Zombies invade campus

Editor's Note: This is a first-hand account of the Human vs. Zombies event.

"Come at me, bro" shouted Alex Zuelke, a sophmore majoring in construction engineering technology, at a horde of brain-sucking zombies.

This exclamation epitomizes the game Humans vs. Zombies, primarily referred to as HvZ. Universities, high schools and other public institutions all over the world have held HvZ tournaments since 2005.

Toledo's tournament, annually hosted by the university organizations Bash and Adhoc, took place Sept. 21 and ended Monday. This semester's game of HvZ was an action-packed adventure full of egotism, fear and paranoia topped off with a final Nerf war between the Human Resistance and the Zombie Horde.

HvZ starts with one person randomly chosen to be infected, and this first zombie is referred to as the Original Zombie. The Original Zombie can "zombify" others within the Human Resistance by tagging them on any part of the human's body.

Once a person becomes a part of the Zombie Horde, they must remove the blue and yellow bandana from their arm and wear it around their head.

The humans can defend themselves and stun the zombies with Nerf guns and balled-up socks. Once a zombie is hit, he or she is stunned for 15 minutes.

Players must be registered at humansvszombies.org and follow other rules set forth by the site such as respecting no-play zones such as libraries, classrooms and bathrooms.

While survival is crucial, there are also other objectives of the game. The Human Resistance must complete missions that can help them survive and eventually escape from the zombie-infested area.

The missions for UT's game started last Thursday. The humans attempted to retrieve three medics, but unfortunately they were only able to get one.

The medic the humans received had the power to revive a human that had been tagged in the last 15 seconds. The medics that the zombies got were referred to as Brute Mothers, zombies that shorten the time a zombie is stunned for.

The next day, the Human Resistance was sent a cryptogram which, when deciphered, told them to meet a mysterious stranger who could help them at the University Hall bell tower.

After a brutal Nerf battle with the zombies, the humans managed to get to the mysterious stranger who had a power node in her possession. The power node was represented by a water bottle with a glow stick. The Human Resistance escorted this stranger to the Transportation Center where they were able to activate the power grid using these power nodes.

The power grids were shields that kept the zombies from leaving campus. The humans set up a virus inhibitor, which was just a simple box, which they managed to get their hands on Saturday. As they started firing it up, a horde of zombies began a raid that lasted ten minutes.

Fortunately, the Human Resistance was able to hold them off — it seemed like a clear-cut victory. Suddenly, a couple of zombies kidnapped the mysterious stranger. As a rebuttal, the humans set out on a midnight search-and-rescue mission for her.

Many of the humans were tagged and turned into zombies that night, and they were unsuccessful in retrieving the mysterious stranger. The following day, the Human Resistance went on a search mission for three fusion batteries. These fusion batteries were represented by two liter pop bottles with blue glow sticks inside and they were hidden around the campus.

They were successful in retrieving the batteries, however, when they tried to rescue the mysterious stranger a second time, the humans suffered great casualties and failed to do so again.

The zombies then made an assault on the humans with the virus inhibitor, which the humans failed to protect. The last day was extraction day. That was the day when the" helicopters" would come to take the remaining humans away from the Zombie Horde.

While waiting on the helicopter, zombies ambushed the humans. At this point, the Human Resistance was outnumbered by a three–to-one ratio.

Although they put up a fight, the humans were finally taken down and the zombies declared their victory.