Great to see such a quick response from the Zombie Research Society to the LA Weekly piece on the zombie zeitgeist. 

Andrew Morisson’s advice on considering a zombie escape plan:

One thing that has really become clear through the Zombie Research Society’s work is that any plan should be very flexible. Declaring that you’re going to run to the nearest gun store and stock up when the Zombies come is all fine and good, but in reality there is no telling when the outbreak will happen, and where you’ll be when it does. So my plan is general, and involves a path to accomplish very clear objectives: Clean Water, Safe Shelter, and Sustainable Food.

The question of how “interest in zombies seems to be cyclical” came up, which was also under discussion this week over on the Giant Bombcast with Treyarch developer Josh Olin. The concern there was whether “zombie saturation” had been attained, at least in the world of games. Kotaku quotes his response:

Out of fear of showing my zombie nerd-ism I will contend that zombies aren’t saturated at all. I could play zombies for the rest of time.

io9 had a chart last year which mapped a “connection between zombie movies and social unrest”.  Their thesis was that:

… even correcting for the fact that there are more movies being made today, you can see that there are distinctive spikes in zombie popularity – and they always seem to fall slightly after a huge political or social event has caused mass fear, chaos, or suffering.

The ZRS feels the same way as Olin:

It does seem to be somewhat cyclical, but I think only from an entertainment / pop culture perspective. There is also a surprisingly large group of people out there who have a dedicated interest in Zombies that doesn’t change with the trends.

Sounds good to us, but… if we have zombies in our future, does that mean we will live in interesting times?

This question has been on my mind recently for gameplay reasons. This answer from The Straight Dope is a few years old now but is as detailed as any post-apocalypse theorist (or game designer) could want.

Another problem for future survivors (assuming they can eventually deal with the zombie hordes) is whether anyone would be still alive who understood how to bring the power stations back to life. This was the focus of series three of Survivors on BBC back in the 1970s.

I’ve been playing a lot of the new survival mode on Left4Dead since it was released for the PC. It really encourages cooperation and communication. Even more than the normal game. You can usually do quite well in campaign and versus modes even without discussing strategy with your team. In Survival, letting your team wander leads to death. And the horde just keeps on coming…

Here’s a video of Chet Faliszek on the Last Stand map.