Tag Archives: zombie apocalypse
ZOMBIE HISTORY – The Plague That Is Zombies
‘I hereby resolve to kill every vampire in America” writes the young Abraham Lincoln in the best-selling 2010 novel “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” Honest Abe doesn’t quite make good on his promise, and the grim results are all around us. Today, vampires spring from the shadows of our popular culture with deadening regularity, from the Anne Rice novels to the Twilight juggernaut to this year’s film adaptation about the ghoul-slaying Great Emancipator. Lately we’ve also endured a decadelong bout with the vampire’s undead cousin, the zombie, who has stalked films from “28 Days Later” to “Resident Evil” (the next sequel of which is due out this fall) and the popular TV show “The Walking Dead.”
Purists will hold forth on the differences between vampire and zombie, but the family resemblance is unmistakable. Both are human forms seized by an animal aggression, which manifests itself in an insatiable desire to feed on the flesh of innocents. (Blood, brains, whatever; it’s a matter of taste.) Moreover, that very act of biting, in most contemporary versions of both myths, transforms the victims into undead ghouls themselves.
Our vampires and zombies (as well as such poor relations as werewolves) all serve as carriers for vaguely similar saliva-borne infections. These mythical contagions are especially odd because they have so few analogues in the natural world. Indeed, there is really only one: the rabies virus.
A fatal infection of the brain, rabies is particularly devastating to the limbic system, one of the most primitive parts of the brain. Fear, anger and desire are hijacked by the virus, which meanwhile replicates prolifically in the salivary glands. The infected host, deprived of any sense of caution, is driven to furious attack and sometimes also racked with intense sexual urges. Today we know that most new diseases come from our contact with animal populations, but with rabies this transition is visible, visceral, horrible. A maddened creature bites a human, and some time later, the human is seized with the same animal madness.
Known and feared for all of human history—references to it survive from Sumerian times—rabies has served for nearly as long as a literary metaphor. For the Greeks, the medical term for rabies (lyssa) also described an extreme sort of murderous hate, an insensate, animal rage that seizes Hector in “The Iliad” and, in Euripides’ tragedy of Heracles, goads the hero to slay his own family. The Oxford English Dictionary documents how the word “rabid” found similar purchase in English during the 17th century, as a term of illness but also as a wrenching state of agitation: “rabid with anguish” (1621), “rabid Griefe” (1646).
The roots of the vampire myth stretch back nearly as far. Tales of vampire-like creatures, formerly dead humans who return to suck the blood of the living, date to at least the Greeks, before rumors of their profusion in Eastern Europe drifted westward to capture the popular imagination during the 1700s.
In its original imagining, though, the premodern vampire differed from today’s in one crucial respect: His condition wasn’t contagious. Vampires were the dead, returned to life; they could kill and did so with abandon. But their nocturnal depredations seldom served to create more of themselves.
All that changed in mid-19th century England—at the very moment when contagion was first becoming understood and when public alarm about rabies was at its historical apex. Despite the fact that Britons were far more likely to die from murder (let alone cholera) than from rabies, tales of fatal cases filled the newspapers during the 1830s. This, too, was when the lurid sexual dimension of rabies infection came to the fore, as medical reports began to stress the hypersexual behavior of some end-stage rabies patients. Dubious veterinary thinkers spread a theory that dogs could acquire rabies spontaneously as a result of forced celibacy.
Thus did rabies embody the two dark themes—fatal disease and carnal abandon—that underlay the burgeoning tradition of English horror tales. Britain’s first popular vampire story was published in 1819 by John Polidori, formerly Lord Byron’s personal physician. The sensation it caused was due largely to the fact that its vampire, a self-involved, aristocratic Lothario, distinctly resembled the author’s erstwhile employer.
But Polidori’s Byronic ghoul only seduced and killed. It took until 1845, with the appearance of James Malcolm Rymer’s serialized horror story “Varney the Vampire,” for the vampire’s bite to become a properly rabid act of infection. For the first time readers were invited to linger on the vampire’s teeth, which protrude “like those of some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like.” And at the long tale’s end, Varney’s final victim (a girl named Clara) is herself transformed into a vampire and has to be destroyed in her grave with a stake.
Both these innovations carried over into the most important vampire tale of all, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” In Stoker’s hands, the vampire becomes a contagious, animalistic creature, and his condition is properly rabid. It is a lunge too far to claim (as one Spanish doctor has done in a published medical paper) that the vampire myth derived literally from rabies patients, misunderstood to be the walking dead. But it is clear that this central act of undead fiction—the bite, the infection, the transferred urge to bite again—has rabies knit into its DNA.
Over time, the vampire’s contagion infected his undead cousin, too. The original zombie myth, as it derived from Haitian lore, also involved the dead brought back to kill, but again without contagion—an absence that carried over to Hollywood’s earliest zombie flicks. In this and many other regards, the most influential zombie tale of the 20th century was nominally a vampire tale: Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel “I Am Legend,” whose marauding hordes of contagious “vampires,” victims of an apocalyptic infection, set the whole template for what we now think of as the standard zombie onslaught.
Since then, as Hollywood has felt the need to conjure ever more frightening cinematic menaces, the zombie has if anything grown increasingly rabid. The antagonists in Matheson’s novel can, at times, carry on an intelligent conversation with a normal human. By the 2007 film adaptation, starring Will Smith, the infected are howling, lunging, senselessly hateful animals inside a human form. Danny Boyle, the director of “28 Days Later,” has said outright that he modeled his zombie virus on rabies. But even if he hadn’t consciously done so, the name he gave that virus—”Rage”—already draws its power from the same centuries-old supply.
Westerners don’t have much cause to fear death from rabies these days. Thanks to the availability of vaccine, human fatalities in the U.S. have dropped to a handful per year; Britain got rid of the virus entirely in 1902, succeeding in just the sort of national eradication project that apparently stymied the vampire-slaying Abraham Lincoln. Yet the infected bite, the human turned animal aggressor, menaces us as often as ever on our flat screens and nightstands.
Rabies itself may be a distant concern, but the rabid idea, like Varney the vampire, still has teeth—and it still succeeds in spreading itself.
Z.E.R.O. (Zombie Extermination, Research and Operations) Kit by OpticsPlanet
Imagine: You half-hear a low, guttural sound from outside as you lay sleeping. You figure it’s just your stomach after too much delicious Mexican food…
but a sudden thud on the outside wall of the house shakes you from a peaceful slumber. Deep within the primal centers of your brain, you realize the dead have risen to claim our once-peaceful realm. What do you do? What do you need?
The dead have risen, and they’ve returned as something different. Those you were once closest to now hunger for your flesh, and possibly the Mexican food you had for dinner.
There is no room for error when dealing with the undead.Our Z.E.R.O. (Zombie Extermination, Research and Operations) Kit takes into account all the different aspects of surviving the looming zombie apocalypse. When the undead hordes rise from their shallow graves to wreak havoc on all decent civilization, you’ll need to both fight back (Extermination), and find a cure (Research).
Always be prepared. In the new zombie world you can be king of the hill, or the tastiest treat in town.
Life Post Zombie Apocalypse is Harsh…Survive it!
First, as in any disaster, whether it is a hurricane, blizzard, alien invasion or giant lizard attack, you need basic survival gear. Fighting back will be necessary as well, but you have to survive the elements and everyday hazards before you can mount an offensive.
Stanley First Aid treats bite wounds, scratches & more.You’re sure to get a few cuts and bruises along the way so you need good first aid. The Stanley Personal Protection Large First Aid Kit will help you stop bleeding and take care of other wounds in no time. Zombies don’t have the best eyesight, but their sense of smell is on par with a bloodhound’s. There’s no scent as irresistibly alluring as blood, so make sure you clean and dress wounds when they happen. In addition to keeping zombie hordes from tracking you, treating wounds will prevent infection.
Punching zombies is the most fun you can have, but only with BlackHawk SOLAG Gloves.Preventing scrapes is the best way to keep blood from attracting zombies, so covering exposed skin with protective gear is essential. Blackhawk S.O.L.A.G. Kevlar Gloves keep hands safe from normal cuts, and the reinforced stitching stops zombie teeth from ripping through flesh and turning a healthy human into the enemy. Best of all, the molded knuckle protectors let you put a hard jab straight down the gullet of a walking dead monster in the event you’re unarmed.
Don’t Lose Your Head, Don’t Miss Your Shot, and Don’t Get Lost.
Watch It! The 5.11 Tactical Watch helps you take the perfect shot and get moving fast.Knowing your surroundings and where you’re going is essential to survival in any setting. Make sure you’re wearing the 5.11 Tactical Field Ops Watch, which not only tells time, but also has a digital compass so you know your bearings. The integrated SureShot calculator gives you shooting solutions out to 1000ft so that you don’t need to carry one when you’re taking headshots out from 300 meters to save a loved one’s life. Zombies send panic through the hearts of even the most hardened men, so let the 5.11 Tactical Watch take the guesswork out of your long distance shots.
Thermal Vision and Night Vision will prove essential for identifying the zombie menace in darkness.In addition to knowing where you are, seeing what’s around you will definitely help you survive when a chomping, cadaverous fiend comes for a reckoning. For late night viewing, the OPMOD PVS-14 Night Vision Scope will let you peer into the darkness. When patrolling your camp in pitch blackness you have to be absolutely certain you can see everything, but at a distance it can be difficult to differentiate between an injured human and a zombie. For this we added the Thermal-Eye X-50 Thermal Imaging Camera. As we all know, rising from the grave expels most of the heat from a zombie, leaving behind only faint warmth in the lower extremities. So if you view a stumbling figure with warm feet and a cold head, you know to take the shot. Just as the 5.11 Tactical Watch lets you calculate elevation compensation for long shots, the thermal imager helps you shoot with the confidence, knowing you’re only going to re-kill the undead.
No one survives long without batteries. People are going to loot stores for all the batteries they can find when the dead rise, so stock up now with the SureFire 123A Lithium Battery Box. Ten or twenty batteries might be nice to have, but you’re not planning on living for just a few months, you’re going to live a full lifetime. The included SureFire battery box has FOUR HUNDRED batteries. They’re going to prove to be one of the most valuable forms of currency in the post-zombie world. While we only included one box in our Z.E.R.O. Kit, you might want to pick up a couple extra, plenty for yourself and plenty for trading. Just a few boxes could make you one of the richest men in the world!
Combine the outstanding charging power of the Solaris with its unique ability to distract zombies.If you do run out of batteries and need to power your kit, asolar charger can become your best friend. Zombies have many horrifying abilities, but the one thing they can’t do is blot out the sun, so when you set up the powerful Brunton SOLARIS Portable Solar Panel Battery Charger you’ll enjoy 62 watts of power, which will keep your precious electronics working long after the power grids have shut down. As a side benefit, if a zombie attacks you near the solar charger you can yell out, “Left hand on Green!” and the zombie will forget your brains and focus on completing the task given them.
The SureFire Benelli Forend Light for shotguns turns a regular shotgun into a Zombie Destroyer!While the hunger for human flesh overrides nearly all zombie impulses, certain childhood memories will temporarily replace their hunger. This is a short-lived solution though, as zombiescan’t tell right from left, and the resulting frustration will send them into a rage.
Give the Undead Nightmares by Taking the Fight to Them!
Once you’ve gathered your basic survival gear together, you need to think about how you’re going to dispatch those creeping, gnawing, nearly unkillable monsters. Your rifle, shotgun and handgun (one gun will not keep you alive long) need to be enhanced for maximum zombie-slaying effectiveness.
The Zombie Stopper strikes fear into the hearts of undead creatures.Let’s start with the bread and butter of any zombie-fighter: the shotgun. Zombies are only dangerous at close range, and they often stand idly until a delicious human comes along. If you’re clearing a house at night and a zombie steps around a corner you need to see exactly what you’re shooting at, and the SureFire Benelli M1 Super 90 Forend Weaponlight provides a bright 120 lumens of light without changing your grip or weighing down your shotgun. It uses the Lithium 123A batteries from the SureFire Battery Box, so you won’t need to worry about power. It’s both super durable and powerfully bright. This will give you plenty of light to see those lifeless eyes roll back once you’ve given your zombie attacker peace.
While you need to see if a zombie is hunting you in the blackness of night, to turn the tables and go from hunted to hunter you need the absolute best in rifle scopes and red dot sights. Enter EOTech and theirZombie Stopper Holographic Weapon Sight. This red dot sight gives you an appropriately zombie-themed reticle, and placing that biohazard design on a ghoulish skull will help steel you to always take the shot without hesitation. Even if you’re using the Zombie Stopper for hunting food it will always serve as a reminder that you must be aware of your surroundings.
Little known fact: zombies love the woods. If you’re hunting deer to feed your family keep in mind that a walking creature of the night could pop out from behind any tree or bush and make a feast of your brain.
Don’t rely on a non-zombie specific laser grip.When a large herd of zombies is converging on your position you may not have time to reload your rifle or shotgun and may need to quickly transition to your sidearm. Since speed is of the essence it’s best to have a laser grip on your Glock (the best zombie-slaying handgun). The Crimson Trace Zombie Edition Laser Gripactivates with a normal grip, so you don’t need to worry about pressing a button to turn it on. Seeing the red laser on your target ensures you’ll never miss a shot.
As a side benefit, zombies are drawn to the red light in much the same way a cat is (no surprise, as zombie infection comes from a feline-human hybrid virus). If you run out of ammo you can use this red laser grip to distract the zombies and make your escape!
Zombies fear blades like cats fear dogs, and vacuum cleaners.That brings up an important point: much like batteries, ammunition will be scarce once the zombies cause the fall of civilized society. There are a few ways to deal with this. First,knives are both an outstanding survival tool and stalwart zombie killer. Browning understands this very well, which is why they developed a Zombie Apocalypse Knife.
The seven inch blade is for precision zombie hunters who sever brain stems like ninja assassins. The drop point blade is extra strong and will hold up to all the rigors of a zombie-plagued world.
While you’ll have to learn to rely on your knife when taking on the zombie masses, shooting a rifle is still easier and willdispatch zombies at a faster rate when faced with a large group of these horrors. As ammunition is sure to run low, you’ll need a way to reload your empty cartridges.
The OPMOD Battle Mug: The only cup that can take down a zombie.RCBS has reloading gear so tough you could bash out an undead brain and continue reloading immediately. From the RCBS Pro-Melt Furnace, for re-forging your bullets, to their Progressive Press, for getting your bullets into cartridges, you’ll be all set for the next nightmarish wave.
Don’t forget that at any moment a zombie can appear, so if you’re sitting by a campfire enjoying a glass of water you may not have your knife or gun in hand. It’s best to make sure ANYTHING in your hands is tactically sound, so never drink from a regular cup. Drink from the cup of survivors and champions the world over. The OPMOD Battle Mug is a super strong cup, made from aluminum and features a crenellated base for extra zombie smashing power. You can go from thirst-quenching to death-dealing in less than .45 seconds. We tested that.
Search for a Cure or You’ll Search for a Grave.
Unfortunately, all the gear so far is simply a stop-gap as long as the zombie disease rages on. You can take down thousands or even millions of risen dead and hardly make a dent in the overall undead army. Don’t think short term when prepping for the apocalypse. If you want a safe world for your children and grandchildren you must find a cure. For this you need the best laboratory equipment.
Test, test and test Again. Three tests should do it, by then you’ll have cured the zombie disease.We’ve included Qorpak Beakers, Labnet Pipettes and aCelestron Microscope so you can take samples and study the innermost workings of zombies. The destructive nature of their cells might lead you to a better understanding of their life expectancy or how to possibly treat their symptoms so they no longer hunger for human flesh.
Properly tamed, a zombie can do the physical labor of 30 men without tiring. You will only be able to determine if a zombie can be tamed through laboratory research.
Many hours of grueling arguments, exhaustive research and bite-dodging testing went into developing the selection ofzombie survival gear below.
The Z.E.R.O. Kit also includes night vision devices, solar chargers, multi tools, tactical vests, sunglasses, and much more. We’ve completed all this work to give you the best chance of surviving when Death returns to Earth with hell by his side. You only need to do two things: buy the Z.E.R.O. Kit and fight for your life.
All the zombie gear in this kit is listed below so you can purchase the items separately, but remember that the kit was very carefully put together to cover all your bases. Each item you choose NOT to buy is one less day you’ll live.
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.
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.