Marina’s Zombie Report: Greatest Zombie Moments of 2012
It’s nearly 2013. Fuck you, Mayans, we made it. In honor of the special occasion of us all being alive and not cosmic cinders, the Zombie Report would like to present…
The Five Greatest Zombie Moments of 2012
5. The Discovery Channel finally gave the zombie apocalypse the respect it deserves and showed us scientists on the same show with people who hoard weapons and passionately debate whether or not they can bear to shoot their families when they get bit.
4. Filmmaker Joss Whedon endorsed Mitt Romney for President because he’d be the candidate most likely to bring about the zombie apocalypse. Romney lost, in spite of Whedon’s help.
3. Marina Bridges and J. W. Manus published the ebook, ZOMBIES TAKE MANHATTAN! (you seriously didn’t think I’d leave myself out.)
2. Most of Ronald Poppo’s face was chewed off by Rudy Eugene in a bizarre Miami, Florida zombie attack. Police had to shoot Eugene multiple times before he ceased and desisted and died. There were cries that the zombie apocalypse was upon us, but Eugene took the reason behind his actions to his grave without infecting any of the rest of us.
1. AMC’s The Walking Dead killed off the character that hero Rick and the entire country loved most…T-Dog. In spite of hardly ever having lines or anything to do, T-Dog won the hearts of the country by being a black guy in a zombie entertainment who didn’t die immediately. Rick’s wife, Lori, also died, but eh, nobody much cared. Here are all of T-Dog’s lines from Season Two of the top series. All five minutes of them.
Welcome to 2013, you survivors. Be sure to stay with a buddy and aim for the head.
Marina Bridges’ Zombie Report: Real Life Zombie Preparedness
I’ve talked about zombie apocalypse preparedness before in this report. I’ve talked about how prepared I am (not at all, unless you count having a three month supply of expensive dog food for my pampered little dogs, and I don’t think I can count that). There are some people who really ARE prepared for the zombie apocalypse, and they can help you get prepared, too.
A good resource for zombie apocalypse preparedness is actually the CDC (Centers For Disease Control) website. In addition to information and printable posters, there is also a downloadable graphic novella about preparedness. It’s interesting to note that government zombie outbreak models have shown that we are all zombie feed unless the outbreak is contained very early on.
The Zombie Squad is a far more interactive, fun, and socially conscious way to be prepared for the zombie apocalypse. The organization started in St. Louis and then, like a contagion, it spread. It’s all about general emergency preparedness, charity, and zombies. There is probably a chapter near you.
If you need something to read on your Kindle or computer while you sit in your basement and wait for the apocalypse to die down, please consider Zombies Take Manhattan!, my ebook!
Marina Bridge’s Zombie Report: Got Weapons?
Guns are fun. I like them myself. Many were the hours I’ve spent plinking away at tin cans. I don’t have a gun now. I know I live in America, but I don’t have anywhere to shoot a gun. So I don’t own a gun.
A gun would probably come in handy in the aftermath of most kinds of apocalypses, but guns are THE zombie apocalypse weapon because the traditional way to kill a traditional zombie for good and all is to destroy its brain. A gun affords a zombie slayer the distance necessary to avoid zombie bites while destroying zombie brains. A zombie slayer with a gun doesn’t necessarily have to be in fabulous shape to destroy zombie brains, since pointing and shooting is a lot easier than cracking skulls up close and personal. Provided the zombie slayer can shoot (and you aren’t a good shot just because you play a lot of video games, no matter what you think), the gun is the ideal zombie apocalypse weapon for the average citizen.
So you get yourself a gun and then… You might not be near your gun when the zombie apocalypse starts. Most zombie apocalypse survival kits rely heavily on the idea that the owners will be at home when the rotting, animated corpses hit the fan. I suspect that most of us will be at work or a bar. Say you are home and have the luxury of holing up with your bottled water and MREs and guns and unlimited ammo… You say you don’t have unlimited ammo? Even if you think you do, you don’t. Unless civilization recovers pretty quickly, the whole world is going to run out of ammo. The stupidest zombie apocalypse survival strategy I’ve ever seen was the target practice on AMC’s The Walking Dead. The characters wasted their finite amount of ammo teaching people how to shoot.
This brings us to a list of
BEST NON-GUN ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL WEAPONS
DARYL DIXON’S CROSSBOW
The Walking Dead is getting this right. Quiet, efficient, and badass, Daryl stays in bolts by retrieving the bolts that he shoots, but it’s not a stretch to imagine him making his own bolts.
MACHETES, AXES, BIG KNIVES, SPEARS
This Zombie from the original Dawn Of The Dead has a splitting headache. A machete works pretty much until you lose it. Remember to keep it sharpened.
CORDLESS POWER TOOLS
Many power tools are cordless these days. Set up a solar recharging station, and you can be just like this Michonne action figure.
LAWNMOWER
The finale’ weapon in Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive. This weapon does require strong arms and a strong stomach.
Hell, watching this clip from the movie requires a strong stomach.
There are a million more weapons, including ordinary household objects, that could be used in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
In my own ebook, ZOMBIES TAKE MANHATTAN!, stagehands use pieces of a theatrical fly system to kill zombies. The sky’s the limit. Don’t count on your gun to save you. Start looking at those staplers and aerosol cans with fresh eyes!
Special question from DD1 to you, Marina. She sez: You know the saying, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” right? So, DD1 asks you, oh great and wise Zombie Expert: “If the zombie apocalypse starts in Vegas, does it stay in Vegas?”
Marina Bridges’s Zombie Report: Zombie Apocalypse Survival Essentials
I embarrassed a co-worker the other day by expressing an interest in her boyfriend’s Zombie Apocalypse Bug Out Bag. The bug out bag seems to bother Ash the same way she’d be bothered if her boyfriend walked around in a brown bathrobe with a colander on his head and said things like, “Hail good fellow and well met! Do there be trolls in this enchanted forest?” Since I’m not very sensitive, I talked to the boyfriend on speaker phone and asked questions like, “Water purification tablets? Do you have those?” while Ash shrieked, “NOTES! She’s taking NOTES!”
I don’t have a bug out bag. I put one together in New York City after the September 11th attacks, but even then I wasn’t able to commit. My bug out bag consisted of two cans of Spam, a 16 ounce bottle of water, a carton of cigarettes, as much dog food as I thought I could reasonably carry 300 yards or so, and $100 in twenties. I eventually ended up using everything in the bag (yes, even the Spam) and the bag sat in the closet, an accusing empty bladder backpack of non-emergency preparedness.
I don’t have a bug out bag now. I have zero emergency preparedness supplies at all except for some random half-burned birthday candles somewhere in the kitchen. I do have an evacuation plan. It’s actually more like a vague fantasy of me driving three hours (provided there is no traffic) through several cities to my grandmother’s house to hole up there and live on whatever she has in her kitchen until the danger passes.
While Ash is horrified by her boyfriend’s bug out bag, it isn’t a bad idea at all. The government tells us we should be ready for emergencies. Here is FEMA telling us what we should have in our home preparedness kit. Of course, it’s woefully inadequate and shitty, and operates entirely on the idea that the government will rescue the kit owner before he or a zombie eats his family. The clever signalling-for-help whistle is something I certainly would never have thought of. All I have to say to FEMA and their whistle is, “Hurricane Katrina.”
The honest truth is I would like to last through the first round of the zombie apocalypse just to be able to say I did, but I’d be screwed the instant I tripped over a limbless zombie torso and broke my glasses. With two little yappy dogs in tow, I wouldn’t be welcome even in most public storm shelters. If you are looking for real zombie apocalypse survival tips, don’t ask me. Zombie Survival and Defense Wiki is where you need to be.
Jaye here: Every time this subject comes up, I feel a vague sense of panic. Then I remember my purse. The very same purse my family mocks me for because people can ask me for all kinds of stupid items and yes, I will have it in my purse. (Mom, why do you have an Allen wrench in your purse? I don’t know, but it did come in handy, didn’t it? So shut up.) I do draw the line at cans of Spam. I think I would prefer to eat the old man before eating Spam. I’m off to check the Survival Link to see what else I need to be hauling around.
One thing for sure will be Larry the Kindle–whither I goest, goes he. It is well loaded with zombie fiction, including Marina’s Zombies Take Manhattan! which gives me at least five good reasons to stay the hell out of NYC during the zombie apocalypse.
Jaye's Love Affair With Genre Fiction 