The Undead Report was featured in G4 TV’s Attack of the Show’s Blogwatch segment, “Best Cataclysmic Zombie Apocalypse Blogs”. The pending zombie apocalypse is no laughing matter! At around 1:07, you’ll see Sam on watch, a pic from this post. Want to buy the stuff you saw on the show? Check out the Zombie Weapons and Gear Store, support this site and purchase man woman and child zombie targets, or just play some zombie hunting Flash games.

Attack of the Show

Also check out the Zombie Research Society — doctors and scientists performing zombie research and hypotheses. Transmission via mosquito? stay informed. They maintain an excellent zombie science blog.

Well, it’s not something I’d like to be on the wrong side of. One part electric chainsaw, plus one part tactical rail mount equals twelve parts zombie decapitation. There are distinct benefits to using this weapon attachment – you won’t need a strong body to kill the undead, there is a great morale boost to carrying one of these around, it would be handy for carving particularly thick-skinned venison. As the video below shows, sometimes a zombie head won’t be destroyed by bullets alone.

Yeah, it’s pretty badass. As a tactical zombie weapon, it has some merit. When you run out of ammo in a tight spot, an electric chainsaw attached to the end of your rifle will be a nice thing to have, but you must realise you risk contamination, friendly fire and other hazards by waving that thing around. It should be your last defense. If a zombie infection is a blood-borne pathogen, you won’t be wanting any of that getting on you. The bayonet could come in very handy for entering places and point defense / room clearing. Carrying around a charger and spare batteries will cause problems.

There’s plenty of mess to clean up after you’re done carving those heads. I’d say leave the chainsaw bayonet as a novelty. You don’t want blood in your eye and if the power goes out, you’re not going to find any extension cords handy. I must admit, however, that it would be a great tool to have for de-limbing trees. And zombies.

If you can, get your hands on the AA-12. And somebody please send me one to review!

ZOMBIE ARMY – SUNDAY NOV 23RD @ 10AM – 5PM

1401 W Wabansia Ave , Chicago, IL 60622

Make-Up will be provided to those that want it.
Food will be on set for those that love it.
Vegetarian Friendly! Cannibal Friendly!
A Sign-Up for a copy of the DVD once it finished.

If its a cold day, dress warm. There will be an inside to keep warm but the scene is being shot outside so there will be standing around and drinking of hot beverages (also provided!!!!)

I’m counting on a good turn out for this movie to look good. More now than ever do the zombies of Chicago need to assemble for the cause.

THE END IS NIGH

More information: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=23561223992 

If you’ve survived last night, that must mean either A) you don’t live in Flint or Detroit or B) they’re just not burning buildings like they used to anymore.

Zombie Walk

Devil’s Night in Grand Rapids Michigan was a bit more placid than usual. Instead of burning churches like they ususally do, the teeming masses of socially repressed youth and ne’er do-wells rose up against the system by becoming… ZOMBIES.

A world record zombie walk was held last night, with near FOUR THOUSAND zombies shambling about the city. For more information, check out the following articles, and this film clip.

Zombie Walk brings out the dead in downtown Grand Rapids

World Record Zombie Walk, Grand Rapids, MI 

Toxic Blood

Riverside California, 1994: A sick woman is admitted to the ER, with a highly elevated heart rate, rapidly decreasing blood pressure and incoherent speech. Nurses drawing blood notice manila colored particles in her blood. Then they notice the deathly, checmical and ammonia smell coming from it. Then their faces feel burning, they pass out and wake up in uncontrollable convulsions. The hospital is evacuated, and a fully-suited  hazmat team is brought in to manage the strange occurances.

Her blood ends up putting five people in the hospital, some in intensive care, and others suffering from avascular necrosis, a condition in which bone tissue is starved of blood and begins to die. Read that again: the chemicals swirling around in this womans blood, when exposed to air, caused people to pass out, become overwhelmingly sick, and kill their bones. Forensic scientists and several goverment agencies never reached a conclusion (or suppressed their findings) as to what happened to her blood and body.

Analysis of a Toxic Death at Discover Magazine

Halloween Podcast

In case you missed it on the 29th, Red Bar Radio in Chicago interviewed me on their Halloween show. Think shock jocks and real raunchy radio, but they were certainly interested in what I had to say. Either that, or they were a bit disturbed about my waving a knife around and showing up in military gear.

Red Bar Radio podcast – Warning: raunchy, sick humor.

Undead in Magazine and Books

This April, Discover Magazine’s ran an article about Wade Davis, the ethnobotanist who researched Haitian zombies. His work lead to the book and movie “The Serpent and the Rainbow”. He was the only white man to be initiated into the cult like secret societies, he learned the way to make real zombies;  the neurotoxin induced psychosis zombie made through voodoo zombie powder. Psychosis zombies come from a powdered derivative of TTX or tetrodotoxin, from certain puffer fish native to the Haitian waters.

Humor publications also run undead corpse and zombie related topics, The Onion most notably. Of spot-on interest is the article, “Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack“.

Government-conducted zombie-attack scenarios described on the State Department’s website indicate that a successful, citywide zombie takeover would take 10 days, but according to ZPI statistician Dr. Milton Cornelius, the government’s models fail to incorporate such factors as the zombies’ rudimentary reasoning skills and basic tool use.

While the humor is a bit of a stretch, is your city really prepared? Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z are excellent reads, providing useful information and a realistic narrative of a post-zombie holocaust. I won’t go into detail about the books here, but I strongly suggest you read them. World War Z is very well written, and quite scary.

Zombie Dreams

Several readers have written me and shared their zombie dream experiences, relieved to discover their dreams are not uncommon. Many, myself included, have had “me versus them” zombie dreams that almost seem like training or practice for a zombie apocalypse. These dreams can be influenced by films and books, but still carry a common thread with the dreamer, who seems to be preparing for the inevitable, training to kill zombies and survive the holocaust. Readers share that their zombie dreams seem to focus on actively participating in the holocaust, revealing neither the end nor the beginning, similar to George Romero’s movies.

The funny thing is I keep having re occouring nightmares of zombies. Never have I had these type of dreams…

I too have been constantly dreaming of the undead, but only because my friends and I have been dwelling on the thought for so long. I’ve done my share of homework, and judging by what this article reads, I’d say it’s extremely close if not entirely IDENTICAL to my own perception of 2012 and the zombie pandemic…

A girl from Maine wrote… how they seem like fighting practice…

I just woke up from a dream… The funny thing about these dreams is how these seem so real… I was running from zombies and very scared… I seemed to be searching for them and I did have a handgun… I felt “experienced” in this one. In every dream though it was clear there was not too many people left on earth.

Zombies as a Social Metaphor

A colleague suggests that you can understand the weltgeist based on monsters or demons in popular films. In the 50s and 60s it was often nuclear war, mutants and aliens, suggestive of our fear of communists, growing xenophobia and living in a a post-war, post nuclear society. Later, it was vampires and zombies – sucking the life out of cities and people as more and more Americans moved to the suburbs and tuned out from city life and each other, stressing the economy. In the late 80s and early 90s, it was slasher and demon films, one unstoppable killer against many, echoing the increase of public paranoia and the daily fear of your neighbors. Parents became overly cautious and overbearing. “They Live”, the cult classic John Carpenter film is a fantastic metaphor for the Reagan era and a massive increase in materialism and the disappearing middle class.

Zombie films are definitely on the rise, in the past five years, we’ve had the 28 Days saga with its human induced virus zombies, remakes of the Dead series, new terrifying zombies in the Resident Evil films, and numerous independent zombie films. While not every zombie movie has an axe to grind with culture and material desire, their numerous releases parallel common sentiment that many people, Americans in particular, are tuning out to the real world – becoming zombies and mindlessly going about their trivial business, devouring the less fortunate without second thought.

Zombie Video Games

It’s hardly necessary to mention zombie video games. There are fewer zombie themed games than films produced, but they are gaining in number. While many games do not have zombies as the main foe or plot device, they make an appearance in several games as support enemies or unique levels.

Zombies are difficult enemies in Doom 3, Quake, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, STALKER, Half Life 2, and many more. They range in attacking ability – some are slow, some explode and others shoot at the player – but they remain a difficult target. Unfortunately, not a lot of games understand the whole “headshot” thing. STALKER zombies seem to get it right, as they tend to be more difficult to kill than their human counterparts. Headshots certainly work much better in the Half Life series, though eviscerating a zombie with a saw blade and watching half its corpse come after you is also quite accurate. Just remember to aim for the neck or head, no body shots and you’ll do alright.

Zombie themed games include Dead Rising, the Resident Evil series, and the upcoming (sure to be awesome) multiplayer Left for Dead. If you are looking for an RPG style zombie experience, I suggest Urban Dead, a web based zombie game. You can create multiple characters, play as survivor or zombie, and continue to be revived.

If you want to prepare for the holocaust – look no further than your local book and movie store.

View the real life zombie footage here.

Thanks guys, comment as always!

I touched a nerve with my earlier post about reanimated dogs heads. This is a followup to that post, as well as an addendum to my article about types of zombies. This would fall under the scientifically reanimated corpse.

In the 40′s, the Soviets were working on experiments involving reanimating mammals, specifically canines. In this film, witness the shock and horror as organs are reanimated though electricty and with mechanical hearts and lungs! Now, it’s noted that this is no outstanding feat, a human heart can operate with nutrient rich blood and plasma alone. What’s fascinating in this film, is the apparently conscious and reactive head of a dog. Is it merely muscle synapses and reflexes? Perhaps, but the dog shows a keen awareness to its surroundings, suggesting activated sight, sound and other senses.

Canines? Yes. Humans? Perhaps. How long can we wait? Hours or days? It stands that a reanimated human head would be responsive to its surroundings, and most likely not feral and try to eat you. This of course, begs the question of human souls and the like, where this news report will not go.

One thing remains certain. DESTROY THE BRAIN. You won’t see that dog head barking and licking its chops if it has no brain.

Pittsburgh. Reanimated Corpses. The Zombie Holocaust.

Except this time, its not a movie.

Naturally, there are great medical benefits of prolonging death. It grants doctors more time to operate and save patients, but there remains a great unpredictable factor of bodily decay and brain rot associated with reanimating patients, even in a closely controlled setting. Even some of the dogs have suffered permanent damage.

I’m sorry, this center for reanimation is in fucking Pittsburgh. PITTSBURGH. Consistently the site of Hollywood zombie outbreaks, attacks, apocalypses, sightings, feasts and record-setting zombie mall walks. Those poor inhabitants of Monroeville, PA can ususally be found stumbling about in various states of decay and death, either at the mall, in the parking lot, or shambling the eight miles from the Safar Center for Zombie Creation.

The experiment bears a frightening similarity to that of Communist Russian scientists in the 1930’s that experimented with reanimating and sustaining life in severed dogs heads, as well as attaching multiple heads to single bodies. Surely this kind of practice cannot publicly be performed today, yet dogs remain an abundant and useful test subject for reanimation and resuscitation practices. A controversial communist Russia film was released in 1943 to American scientists. The video shows Reds working on a reanimated severed dogs head hooked up to an Autojektor, one of the first artificial hearts used to maintain life.

From Time Magazine, Monday, Nov. 22, 1943:

The autojector, a relatively simple machine, has a vessel (the “lung”) in which blood is supplied with oxygen, a pump that circulates the oxygenated blood through the arteries, another pump that takes blood from the veins back to the “lung” for more oxygen. Two other dogs on whom the experiment was performed in 1939 (were still alive four years later). The autojector can also keep a dog’s heart beating outside its body, has kept a decapitated dog’s head alive for hours—the head cocked its ears at a noise and licked its chops when citric acid was smeared on them. But the machine is incapable of reviving a whole dog more than about 15 minutes after its blood is drained—body cells then begin to disintegrate.

I’ll post the entire film with review and notes later. Here’s a short, distrubing excerpt.

Safar Center scientists, it would seem, are filling in the gaps left in these grizzly experiments performed over 60 years ago. It’s the same thing — killing and reviving dogs in the name of science — but the end results can have strange, perhaps undead outcomes. How long can a dog remain dead? Can half a dog be reanimated? How long before the brain is damaged to a feral, bad-dog state?

Zombie dogs are really freaking hard to kill as evidenced in say, Wolfenstein, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or any other video game for that matter. Heck, even mean, fully live dogs are hard to deal with — deranged reanimated hounds from the depths of science hell are something that should never be fooled with.

• Weekend of the living dead: Zombies return to the Monroeville Mall
• Boffins create zombie dogs
• NY Times: Zombie Dogs
• Safar Center for Resuscitation Research
• Film – Russian Scientists Reanimate Dead Dogs – and severed heads
• Experiments in the Revival of Organisms – Creepy 1939 Russian real Undead Film
• Red Research into reanimating severed dogs heads – Time responds to the Red Zombie film

As far as the nostalgic value goes, this movie is spot-on. I’ve seen many government/commercial propaganda films from the fifties and sixties, and the production value of this homage is perfect. Great acting, voiceover and direction. The narrator does go a little overbaord with the anti-communist overtones, but they are amusing.

Check it out after the jump.

What to do in a Zombie Attack

If you haven’t a zombie plan yet, you can put off reading that old Air Force survival guide just a little longer. The good and creative folks over at Common Craft have written a finely prepared video guide to surviving an undead outbreak.

Watch those Molotov Cocktails, as a flaming zombie could burn you out of a hideout.

From Common Craft.