Researcher: “Zombie” pandemic not impossible
You can get schooled in all things zombie before taking them on next week for the first Humans vs. Zombies game at UNM.
Matt Mogk, author of “Everything You Wanted to Know about Zombies,” is presenting his talk, “What You Don’t Know Could Eat You!” at UNM this evening. Mogk said his early interest in zombies led him to pursue a master’s degree at the New York University Film School with a concentration in horror cinema and to write his thesis on zombies. He then formed the Zombie Research Society.
“I realized that I was never as scared watching any zombie movie as I thought I would be in a real zombie outbreak,” he said.
“That’s really how Zombie Research Society got started. I simply asked the questions, ‘If a zombie were to show up at my front door, what would it look like? What would it smell like? How would it hunt? How would its brain work?’ By asking those and other questions to real experts in a variety of fields, ZRS was born.”
The talk covers zombie history, pathology, anatomy and survival, according to the Student Special Events flier. Mogk said the society’s current work includes composing fictional essays in a collection that chronicles a zombie outbreak in real-time.
“Zombie Research Society is dedicated to advancing zombie scholarship and respect in the arts and sciences,” he said. “Our advisory board is made up of leading scholars and authors from across the country. The board has published upward of 20 zombie books in the last two years, both fiction and nonfiction.”
George Romero, also a ZRS board member, essentially created the modern zombie with the 1968 movie “Night of the Living Dead,” Mogk said.
“The concept caught on because zombies mirror our understanding of infectious disease and catastrophic, man-made and natural disasters,” he said. “We’re all concerned about the end of the world — global warming, nuclear disasters, economic collapse, terrorism — and zombies serve as a metaphor for these more common threats better than any other popular monster.”
He said through his research he has received such significant feedback from renowned virologists, specialists who study viruses and the diseases they cause, that he no longer questions the possibility of a “zombie” pandemic. This is why the society works so hard, he said.
Because researchers have yet to learn a lot about zombies, he said formulating adequate strategies is difficult.
“One thing we can all agree on is that people make zombies,” he said. “Without people there can be no zombies. So the number one piece of advice I can give about surviving a zombie outbreak is stay away from people.”
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First UNM zombie game small, yet promising
When the spooks resume their posts in the supernatural world on Halloween, the undead will have just begun to infect the campus.
Mark Gorski, organizer of UNM’s first Humans vs. Zombies Game, said he recently graduated from the University of Iowa where one game would often have more than 600 participants. He said this inspired him to start something at UNM when he moved to Albuquerque.
“I consider this playing out a fantasy, but other players may take it differently,” he said. “Everyone plays differently. Part of what makes the game so great is the large number of players and strategies.”
The game divides those who register online at unm.hvzsource.com into two groups. At the start, all but one person are humans. The original zombie (OZ) is randomly chosen from a list of volunteers.
All players are marked with bandannas — humans wear them around their arms, zombies around their head.
It is a basically a massive game of tag, but Gorski said the folks in Iowa took it seriously, getting creative with weaponry and strategy.
“People made creative sock weaponry, ammo belts and the like,” he said. “There were even separate forums for human and zombie players to organize. Players would organize to try and either escort fellow humans from class to class or large zombie groups to outnumber the human players.”
Gorski said UNM doesn’t have quite enough people for this kind of complexity, but hopes the enthusiasm of this year’s participants will act as a catalyst for the growth of next year’s game.
As of now, he said some goals include putting a game on every semester that utilizes Nerf blasters and a more formal structure with officer positions. Also he said he’d like to expand participation as well as the game itself to include missions, objectives and rewards for completion. He said his long-term plans are more vague.
“I’ve already begun to plan next semester’s game,” he said. “I really am hoping for more people to join next semester’s game.
I’ve got a few surprises in the works for future games depending on the level of interest. Maybe prizes — who knows?”
First UNM Humans vs. Zombies Game
Infection breaks out Oct. 31 at 12:01 a.m.
Game ends on Nov. 6 at midnight
Register at unm.hvzsource.com
“What You Don’t Know Could Eat You”
SUB Ballroom
Today, 7 p.m.
Free
