Week of the Living Dead

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Humans, armed to the teeth with plastic blasters and foam darts, march to square off with their perennial zombie rivals. Photo by Alan Rodges/The Jambar.

The Urban Gaming Club will be hosting the week-long Humans vs. Zombies event campus wide. This event started Sunday night with their opening ceremony after a mandatory meeting around 4 p.m. about the rules of the game.

The players are required to wear orange bandanas. The bandana placed on their head to designate players as zombies or around their arms if they are human. At the start of the game, all of the players but one are human. This one person is known as the original zombie.

Humans are armed with Nerf blasters, darts and rolled up socks — all effective weapons. Once the zombies are hit with a dart, they are stunned for a period of 15 minutes. The zombies are able to walk in the paths of humans at that time, but cannot attack until the 15 minutes are up.

The insides of buildings are considered safe zones for safety purposes. However, there will be zombies waiting around the doors waiting to get those who are unaware. It’s every human for themselves.

Tyler Matthews, president of the UGC, and Vice President Michael Goldthwait, see this week-long as a game of tag where anything goes.

“We see everything from one guy running around with only one sock, to someone else wearing every blaster known to mankind,” Matthews said.

To Matthews and Goldthwait, the object of the game isn’t to win or lose, it’s a chance to have fun and meet new people.  There have even been some cases of students that come from various campuses to join in the game.

Goldthwait has been involved in the week-long series since the very first in spring of 2013. He later became a moderator.  Those duties include making the rules and instead of the regulatory orange bandana, they are given a white bandana to designate their place in the game.

For the past three games, the zombies have beaten out the humans. The zombies have conquered each of the final missions. The players have special night missions that give the humans a chance to run and catch the zombies without getting distracted and a chance to hide without their armbands or headbands showing, while interacting in a story created by the mods. Safe zones are nonexistent during these missions.

Matthews said that the game is designed to be for students to come from all over campus to have some fun and establish lasting connections.

“It’s nerdy, but it’s something that really a lot of people can have fun with,” Goldthwait said.