Aquarius Zombie Survival Tin Lunch Box

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Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit in a Sardine Can

All kinds of useful in a tiny little can! Perfect for the go-bag or purse More »

The Walking Dead: Compendium One

The Walking Dead: Compendium One by Robert Kirkman - the first eight volumes of the fan-favorite, New York Times Best Seller series collected into one massive paperback collection! Collects The Walking Dead #1-48. More »

MTM Limited Edition Zombie Ammo Can (Black and Green)

Because you can never have too much ammo - or a cool enough box to hoard it in More »

BLOODY ZOMBIE HAND PRINT Window Sticker

Because freaking out the neighbors is an endless past time.... More »

 

Hungry? Try the new zombie diet

One of my favorite episodes of the classic television series “The Twilight Zone” was titled “To Serve Man.” Aliens visited Earth and proceeded to help humanity solve its social, political and medical problems while setting up an exchange program. A tool was a book with the title of “To Serve Man,” which turned out to be a cookbook with recipes on how to prepare people as meals.

That imaginative episode of the sci-fi series seems to be playing out in a slightly different form the past two months. Zombie-mania is taking hold of the country, with reports of people eating each other and other creatures.

The entertainment industry is filled with movies and television shows depicting zombies in all of their mindless, flesh-eating gory glory. A cottage industry has tips, products and processes to protect humanity from the living dead.

But zombies aren’t just for entertainment anymore. They have infiltrated real life.

Following the news recently has been a trip through weirdville, with reports on cannibalism and assorted stomach-turning events. Movies, television shows and social media conversations have elevated the topic to near maniacal status, focusing especially on the zombie potential.

One of the first reports came from Miami on May 26, as police shot a naked man eating another man’s face. A few days later, a college student in Maryland told police he killed a man and then ate his heart and part of his brain.

Then things got really weird. In New Jersey, a man stabbed himself 50 times and threw bits of his own intestines at police, who then pepper-sprayed him but still had a hard time bringing him down.

Also in May, police discovered a video that appeared to show Canadian porn performer Luka Magnotta, 29, slashing his bound young lover with an ice pick. He then reportedly abused and dismembered the corpse before eating some of the man’s remains with a knife and fork. Detectives in Montreal allege Magnotta then mailed some body parts to members of the Canadian Parliament. Magnotta was arrested about two weeks later in Germany.

The lunacy continued with other reports in June, including one of a man who ate his dog.

While some are equating the rise of this type of incident to zombies and end-of-the-world prophecies, cooler heads are blaming a more mundane and man-made cause: drug abuse. The New Jersey event is being specifically blamed on a drug mixture known as “bath salts.”

Florida officials describe bath salts as a synthetic drug that reportedly produces “an extreme high of euphoria” and is comparable to amphetamines and cocaine. The mixture is sold as potpourri and incense at liquor stores, gas stations and head shops. Officials said in order to know exactly what is in each package you have to seize them from the store and test them in a lab.

Some state legislatures, Michigan included, have taken steps to outlaw the product. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta released a statement saying there is no Zombie Apocalypse on the horizon.

Personally, I think the CDC’s statement is just a diversion to hide the truth.

In the meantime, bolt the doors, stockpile the food and keep your loaded weapons nearby. Remember, zombies are already dead. The only way they can be stopped is by destroying the brain, according to people who have studied this sort of thing.

THE WALKING DEAD – SEASON 3 SNEAK PEEK

Michonne SNEAK PEEK – KICKS ASS

ZOMBIE THEME PARK – COOLEST THING EVER

Why wait for the zombie apocalypse? One man wants customers to experience the terror now.

With soaring budget deficits and population on the decline, Detroit has become a laboratory for testing out creative solutions for cities, like urban farming and pedestrian-friendly greenway trails.

Mark Siwak says he has his own idea for bettering the city — a live-action zombie theme park set in one of Detroit’s abandoned neighborhoods.

Paying customers would be chased by a growing horde of zombies (all professionals) through a cordoned-off, desolate section of the city, seeking shelter in abandoned homes and factories and businesses.

Z World creator Siwak, who has launched a fundraiser on IndieGoGo (he’s raised $2,200 of the $140,000 needed to meet his goal), says that the city of Detroit needs to consider creative solutions to areas of urban blight.

Mayor Dave Bing’s long-touted campaign promise was the implementation of theDetroit Works Project, which could ultimately relocate residents from blighted districts to more populated areas in an attempt to centralize city services. Spread across 140 square miles, Detroit proper is so large that the entire cities of San Francisco and Boston, plus the borough of Manhattan, can fit inside its borders.

And Siwak says, with all that land, there’s room in the Motor City for a zombie theme park. He even compares his idea to the city’s famed Heidelberg Project, in which artist Tyree Guyton transformed the empty homes of his neighborhood into a large-scale art installation.

But some critics have shrugged off “Z World” as an exploitative and insensitive ploy to profit off the glamorization of Detroit’s problems. Curbed Detroit blogger Sarah Cox wrote that Siwak’s plan “sounds a lot like all that fun we had during the 1960s race riots. It is nice to know that Z Land is finally going to capitalize on our love of adrenaline rushes and nostalgia. Now even visitors from the ‘burbs can ‘wonder if they will make it through the night.'”

Siwak told CBS Detroit that “the city can only have so many urban farms or similar uses for vacant plots.’

And while he’s far away from his funding goals, not to mention permission from the City of Detroit, he says he’s already getting resumes from Detroiters who’d like their next 9-to-5 to focus on eating brains and staggering through the streets.

On his site, Siwak assured, “while zombies are great, the real neat thing about this project is the potential to inject some life into a forgotten neighborhood – with the opportunity to work with neighborhood groups and organization.”

This wouldn’t be the world’s first live-action zombie role-play game, though Detroit’s proposal is almost certainly the most expansive. In Atlanta, thrill-seekers wielding paint ball guns will pay as much as $30 to play hide-and-seek with undead zombies in a formerly abandoned truck stop rechristened as the Atlanta Zombie Apocalypse, opening Sept. 28. Over on the other side of the pond, wish.co.uk offers zombie combat mission experiences with training from military veterans and movie-grade special effects.

PANDEMIC OUTBREAK – Mystery illness claims dozens of Cambodian children

Hong Kong (CNN) — The World Health Organization is helping the Cambodian Ministry of Health investigate the cause of a mysterious illness that has killed dozens of children in the country since April.

A joint statement from the WHO and the ministry, released Wednesday, said 61 of 62 children admitted to hospital had died from the disease. The majority of the reported cases came from southern and central Cambodia.

“[The Ministry of Health] and WHO are currently investigating the cases,” Mam Bunheng, the Cambodian minister of health, said in the statement, “possible causes of the disease are being considered, but definite identification of the cause and source may take some time.”

Initial reports from the Cambodian government indicate that the unknown illness struck children under seven years old.

“The symptoms include a mixture of respiratory illnesses, fever and generalized neurological symptoms, including convulsions in some of the patients,” Dr. Nima Asgari, a team leader of the WHO country office in Cambodia, said in an email to CNN.

The children were brought to hospitals in the capital, Phnom Penh, and the northern tourist hub of Siem Reap — the two biggest cities of Cambodia — but most of them died within 24 hours upon admission.

“This can be a mixture of a number of known diseases — virological, bacterial or toxicological — which have been reported as one syndrome or something new,” Asgari added.

“While the labs are excluding the various pathogens, we are providing support to [the Ministry of Health] to make sure that an in-depth analysis of cases is done to identify possible causes or exposures which will give us a better picture. The investigation is ongoing.”

So far, there were no signs of contagion or clusters of cases — patients who had contact with each other and fell sick together — a telltale warning sign of a highly infectious disease. But Asgari admitted the high mortality rate in such a short time was extremely worrying.

ZOMBIE HISTORY – Zombie Scenes in the Bible

Zombies loom large in popular culture these days. Max Brooks’ “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” (2006), the Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith mashup “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” (2009), and Melissa Marr’s “Graveminder” (2011), to name but a few recent novels, enjoy a wide readership. There are also graphic novels, the AMC television show “The Walking Dead,” video games, and of course movies. Some of my recent favorites in the latter category include the Norwegian Nazis-as-zombies film “Dead Snow” (2009) with its delightful tagline “Ein! Zwei! Die!” and Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s “The Cabin in the Woods” (2012). With all of this going on, there is little surprise to come across the open-source, collaborative Stinque Zombie Bible. It was just a matter of time, I suppose, and the King James Bible will never be quite the same.

I am an unabashed zombie fan but also teach “classic” English literature and the New Testament so I can’t quite bring myself to desecrate the literary and religious masterpiece that is the Authorized (King James) Version by contributing to the Zombie Bible. Still, wanting to get into the spirit of things, I can’t resist noting a few biblical scenes and themes — a top 10 list — that come to mind each time I watch or read the latest version of the zombie apocalypse to come along. At least in some passages, a zombie-Bible mashup requires very little editorial interference.

1. The Gospel of Luke: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Luke 24:5). Such a suggestive phrase. Note also that the angels asking the question and those they address are standing inside a tomb at the time (Luke 24:2-4).

2. The Book of Revelation: “the sea gave up the dead that were in it” (Revelation 20:13). John the Seer’s creepy statement reminds me of a scene in George A. Romero’s “Land of the Dead” (2005) that features slow-moving corpses walking out of the surf, and Max Brooks’ “World War Z” with its account of the boy returning from a swim with a bite mark on his foot. He also describes the zombie hoards roaming the world’s oceans: “They say there are still somewhere between twenty and thirty million of them, still washing up on beaches, or getting snagged in fisherman’s nets.”

3. Deuteronomy: “Your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away” (Deuteronomy 28:25-26; cf. 2 Samuel 21:10; Psalm 79:1-2; Isaiah 34:2-3; Jeremiah 7:33). The ancients worried about the exposure of their body after death. Improper care of one’s corpse was a terrifying prospect, so it is no wonder it features in prophetic warnings of divine wrath. Qoheleth insists that even though a man lives a long life and has many children, if he “has no burial … a stillborn child is better off than he” (Ecclesiastes 6:3). The indignity of non-burial presumably accounts for the honor bestowed on the poor man Lazarus in Jesus’ parable; the rich man receives proper burial but Lazarus “was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham” (Luke 16:22) because there was no one to care for his remains.

4. The Book of Job: “Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures…?” (Job 3:20-21). Job is angry he did not die at birth (3:11), adding that he loathes his life and does not want to live forever (7:16). Others prefer death to life out of principled anger against God, like the prophet Jonah (4:3; cf. 4:8). Physical death eludes a surprising number of people in the Christian Bible, and this is not always a welcome thing. The prophet John refers to some who “seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them” (Revelation 9:6). The prospect of an elusive death, as every zombie fan knows, terrorizes the living. The “stricken” Charlotte Lucas in “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” agrees to marry the tedious and obsequious minister Mr. Collins because she wants “a husband who will see to [her] proper Christian beheading and burial.” This is no small task for most survivors left with such a grim assignment, as Shaun well knows: “I don’t think I got it in me to shoot my flat mate, my mom, and my girlfriend all in the same evening” (“Shaun of the Dead,” 2004).

5. The Gospel of Matthew: “The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After [Jesus’] resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many” (Matthew 27:52-53). Unwanted persistent life is a recurring image in biblical literature and so too is language referring to the impermanence of bodily death. The dead do not stay dead. The psalmist is confident he will not “see decay” (Psalm 16:10 New International Version; cf. Acts 2:27; 13:35). We read of the physical resurrections of specific individuals (e.g., 1 Kings 17:17-24; Luke 8:49-56; maybe Acts 20:7-12) and expected mass revivals (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). Some of these accounts of un-dying involve reference to un-burying. Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus walks out of his tomb when “they took away the stone” (John 11:41). On Easter morning, mourners find “the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back” (Mark 16:4). A second century writer describes further the events preceding Jesus’ emergence from the tomb: “That stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started of itself to roll and gave way to the side, and the sepulchre was opened” (Gospel of Peter9.35).

6. Ezekiel: Ezekiel receives a vision promising the restoration of Israel (37:11). Seeing a valley full of bones, the Lord instructs him to speak to them, saying, “O dry bones … I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live” (37:4-6). When Ezekiel does so, “there was a noise, a rattling” as bones come together and sinew and skin appears and the breath of life returns. The dry bones “lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude” (37:7-10).

7. Zechariah: “their flesh shall rot while they are still on their feet; their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths” (Zechariah 14:12). They seem to resemble extras in a George A. Romero film.

8. The Gospel of Mark: “hell, where their worm never dies” (Mark 9:48; alluding here to Isaiah 66:24). Gehenna (here symbolically representing “hell,” and usually translated so, as in Mark 9:44, 45, 47) refers to the Valley of Hinnom located to the south and southwest of Jerusalem. Following the reign of Israel’s righteous King Josiah (see 2 Kings 23:10-14), it became Jerusalem’s garbage heap, a place with maggots and rotting corpses. Jesus refers to this burning garbage in Mark 9:48, a place where residents of the city would leave the rotting corpses of humans and animals to the worms that do not die, to maggots. The image suggests the corpses of the damned rot ingehenna/hell — maggot ridden — in perpetuity.

9. 2 Maccabees: “[Antiochus IV Epiphanes] was seized with a pain in his bowels, for which there was no relief, and with sharp internal tortures — and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange inflictions … he fell out of his chariot as it was rushing along, and the fall was so hard as to torture every limb of his body. … the ungodly man’s body swarmed with worms, and while he was still living in anguish and pain, his flesh rotted away, and because of the stench the whole army felt revulsion at his decay. Because of his intolerable stench no one was able to carry the man who a little while before had thought that he could touch the stars of heaven” (2 Maccabees 9:5-6, 7, 9-10). The Syrian ruler’s physical body rots away zombie-like while he still lives. The cause is divine, as the God of Israel strikes this enemy of the Jews with “an incurable and invisible blow” (2 Maccabees 9:5).

10. Genesis with the Book of Revelation: “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep”; “the first heaven and the first earth has passed away, and the sea was no more” (Genesis 1:2; Revelation 21:1). With the disappearance of chaos, Eden returns: “On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit” (Revelation 22:2; cf. Genesis 2:9). Horrors stories often wander back and forth between forms of paradise (ordered society) and chaos (some variant of an apocalyptic hellscape) thus recalling biblical stories with similar alternations. Zombie stories typically depict the disintegration of the modern world, and often hint at a return from the wilderness to the paradisiacal garden for survivors (cf. Genesis 3:23-24). Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” (2002), for one, ends with a developing romance between Jim and Salina, happy in the cultivated lands around a cottage that echoes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The sequel “28 Weeks Later” (2007), however, depicts a failed attempt to restore Eden. After the spread of the disastrous infection in the first film, the sequel documents efforts to repopulate the United Kingdom. Survivors return to their homeland, to what the director’s commentary refers to as “a new world” and a “Garden of Eden.” Naturally, mayhem ensues and the infection spreads as the movie unfolds. It wouldn’t be much of a horror movie otherwise.