It’s that time of year again. Leaves are falling, classes are in full swing, and students donning red bandanas can be seen fending off the living dead with Nerf guns. Humans vs. Zombies has officially started.
But what does it all mean? For those with little information about the campus-wide game of tag, Human vs. Zombies, this can be a very confusing and sometimes frightening time. So from here on out, Amherst Wire will be making sense of it, covering missions, talking to zombies and humans, and keeping you informed about the madness that will take place October 14th through the 25th.
For those of you still wondering why October means never enough marshmallows at the dining commons, here is a quick rundown on HvZ rules:
“Zombie” players (indicated by a red bandana around their forehead) try to eat “Human” players (indicated by a red bandana around their arm) by tagging them. Humans try to avoid being eaten (tagged) by stunning zombie predators by shooting them with Nerf guns, or, for the thrifty human, throwing
clean socks or marshmallows. A stunned zombie cannot eat humans for ten minutes and must lower their bandana around their neck to show that they are, for the moment, harmless. A human bitten by a zombie becomes a zombie (following basic zombie movie logic) and must surrender their “bite code” issued at their registration. The lucky zombie who scored the meal enters that code online and can continue living. A zombie that doesn’t eat for three days dies and, for them, the game is over. For full details on how a zombie apocalypse is managed click
here.
To get everyone in the mood, HvZ administrators held a viewing of the 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead, in Isenberg the night before the game started. Those who attended shared stories and hopes for this semester’s game.
Some seasoned players carry the battle scars of games past (quite literally) and are eager to tell their tales. HvZ veteran, Josh Bajgot, presented a scar on his arm stating proudly, “I got this protecting a special player.” Despite the intensity of his own story of paying in blood to protect his fellow humans, Bajgot admits that his “was not a brutal injury. There has been much worse.” he explains that “one girl fell on her head trying to tag somebody a few semesters ago. She jumped over a railing, just face-planted.” He also told of one zombie in a previous game throwing himself from his bicycle in hopes of tagging a player. “There was a zombie a few years ago who tried to jump from a bike onto somebody. He learned the hard way that it’s not a good idea,” explains Bajgot, “he broke his wrists.”
Bajgot also had a few words of advice for humans hoping to survive. He explained that “building hopping” was an important strategy because they are considered “safe zones” where HvZ cannot be played. His advice to new players was to “Stay inside every building as far as possible. There are a lot of routes around campus you can go.”
If all of this seems too intense, Rachel Tremblay, an HvZ administrator offered some reassuring words saying that these types of accidents are usually the result of “players going overboard. Usually they aren’t injuring each other; they’re injuring themselves.”
For player and innocent bystander alike, this will undoubtedly be an exciting game.
