Orange and black bandanas are not a new fall fashion— and no, Nerf guns are not a fad again. There was, however, a zombie invasion at Saint Louis University last week.
The first-ever game of Humans vs. Zombies took place at SLU from Oct. 25-29. The game was organized and sponsored by the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SLU SEDs), also known as the Space Club.
According to the official SLU Humans vs. Zombies website, “Humans vs. Zombies is essentially a game of tag consisting of two teams, the humans (resistance) and zombies (horde).
All players start out as a human with the exception of one randomly- selected person who is chosen to be the Original Zombie.”
This Original Zombie was selected from a pool of players who indicated that they wanted to be the Original Zombie.
At 12:01 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 25, the Original Zombie was able to begin ‘feeding on’ (tagging) humans, and the zombie invasion spread from there.
The 153 participants identified themselves with orange and black bandanas, which humans wore on their arms, and zombies wore on their heads. The Original Zombie, however, was allowed to wear the bandana on her arm until she had infected six humans so as to remain stealthy, allowing her to infect more humans and get the game rolling.
Now it may sound as though the situation was dismal for humans, but they were allowed to defend themselves against the zombie invasion by using balled up socks and/or Nerf guns.
If a sock or a Nerf bullet hit a zombie, that zombie was ‘stunned,’ or not allowed to feed for the next 15 minutes.
In addition, zombies could only survive 48 hours without ‘feeding’ on a human.
According to Katlin Landers, the Head Moderator of Humans vs. Zombies, the game ended on Friday night with 64 humans left in the resistance, 55 zombies in the horde, and 34 zombies that had deceased.
“I survived from Monday until Friday afternoon. I got killed coming out of chemistry; it was kind of a letdown” freshman Ben Minden-Birkenmaier said.
Even though the fate of many of the participants was becoming a zombie, the game provided students with a way to take a break from studies and enjoy some friendly competition.
“I had a ton of fun and I thought the Space Club pulled it off really well… I would definitely play again,” said Minden-Birkenmaier.
The success of the game was a product of all of the hard work that Landers and the rest of Space Club put into the planning and execution of the game.
“I heard about it last year and thought it would be a great game that we could play as a Space Club… I began working on the idea last year, and towards the beginning of the year this year we began getting ready for the game itself” Landers said.
As a result of the game’s popularity, there are already talks in the Space Club of organizing a game again in the spring.
“We would like to do it in the spring again. There were several people who didn’t know about the game and wanted to sign up but weren’t able to,” Landers said.
So if you have the desire to devour human flesh (figuratively, of course) or to fend off a multitude of invading zombies, keep your eyes peeled for Humans vs. Zombies: Round two, which will be coming soon SLU. May the best species win.
