Friday, October 31, 2014

Animal Planet Developing Animal Zombie Series




Animal Planet is the latest cable network to dip into graphic novel fare, optioning the zombie animal story “The Other Dead” to be developed as a scripted series.
From creators Joshua Ortega (“Gears of War,” Spider-Man”) and Digger Mesch (“Agent 88,” “X-Men”) and IDW Publishing, “The Other Dead” is set in Louisiana during the ‘next Hurricane Katrina’ and revolves around a world of undead animals and unrelenting storms.
“The entire creative team could not be more excited about this partnership, and the timing for ‘The Other Dead’ series could not be more perfect,” says Ortega.“Zombie animal meets Animal Planet? Sounds like we have some serious undead fun ahead of us.”
Adds Rick Holzman, Animal Planet exec VP and g.m.: “This is an intriguing choice for Animal Planet as the network further branches out into different, dynamic genres.”
“The Other Dead” joins the company of popular comic book and graphic novel-based television series including AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” recently renewed for a sixth season, and the slew of superhero series: CW’s “Arrow” and “The Flash,” NBC’s “Constantine,” ABC’S “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and more.
Series is being eyed for a 2016 premiere.

~variety.com

First image from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: the movie!


Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The first image from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the movie adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith‘s horror twist on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, has found its way online.

The image shows the Bennet sisters—Elizabeth (Lily James), Lydia (Ellie Bamber), Mary (Millie Brady), Jane (Bella Heathcote), and Kitty (Suki Waterhouse)—dressed as proper ladies, and weapons at the ready.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies also stars Sam Riley, Jack Huston, Douglas Booth, Matt Smith, Lena Headey, and Charles Dance, and is being directed by Burr Steers. It is currently filming.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Bennet Sisters




~EW.com




Happy Halloween!




Thursday, October 23, 2014

Ninth Annual Dover Zombie Walk 10/25/14 Dover, NH




Dover Zombie Walk returns for a ninth year of shambling good times. Zombies of all ages are welcome to gather at the Greater Dover Chamber of Commerce, 550 Central Ave., on Saturday, Oct. 25, at 2 p.m. 

The undead horde will march through downtown Dover (while obeying all traffic rules, of course), and end at Adelle’s Coffeehouse, at 3 Hale St., where they’ll feast on Jell-O brains and hold a creepy costume contest. Prizes for best costumes for kids and adults. 

Visit facebook.com/doverzombiewalk for more info.




~fosters.com


Clarendon Hills to sell zombie hunting permits for breast cancer fundraiser




Clarendon Hills is offering a very different kind of permit for sale in hopes of raising money for a good cause.
Taking a fun twist on some scary beings, the village is offering zombie hunting permits for sale through the month of October. Money collected from sales will be donated to the Susan B. Komen Breast Cancer Awareness Fund.
Permits are for sale at Village Hall, 1 N. Prospect Ave., for $5 for Clarendon Hills residents and $10 for non-residents. Anyone wishing to pay more to make for a larger donation during Breast Cancer Awareness Month is welcome to do so, said Dan Ungerleider, the village’s community development director.
“This is just our effort to change some Halloween orange to pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month,” Ungerleider said. “I think it’s always positive when we can bring the community together for a good cause.”
The Village Board voted Oct. 6 to approve the sale of the zombie hunting permits. Trustee Eric Stach voted against the action.
“I’m definitely against zombies and for fighting breast cancer,” Stach said. “This is a very creative idea, but I have a concern about whether the village should be picking certain private organizations to support. I don’t really think the village should be dipping its toes into this arena.”
Ungerleider said he has no specific goal in mind for the amount of money to be collected through sales of the zombie hunting permits.
“Whatever we do collect will go to a great cause,” he said. “I’m hoping people get involved and have fun with this.”
Those purchasing a permit will have to first complete a short test, answering questions to help determine someone’s understanding of “what makes a zombie and why they are so darn scary.”
Permits are in the form of a placard that can be placed for display in the front window of homes.

“We’ll start off selling the permits here at Village Hall,” Ungerleider said. “If there’s a big demand, we’ll add locations, like the police station.”



~clarendonhills.suntimes.com

‘Z Nation' gets renewed for a second season




"Z Nation” will live on.
The zombie TV series filmed and produced in Spokane will be picked up for a second season, Syfy and North by Northwest Productions announced on Monday.
Rich Cowan, co-founder of North by Northwest, called the decision great news.
“We’re showing the TV and film industry that we can deliver network episodic television directly out of Spokane,” he said. “We’re thrilled and so happy for the crew.”
The 13-episode series, which just aired episode six Friday night, created the equivalent of about 200 full-time jobs in the first season and employed hundreds of Spokane-area residents cast as extras, mostly zombies. In addition to filming, all production work is being done in Spokane.
Cowan said it was notable that the second season was announced so quickly.
“We just aired episode six,” he said. “They pulled the trigger because the ratings have been higher than anticipated.”
So far this season, “Z Nation” has been Syfy’s third-highest-rated scripted show, behind “Dominion” and “Defiance,” with an average of 1.4 million viewers.
Cowan could not say yet if season two will be filmed in Eastern Washington, pending contract negotiations.


~spokesman.com


The Walking Dead HORDE II Vannen Watch Available Now




Vannen  joined forces with Skybound last year to release "Horde", a limited edition The Walking Dead watch featuring glow-in-the dark detail and artwork by Charlie Adlard. It was a huge success at San Diego Comic-Con, but was never available in stores.
To celebrate the start of Season 5 of  The Walking Dead on AMC, we’re releasing "Horde II". This special edition watch features the same sinister artwork as the original "Horde" minus the glow-in-the-dark detail and hand-numbered packaging. "Horde II" is available now for the fan-friendly price of $60.

“Zombie-Proof” Cabin comes with a 10-year Anti-Zombie Guarantee


image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
You hear the horrifying groans. Decaying hands scrabble at the door, trying to find a way in. They want to eat you. You sit down on the sofa, kick your feet up and open a can of Spam. No worries. You’re inside a Zombie Fortification Cabin from Tiger Log Cabins. All you have to do now is wait in safety and comfort for the zombie apocalypse to blow over.
The ZFC-1 is a log cabin kit designed with the walking dead in mind. The structure consists of three connected buildings. It comes stocked with reinforced slit windows, walls and doors; a barbed-wire surround; an escape hatch on top; and a living room with Xbox, TV and sound system. It comes with an arsenal storage unit to secure your anti-zombie weaponry. There’s also a toilet system, garage, kitchen area with microwave and an upper deck with a full view all around so you can keep an eye out for the oncoming horde. A garden section means you won’t have to take over an abandoned prison to start a small produce farm.
The $113,000 (£69,995, about AU$129,000) price tag is for the kit only. It will cost you an additional $21,000 to add installation, $3,000 for security cameras and $5,600 for solar panels. Pricing is available on request for adding a water cannon, search lights or flame thrower to the package. There seems to be no option to add on a samurai sword, so you’ll need to provide your own.
One of the cabin’s more notable features is a 10-year anti-zombie guarantee. This may be the most brilliant guarantee ever offered on a structure. If for some reason the cabin doesn’t hold up and a zombie (or 2 or 12) gets inside, chances are the cabin’s owner won’t survive to complain. “Please note — we require medical evidence of the presence of a real zombie should you wish to claim under the 10 year anti zombie guarantee,” Tiger writes.
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved
image via Nerd Approved

Zombie Brew Festival 10/31/14 Hermitage, TN




Make this Halloween a deliciously dangerous one when you attend Zombie Brew Festival at Nashville Shores on Friday, October 31. Instead of walking dead, you'll encounter the pouring dead -- scary-looking zombies will be serving seasonal beers from 40 breweries as well as artisan Bloody Marys, all while you monster mash it up to music from a DJ and a live band, and wander to various food trucks and local vendors.
Choose from the following offers:
• $45 ($76 value) for two GA tickets
• $75 ($152 value) for two VIP tickets, including one-hour early entry
• $125 ($200 value) for two premium VIP tickets, including one-hour early entry, a pint glass, a catered meal, seating in the VIP tent, and use of the VIP restrooms
Zombie Brew Festival's Website



Zombie Pub Crawl 10/25/14 Port Clinton, OH




Downtown historic Port Clinton will welcome zombies from all shuffles of undead on Saturday, October 25, from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. for the third annual Zombie Pub Crawl and Ball presented by Heidelberg Distributing.   Zombies will crawl to eight participating pubs: Bait House, Cielo Grande, Clinton House, McCarthy’s, Mr. Ed’s, PJ’s Grille & Bar, Rosie’s, and Slater’s Madison Street Pub.
Cash prizes will be given to the top three costumes.  New this year, cash prizes will be awarded for Best Group, Best Couple, and Most Creative.  Costume judging will take place at the upstairs of Slater’s from 7:30-10 p.m.  Tickets must be punched at each bar and must be complete to be entered to win prizes at the Ball. At 12 a.m., zombies are asked to head to PJ’s Grille & Bar for the Zombie Ball where costume contest winners will be announced.
The first 100 tickets sold will receive a free Zombie t-shirt.  Tickets can be purchased for $10 at Main Street’s office or any of the participating pubs. For more information, please contact 419-734-5503.


Teacher using zombies to teach geography




A Seattle teacher may have found the key to successfully teaching middle school kids. It takes patience, creativity, and plenty of zombies.
David Hunter was a geography teacher with a problem. His students just weren't connecting with things like archipelagos, plateaus and tributaries. The learning landscape was pretty barren.
"I knew there were much more exciting ways to talk about geography," Hunter said.
So he looked for inspiration in the monster of the moment and mapped out a curriculum that involves surviving an undead apocalypse. It's called zombie-based learning.
In order to survive, you've got to know zombies and you've got to know maps.
"Knowing where to go and what resources to look for, how to get there, where people are moving and where people are located would really help you," said Hunter.
Shana Brown's 6th grade geography class is one of more than 1,300 classrooms using Hunter's curriculum.
"When you ask students at the end of class, What's today's takeaway?' They all get it. There's just not a lot of re-teaching needed," said Brown.
That's because, when you speak zombie, you speak like a middle school student.
"Kids can talk about something that they think a lot about but still be doing their school work," said 6th grader Cooper Mahlin.
David Hunter says zombie-based learning is less about gore and more about tapping into your inner-zombie to grasp maps and other concepts.
"What you really see is students planning what they would do. A lot of the outbreak is in your imagination, so you're presented with these ideas and problems you have to solve but the students take it with their imagination from there," said Hunter.
The textbook is a comic book that Hunter describes as part graphic novel, part apocalypse survival tutorial. He's working on a second volume now and he's looking at ways to apply zombies to other subjects in school.


~king5.com

Zombie Walk 10/24/14 Fayetteville, NC




October 24 , 6pm-10pm in Downtown Fayetteville, witness the most unique event of the year. There will be a new route this year ending at the Fesitval Park stage. 

The Rock Shop Music Hall will have a great line up of bands as well as performances by the Air Born Aerial Arts on the Festival Park stage.  Pre- Walk entertainment can be see from 6pm-8pm, with the Zombie Walk starting at 8pm in front of the Cumberland County Library.  

FREE make-up stations, music on the mini stage, a costume contest and photo booth hosted by Halloween Express will be by the Cumberland County Library from 6pm-8pm for Pre-Walk entertainment.  LaFayette Ford will lead the way with a pace vehicle. The Fayetteville Dogwood Fall Festival will be in full swing at Festival Park with Bud Light for sale , Historic Hauntings Hay Rides, and a Haunted House. Cameo Art House Theater will be showing Dead Snow 2 at 9:30pm. From 6pm-8pm there will be entertainment on Hay Street featuring Shadows of the Fire, 

TranceFusion Fire Arts, Musha Dojo, Street Ratz Break Dance Crew and Thriller Dance show. . Don’t foget the Zombie Prom is at The Rock Shop Music Hall after the event at 10:30pm.


Zombie Apocalypse: An Artificial Rabies, Flu, And Ebola Virus WMD Made By ISIS Could Make ‘The Walking Dead’ Real?



Fears over a zombie apocalypse have some wondering whether it’s possible for a viral hybrid between rabies and the flu virus to cause the end of the world. After all, the Pentagon has a plan for the zombie apocalypse, and even the state of Kansas is preparing for the walking dead. But could fears over a zombie attack be justified by the ISIS terrorist group?
In a related report by the Inquisitr, some Christians believe the Ebola virus could evolve to the point that it becomes deadly enough to meet the standard for the Bible’s “end of times” prophecy, which predicts a quarter of the world’s population will die from diseases before the end of the world. But if the Ebola virus did become airborne, this feat would require genetic engineering since evolutionary theory seems to indicate the scenario would not happen naturally.
According to Elankumaran Subbiah, a virologist at Virginia Tech, a viral rabies hybrid really could create a zombie apocalypse, but it would have to be genetically engineered since random mutations are unlikely to pull off a zombie virus.
“They’re too different. They cannot share genetic information. Viruses assemble only parts that belong to them, and they don’t mix and match from different families,” said Subbiah. “Sure, I could imagine a scenario where you mix rabies with a flu virus to get airborne transmission, a measles virus to get personality changes, the encephalitis virus to cook your brain with fever and throw in the ebola virus to cause you to bleed from your guts. Combine all these things, and you’ll [get] something like a zombie virus. But [nature] doesn’t allow all of these things to happen at the same time…. You’d most likely get a dead virus.”
Zombie apocalypse averted, right? Unfortunately, the modern world has this scenario becoming a frightening reality. Mass panic ensued when two dead Ebola victims rose like the walking dead on the way to their burial, although it’s believed they were simply improperly diagnosed as being dead. But what if the Islamic State were to purposefully genetically engineer a zombie virus as a weapon of mass destruction?
As reported by Vetogate, the ISIS terrorist group leaders reportedly claimed their jihadists would be willing to sacrifice themselves by spreading the Ebola virus in its current form, which requires physical contact with body fluids from the victims.
“Followers and soldiers of the Islamic State are mostly suicide bombers and all of them are ready not only to carry Ebola, but to drink Ebola if they were asked to carry and spread it in the United States. This is not difficult but we need a decision from the leaders jihadist (sic)…. The process of spreading disease is not difficult. It can easily be transported in a bottle in your bag from Africa to America. The contents of the bottle can then be released in an air-conditioning duct or put it in the public drinking water.”
The question of a zombie apocalypse caused by a ISIS WMD is then reduced to the question of capability. U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe once claimed the ISIS terrorist group was developing a WMD capable of blowing up American cities, although when the ISIS in Iraq found Saddam Hussein’s WMD stockpiles, most experts agreed they would not be able to create anything too dangerous with the chemical and nuclear materials.
Earlier reports claimed the Islamic State has funding that exceeds $2 to $4 million per day based upon arms dealing, oil, and other operations. Since ISIS has the money, and some of the ISIS leadership has college doctorates, in the worst case scenario they manage to hire scientists capable of devising such a horrible WMD.
Fortunately, scientific knowledge for creating an artificial virus is not exactly a common specialty, and it took a team led by J. Craig Venter years to make the first major scientific breakthrough. But in August of 2014, researchers from Wageningen UR successfully developed an artificial virus for the first time. The long-term goal is to apply these techniques to biotechnology, medicine, and nanotechnology, but how long will it be until these techniques are weaponized? If that scenario were to ever become reality, the world may wish the zombie apocalypse had been created by nature instead of man.

~www.inquisitr.com


Next on Fox...when zombie pancakes attack




Stay-at-home dad and pancake revolutionary Nathan Shields of Saipancakes is back with these zombie pancakes, just in time for Halloween. He's also made a video that gives us mere mortal pancake makers insight on how to make these culinary creations. 

Brain eating, walking corpses have never been so 
delicious (or better paired with bacon).





~neatorama.com



Capcom releases a Resident Evil survival course in Japan


Resident Evil Survival Course

On the occasion of a new remastered version of the first chapter of the series Resident Evil , Capcom has decided to first release it in Japan. And to wonder why it was released in Japan , and not for example, in Germany , and before searching for the ticket of a low-cost airlines, you need to know that there is a survival course paintball at Base Camp Kawaba.


Resident Evil Survival Course

This game carries the lovers of the title in the world of Resident Evil through settings that depict Racoon City and the 'Umbrella Corporation base. Participants will shoot paint with a fake M-16 , participate in different games, including capture-the-flag , known to most as mature " Flag " Zombie War , in which participants dressed as Zombies will infect other players by hitting them with paint ; or "Defend the dignitary "where a team will have to rescue from the Umbrella base, a scientist that could shut them down. The other team will try to stop them. Anything to not lose the dignitary.



Resident Evil Survival Course

Resident Evil Survival Course

Resident Evil Survival Course

Resident Evil Survival Course

The remastered version of Capcom 's Resident Evil will be available digitally for PC , PS3 , PS4 , Xbox 360 and Xbox One starting in the early months of 2015 in North America and Europe. Starring Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine , along with the Zombie and the other creatures inside the mansion. The graphics will be better than the previous remastering of 2002, Capcom gave the game a 1080p look for next-gen consoles, and also offers a new slide chamber that concentrates in a flexible way the characters move. Zombie , Dignitaries , Heroes , the survival course goes on until the end of October.


Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Let's go to the Cafe of the Dead


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Someday soon, the zombie fight craze will be over and we can all go back to other forms of clichés. That day isn’t today, though, which is why there’s an all-girl versus zombie hordes PC browser game in Infection X Girl: Café Of The Dead.

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In the game, the world has predictably gone to zombie hell. All that’s left are plucky woman with weapons, trying to survive. The game’s a cross of social card game and a tactical RPG. Ladies you save get into set formations on your three by three grid and fight the undead.

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The twist is that it appears in order to survive, you’ll be able to find and create medicines from dubious materials, such as the zombies themselves. While your gals are immune to the airborne version of the zombie plague, they’ll still turn if bitten in some fashion. The medicine is supposed, in some way, to help. If you dare that is. You’ll also have to wander the map to forage for food and other supplies.

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You’ll be able to level the girls up, equip better gear, and go exploring in the world. Since this is an online browser game, there’s also a chat room to discuss tactics and such with other players.

Infection X Girl: Café Of The Dead is out now on PC.




~siliconera.com



Patrick D'Orazio Reviews Matheus Macedo’s “We With Daisies Lie”




We With Daisies Lie is a short story/novella about one man’s journey during the first few days and months of the zombie apocalypse.  Told in first person, it sticks with tradition, bringing nothing new to the table as far as the undead are concerned.  Whether you get bit or not, when you die you turn and the undead are slow moving.  The main character meets up almost immediately after the dead start to turn with a group of three younger kids led by a bully.  They search for places to survive and they overcome several incidents with the dead while dealing with turmoil within the group.  The living continue to be a major threat later in the story as the character grows stronger and more equipped to handle himself with the undead.  With new friends in tow, he tries to lead them to his grandparent’s farm and the fallout shelter they had made during the cold war, which is filled with enough supplies to last them several months.
The author makes a solid attempt at developing his small group of characters, though the length of this tale does limit most of them from being more than archetypes.  The main character and Emily, the girl he grows attached to, are the most fleshed out.  There were some good components to this tale, including the brief conversation the main character has with an ex-girlfriend on the phone after things go haywire.  She is surrounded by the undead in her sky rise apartment in New York City with no way to escape.  The blunt suggestion the main character makes was startling but at the same time made all the sense in the world.  Emily’s work on a poem was a nice touch as well.  There was also something that stretched believability related to an incident surrounding a stab wound to the gut.  I won’t provide further details, but suffice it to say it was a stretch buying what happens.  Otherwise, the story is a pretty straightforward analysis of how people cope with unbelievably horrible circumstances and what they must become to survive.  There were some typos and missed words here and there-the story could have done with another editing run through, but overall, it is a quick read with definite entertainment value.  The author shows solid promise here and I look forward to checking out his other works.

For this and other reviews, hit Patrick's page here!


Meet Dr. Robert Smith? -- Apocalyptic Guru




Dr. Robert Smith? – and yes, the question mark is part of his legal name – knows what will happen if a zombie outbreak takes place; he’s already calculated the events via mathematical modeling, and his work has spread like a virus around the world. Smith? has even entered the ranks of the Guinness World Records (together with the co-authors of his original paper on a zombie apocalypse) for “First Mathematical Model for Surviving a Zombie Attack.” 
You can read about it here:http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-7000/first-mathematical-model-for-surviving-a-zombie-attack/! We asked Dr. Smith? about math, zombies, Through the Wormhole, and question marks…

ZRS: How did you find yourself becoming a guru of apocalyptic prediction?
Dr. Robert Smith?: In my day job, I’m a researcher who uses mathematics to understand how infectious diseases work. This involves understanding not just the science and the mathematics but the social science, the ethics, the politics, and the way media works. I like to take a very holistic view of disease, because I think all these things matter and it’s not helpful to consider them in isolation. I’m also a non-fiction writer in my spare time. I have books on math, Doctor Who, and yes, zombies. I’d always kept my pop-culture interests entirely separate from my academic research until one day when I touched them together and the whole world went mad.
Were you already a zombie fan?
I’ve always been a fan of science fiction and the like, so I’d seen a few zombie movies here and there, but they were more a background thing for me. Then I watched Shaun of the Dead and absolutely loved it. Being a comedy, it has all the zombie tropes in it, so although we watched a lot of movies and played video games when researching the zombie paper, we kept referring back to it whenever we needed a shorthand example. It’s just so expertly constructed.
So what was the inspiration for bringing those two worlds together?
I was teaching a class on mathematical modeling of infectious diseases, and I set the students a project to create a model of any disease they liked. Various people did malaria or HIV, but one group decided to do zombies. They thought I’d shoot the idea down, but being a sci-fi fan, I loved it! It was an excellent educational tool and got the class quite excited when the students presented it. Pretty much on a whim, I decided to submit it for publication, for no other reason than I thought it would be a funny line on my CV; I thought it would amuse me and no one else.
What was the initial academic reaction to the paper?
The journal that accepted it sent me a very nice note saying “Our panel of experts has found that the mathematics is correct, the model accurate… and by the way, we believe this is the first ever mathematical model of zombies!”
What happened next when the world discovered you had just modeled a possible zombie apocalypse?
The media first cottoned on to it when they saw a listing of the table of contents, which went “HIV model, malaria model, TB model, zombies…” One of these things was not like the others; I guess it made an easy hook for the story. Once the story broke, there was a second hook, which is that I had a question mark in my name. It was at about that point that the world went mad. Okay, it was a slow news week that week, but I was fielding calls from TV stations, doing radio and print interviews nonstop, and basically being in constant demand. Happily, it was summer break so I had time for all this and that helped as well. I actually had to get a crash course in media training, which helped enormously. I was very worried the angle of the story was going to be “scientists do stupid research” so I worked hard to make sure they had a better angle. It turns out you can shift the media narrative if you know what you’re doing.
Why do you think this entire zombie genre has become so mainstream and, as a result, such a great vehicle for education?
I think pop culture has an extremely wide reach, but not always a very deep one; academia is the exact opposite. Combining the two hits that perfect sweet spot. You can tap into the kind of thing everyone knows about – e.g. my parents have never seen a zombie movie in their lives but they know what zombies are by osmosis – and then have the substance behind it to demonstrate how education can be useful. One of the great things that happened was that people simply weren’t aware there was such a thing as disease modeling, so the zombie paper opened their eyes to it. I later heard of kids who decided to become disease scientists as a direct result of it, which I think is just amazing.
How did your appearance on the Morgan Freeman series Through the Wormhole (The Science Channel) come about?
The producers contacted me because they were interested in unusual takes on science education. I told them about an experiment that had been done in my class where you fill beakers with water and secretly add something to two of them that isn’t visible. Then you all “share” beakers but exchange some fluid with partners that simulates exchanging bodily fluid in sexual encounters. Afterwards you can add stuff to the beakers and those that have been infected will change color, so it’s a great illustration of how transmissible an STD can be. They also liked my zombie stuff obviously, so they decided combining the two would be fun. More importantly, it would make a great visual for TV.
Any stories from the set, such as the proper method of wielding a cricket bat (your idea?) against malevolent beakers?
The cricket bat was their idea, but they did let me take it home afterwards, which was nice; it still has some shards of glass in it. The extras were all my students, who had a fabulous time playing zombies and being “infected.” By chance, the next day was teaching evaluations, so as a result I ended up with a special commendation for excellence in teaching from my department. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that it was all thanks to Morgan Freeman.
Which is more frightening to you: A possible zombie outbreak, or the spread of Bieber fever [NOTE: Smith? has also modeled this phenomenon]?
Ha! The spread of Bieber fever is so interesting to me, because it’s a sort of “positive disease:” an infection where individuals actually seek out the infection and want to transmit it to others. So it has some similarities to zombies and some differences, but at the end of the day I think it’s pretty obvious that one is much scarier than the other. I mean, your brain turns to mush, you become indistinguishable from anyone else, and there’s a lot of screaming…oh, and zombies are quite scary and all.
Is there something about mathematical modeling of disease that you think the layman should know and understand?
I think the key thing for the layperson to realize is just how powerful mathematics can be. Given the right input, you can model anything. It’s actually the most reliable way we have of seeing the future, which means mathematics is often at the forefront of any disease outbreak (as it was for swine flu, for example). It’s an absolutely crucial tool in determining things like how many vaccines to stockpile, when and if schools should be closed, that kind of thing. It’s being used all the time to model and predict behavior, not just in disease, but everywhere.
Finally, the question mark is a legal part of your name, correct? Why did you decide to do that?
I added it to distinguish myself from all the other Robert Smiths out there, including – as I later discovered – researchers who were right in my field. I kept getting emails asking about a paper written in 1952 long before I was born. After the zombie paper, I don’t get those emails any more.
If you’d like to read the actual paper, HERE IT IS: Zombies

DR. ARNOLD T. BLUMBERG is the “Doctor of the Dead” – a publisher (www.atbpublishing.com), author, book designer, educator, pop culture historian, and internationally recognized zombie expert. He co-authored Zombiemania (2006), one of the first exhaustive guides to zombie cinema (a revised, expanded edition is on the way); his University of Baltimore course “Zombies in Popular Media” has garnered worldwide press coverage since its launch in 2010; he has contributed chapters to Triumph of the Walking Dead, Braaaiiinnnsss!: From Academics to Zombies, and The Undead and Theology (which was nominated for a Stoker award); his lecture “Zombies: Monsters with Meaning” has been presented at symposia and conventions; he appears in the EPiX documentary Doc of the Dead as well as on TV, radio, and online; and he has two ongoing podcasts – Doctor of the Dead (www.doctorofthedead.com) and The G2V Podcast: The Pop Culture Audio Magazine(www.g2vpodcast.com). Find him on Twitter @DoctoroftheDead.  And don’t even get started on his work in Doctor Who, including a book he published called Outside In, edited by…Dr. Robert Smith?!


~zrs.com