every waking moment together has on a small group. But that could be said about all human beings in that surviving the world is something we do on a daily basis; the trick with "The Walking Dead" is that a pack of ravenous zombies could be lurking around the corner, ready to make you into dinner.





Viewers are consistently presented with questions of morality, instinct and terror, where plots are less about discovery -- there's no race for the cure -- and more about the struggle to exist.





CNN checked in with "The Walking Dead" showrunner/executive producer Glen Mazzara to see what's in store for season two, how the show finds its storytelling voice and just how they get that authentic zombie feel.





CNN: On average, how much are you thinking about zombies each day?





Mazzara: All of them. I wake up thinking about zombies. How do I keep them scary? What's new, what's different, what's fun that we can do with zombies?





CNN: How did this show become so popular on just a six-episode first season? What's the appeal?





Mazzara: It's visceral. There's an immediacy for anyone watching it, where they think, "what would I do?"





People buy into the idea that a plague could wipe out things. We've seen that, and it's in the zeitgeist now. It's playing on the everyman level where it's about the survivors and not about what happened to the collapse of government or infrastructure. You get in the car, and it runs out of gas, and then what? Meanwhile, you're being chased by zombies.





CNN: Remember the swine flu? That was a legit panic.





Mazzara: Yeah. It's like when you're watching a horror movie and the people move into a haunted house. And you're wondering, why didn't think just move out? Everything our survivors are doing, hopefully, strikes people as realistic. They're making decisions that ordinary people would make. And none of those decisions have very good consequences.





CNN: There's also weird psychological dynamics between the characters where they have to get along while also ensuring that they survive, they want to survive, and everyone around them survives too, because as far as they know, they're it.





Mazzara: Right. Our characters are definitely flawed. But they're stuck together because, hopefully, there's survival in numbers. It's an interesting dynamic that we're going to play out all season where people are deciding, are they better off with the group or without?





CNN: In a few of the articles that have come out, you mention the desire to showcase your own storytelling voice. What would that entail, exactly, for the viewer?





Mazzara: Part of what I hope to do this season is really focus on the character of Rick and his questions of leadership. Taking over a successful show, I'm facing my own questions of leadership, so that's easy to write. But I feel that the work I've done in the past, especially on "The Shield," where it was a very surprising, violent show, yet grounded work -- that's something I'm trying to bring to this piece as well.





Because it's a heightened reality, one where people are being chased by zombies, you have to be careful not to tip that line where it becomes unrealistic. You have to be grounded, and that's something we worked very hard on "The
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