Well, they try to dance anyway. Saturday  July 25th, approximately 450 to 500 (some liberal estimates put the horde at 1,000) zombies were found congregating in Chicago’s Wicker Park. Many of them were later found to be hipsters, and promptly exterminated. The remainder were allowed, under close supervision, to shamble in an orderly fashion around the neighborhood.

Surprisingly, there was no Chicago police interaction.  Passersby on buses, taxis and cars were understandably frightened, but no casualties were reported. Patrons at local restaurants, bars and shops were visibly agitated and confused, although the majority found the situation to be humorous.

The unruly mob made several unsuccessful attempts to pester and/or eat and/or thrill three zombie hunters on the scene, but again, no injuries have been reported.  The mob stopped in front of an abandoned street festival music stage where after mindlessly wandering about, were suddenly drawn to the soothing, hypnotic and very not-undead sounds of the late and very dead Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.

The zombie hunters came equipped with “demo” Nerf weapons. It’s not advisable to bring Airsoft, live blades or real firearms to non-real undead gatherings, for obvious police and safety concerns. Nerf weapons are absolutely no substitute for actual, hands-on weapons training. I have had several readers ask me this question. Nerf weapons are great for the Humans vs Zombies game, but are strictly for fun and show. If you’re not old enough to legally own, purchase, or train with firearms, I suggest knowing someone who does, befriending and learning from them, and taking martial arts courses specializing in pole arm or blade combat.

This sort of celebration or zombie flash-mob has been occurring in many cities with surprising frequency. It is yet another indication that an underlying fear of zombies pervades our culture.

More photos and updates coming next week, I’m in Michigan for training.

March 14, 2009, Chicago.

A small horde of approximately 50 to 60 zombies was seen, of all places, at a bowling alley on a Saturday night. No reported outbreaks have happened since, and infection was kept to a minimum. Luckily I came prepared to kick some ass with a trusty rifle, sidearm, ninja sword and an endless supply of head smashing bowling balls. Sadly, I was the only zombie hunter in the place, but I rather prefer it that way as I don’t want anyone taking my headshots.

Wildclaw Theatre‘s zombie bowling night was a huge success full of beer, balls and brains. It was a fantastic alternative for many to be zombified and drunk, instead of the normal St Pat’s stupid and drunk. As mentioned before I was a little disappointed to see I was the only survivor amongst the crowd, but I have a mission of survival to represent, bowling balls, Nerf guns and all. I brought a stack of zombie targets to generate some hype, and they were very well received.

There was a table full of prizes and shwag, awarded throughout the night during movie trivia contests, scream compeitions, beauty pageants and more.  A young girl owned first place in the screaming contest with an almost inhuman high pitched ear splitting shrill. Nice. Wildclaw had a table setup where they were making up zombies and covering them in my favorite ice cream topping: blood and gore. There was the ironic zombie with a “Get More Out Of Life” t-shirt. Another zombie bowler mistakenly thought it could bowl with a severed human head in its bowling bag, St Patrick’s day parade beads still hanging from its’ lifeless form. Several other zombies died particualrly gruesome deaths with miscellanous devices sticking from their corpses such as screws and butcher knives. Kitty Zombie from Chicago’s Zombie Army Productions made a groan filled appearance.

The event was a fundraiser for Wildclaw’s upcoming April production of a zombie play, The Revenants, by by Scott T. Barsotti. The Revenants will be about a small group of people who must survive the holocaust and come to grips with their own lives and salvation. “As wounded spouses take a turn for the worse, husbands and wives must ask of each other: When does love die?”

Stay tuned in April for some classy zombie madness.

Now, on to the photos of zombie bowling!

Making the rounds on the zombie web is a hacked road sign in Austin, Texas reading “Zombies Ahead”.

Fantastic, this is an excellent idea and warning of things to come. While I cannot condone any illegal activites, the know how to change a road sign could be very useful in the event of zombie outbreak or space radiation attack. If you are aware of an outbreak and feel inclined to adjust road banners, make sure you keep the exisiting message and place your warning on a separate page. You don’t want people to avoid the zombies only to be unaware that the bridge is out!

Updated info after the jump!

While most road sign control pads are placed in a lock box, it’s seldom locked and rarely under password protection. The password is ususally the default code “DOTS”—or you can easily reset the password by holding “shift” and “control” while typing “DIPY” (so that it just defaults to “DOTS” again).

Many of the road signs are powered by a small generator, but there are some solar powered models. These can be very useful during an apocalypse – you’re not going to run out of sun (nuclear winter excepted). Do your homework, stay alert.

Resources

Inside Programmable Road Signs 

Hackers Crack Into Texas Road Sign, Warn of Zombies Ahead

Update 2009-01-31: More Warnings

Things are starting to look a little sketchy. Perhaps Austin is really under attack and the news reports and images are disbeleiver’s shock, or a cover up. Images below. The idea of nazi zombies is particularly distressing. What is this, Return to Castle Wolfenstein? Time to break out the zombie targets.

Update 2009-02-03: Illinois Zombies

UDR reader Coral writes in that “zombie” road signs are seen in Illinois. The hacking and sighting menace continues across the USA.

Sign warns Illinois drivers about zombies

The Illinois freeways have apparently been taken over – ‘conquered’ if you will – by a master race of commuter zombies. It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive IDOT workers or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the zombies will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new undead overlords. I’d like to remind them as a trusted blogging personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground brain mines.

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!

The Zombie March was the largest in Chicago yet, surpassing the pub crawl back in April. Participants gathered on the lawn at Millenium Park about 2pm. After liberally applying fake blood and makeup, the zombies put on quite a show of groaning, screaming and generally confusing passersby. Security was quite accepting of the hordes, considering they had little or no advanced notice at all. Haunted house rules were in effect – you can’t touch any of the civilians and don’t harm or break anything. For such a large, unruly mob, it was quite well behaved, with zeds generally attacking and eating each other.

I, on the other hand, was not one of the infected. This was the perfect opportunity to do some research and assemble my proper defense gear and practice weapons. A little disturbing was the fact that of the hundreds of zombies, I only found half a dozen zombie hunters like myself. Many were lacking the proper gear. There were several things I found while participating in the walk.

• People don’t really notice someone in SWAT gear carrying a ninja sword walking down the street – but kids did.
• Bring a lot of water – I ran out towards the end.
• Zombies attract a lot of attention, but leave many people confused. Civilians kept wondering what we were protesting and what this was for.
• Even banging on the glass for twenty minutes, news of an undead outbreak got precious few seconds on the evening television newscast.

The mob slowly walked through the park towards Buckingham fountain, still attracting onlookers and getting several puzzled glances from people stuck in traffic (not the place to be in an outbreak). They continued through the plaza to the Grant Park baseball fields breaking into smaller groups and eventually dispersing. The remainder walked back to Millenium Park towards the bean, where about a hundred latecomers were aimlessly wandering. The crowd once again grew in size, and marched through the park, towards the TV studio on State street. There, the group of several hundred zombies pounded on the glass and groaned for about twenty minutes until finally the news realized this was no joke, and they got their attention.

I hope you survived… I threw myself into the blood and gore covered masses, but managed to emerge without a bite mark. The looks on the CTA return trip were quite amusing; those fools had no idea what was happening on the outside.

On to the photos!

An event produced by improv group pH productions, Chicago’s first zombie walk was a drunken growling pub crawl full of the worst people –  and I’m not talking about Cubs fans. The event in Andersonville kicked off around 4:30 PM, with particpants meeting and signing up, applying rouge, blood and makeup, and getting their complimentary t-shirts and tickets. There were at least a good hundred or so people at the start, who proceeded to the first bar in small groups. In total there were about 300 members of the undead shambling about. To see the photos, view the zombie photo section!

Simon’s Tavern was the first hit by the brain hungry mob. The bar was quickly packed shoulder to shoulder, though bartenders were jovial and fast, serving “Rogue Dead Guy Ale” to the mob of thirst patrons. A few locals were at the end of the bar, naming zombies as they came in and having their pictures taken.

After a round or two here, some zombies left ot the next place to get more brainy beer. Dozens of zombies shambled down the street, lurching at passing cars and freaking out passersby, who had no idea what was going on. One couldn’t but notice the irony as we passed the zoned out patrons of a Starbucks – practically oblivious to the zombies smearing the windows with facepaint and blood as they passed by.

Scores of zombies packed Charlie’s Ale House as their regular patrons were confused, witless, scared, or simply annoyed by our presence. Several members left and well – I had some tasty leftover cheeseburgers. I mean brainburgers. Shouts of BRAINS! echoed through the bar as probably a hundred zombies were mixing it up.  Spotted here were nurse and doctor zombies, a DHARMA Initiative zombie, pirate zombies, a man who looked like zorro and a few sports zombies who seemed all too zombified by the games on TV. Amusingly, a pair of daring zombie hunters joined the mess, armed with neon bats and a bright orange hand cannon, looking to cream some zombie heads. Shawn from “Shawn of the Dead” didn’t make it out of this panic – he was seen with his trusty cricket bat and covered in gore, sipping a beer at a booth.

MUMMIES decided to join in the madness. A handful of mummies came out of nowhere and started wrestling with the zombies outside of the bar. I’d like to stress that in an actual zombie panic, you’ll need to be prepared for anything. If your old friends come back as the undead, chances are thousand year old egyptians might too. Nurses with fresh brains, businessmen and girl scouts terroized cars and petrified bystanders.

Hungry for actual dead meat, my tagalong and I shambled up to Hamburger Mary’s in desperate need of charred meat flesh. The best was the look of restaurant patrons as I slowly drug my half lifeless body through the diner in search of food. Upstairs gathered pratically all of the zombies from the earlier pubs. “Night of the Living Dead” played on large flat screen TVs as a dozen zombies danced to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. And oh, the cheeseburgers, they were good.

Aftermath

From a  strictly technical standpoint, this preparedness exercise was executed flawlessly. While zombies may not wander from pub to pub, science does not discredit that the human brain muscle may seek out familar places posthumously. The (only two) zombie hunters I saw do reflect what the odds will be like. You versus a hundred or more.

Drink up now, while you’re still able to taste.

On to the photos!

Watch Night of the Living Dead for free! 

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

A simple offensive kit consists of a primary weapon, an ammunitionless weapon, and a few other provisions. John Lucas at Craftster has created an excellent mockup of such a kit. While he uses non sharpened implements and non-live ammunition, I highly suggest building a fully-functional kit of your own.

The kit consists of an pump action shotgun, shells, large knife and a plexiglass shield. Note also the high quality instructions included with the kit. In preparing a kit of your own, it is suggested that you leave the shotgun fully loaded and maintain extra shells in an easy to use bandolier. There is no point of keeping an anti-zombie weapon on your person or premises if it’s not going to be loaded. Zombies don’t wait for you to reload while they chew on your collarbone.

This kit functions best as a stand alone offensive solution. Its best tacitical placement would be near obvious weak zones in your home, such as entries, near large windows, or in cramped locations. An excellent place for such a kit as this would also be an upstairs window, or near a porch roof – shotgun blasts to the head should be sufficient enough at this elevation to cause complete destruction of the cerebellum and pons. You don’t want a Mike the Headless Zombie” wandering around, trying to eat things with just a throat. It’s pretty gross.

Don’t forget that you’ll still need a larger kit, and should have your whole house prepared anyway. I suggest the following:

• Benelli Super 90 8 Shot Pump Action Shotgun
• 100 Shotgun Shells – though why limit yourself? Have at least 4 bandoliers per person.
• Pikes, ninjata or other polearm – for a ranged blade attack.
• Lightweight Machete or Ginsu Knife – you want something easy to swing in close quarters that will sever the spine on one blow.

Remember: a member of the undead — and a member of the living for that matter — can still function and move with just a brainstem. You want complete severing of that head! When taking a headshot, aim through the mouth and towards the back for a square, clean shot.

John Lucas
Emergency Zombie Defense Station

Ryans writes us the following first-hand insider account of the Tucson Zombie Walk.

On the night of Saturday, October 13th, many citizens of Tucson, Arizona reported a zombie infestation. A large mass of the Undead, or Zombies, were seen near the downtown area.

A bellboy at the Rialto Theatre on Congress St. stated: “well, around 5:30 or so there certainly appeared to be a mass of zombies congregating near our theatre; they were just standing around, moaning, bleeding, etc.” When asked what he thought the cause may be, he responded: “well, they are doing a lot of construction here, digging up old pipes, replacing the 4th Ave. underpass; perhaps that had something to do with it.’

Once darkness had settled over Tucson, it was reported that the zombies began moving en masse to some destination. Many customers at the Café Poca Cosa on Pennington Ave. reported being frightened during their dinner. As one patron reported: “I was there having dinner, the restaurant was filled as per its usual on Saturday night, when we all noticed zombies against the window. I mean, hundreds of zombies scraping at the window, moaning, mumbling about brains. My daughter and I were frightened to death. You could see there were many zombies walking along. After a few minutes most had passed by and the ones against the window seemed to lose interest and move along. Fortunately, none gained access to the restaurant.”

From there it was reported that the undead moved towards the popular 4th Avenue location. They roamed along the sidewalk as a group, limbering, moaning, dragging their feet and dripping much blood. The owner of a candle-shop was unimpressed, and when asked about the infestation replied that it was “just another day on 4th avenue.”

At around 7:30pm the Tucson Police Department became involved, telling the zombies that they must now go back to wherever they came from or face arrest. At this point, the group dismembered (I’m sure he means ‘disbanded’ -Ed.) themselves. Throughout the evening a few zombies remained scattered throughout the 4th avenue and downtown areas drinking beer, playing air hockey, and dancing to electronic music. Nobody was injured or killed during the event, although [it served as an excellent zombie prepardness exercise for those involved and observers].

View the Zombie Walk Tucson photos.

Zombie Reindeer