A contagious virus broke out this past Sunday and resulted in Bradley students becoming participants in a game of Humans vs. Zombies.
“It’s really exciting walking around campus and hearing everyone talking about it in such a positive way,” Humans vs. Zombies moderator Steven Hall said.
Humans vs. Zombies is funded by Student Activities and first started last year with 60 participants.
Due to popularity, another game was hosted second semester of last year and consisted of 150 people. Its success led to the most recent game with the highest number of participants yet, 180 students.
“It’s really cool to see it expand,” said one of the three Human vs. Zombies moderators Erik Johnson. “The more people, the better and the more enthusiastic they’ll be about it.”
The game’s basic goal is to survive.
The participants are broken up into two groups, humans and zombies. Humans wear bandanas around their arms and zombies wear them around their heads.
Humans can stun or stop zombies
for five minutes by shooting them with a Nerf gun or throwing
a sock at them. Zombies must “eat” or tag a human every 36 hours in order to survive in the game.
There are also special rules such as if a zombie tags a moderator, the zombie is safe during the rest of the game.
In addition to survival, missions
are created in order to make the game more interesting.
One mission this past week consisted of humans escorting a scientist who could make a vaccine
that would stun the zombies for seven minutes instead of five. The zombies’ goal was to stop this.
The moderators met at least one month in advance to plan missions and discuss other details.
Johnson says organizing it doesn’t take very long. The hard part comes after the game has begun.
“During the week, every time someone has a question, we’re the ones that have to deal with it,” he said. “As the game gets more progressive
it takes more and more time. We also have to be there for most of the missions.”
Hall said these missions are created in hopes of having more active participants since these missions
have incentives such as longer
stun time or better weapons.
“It makes getting to class exciting
and fun and it gives you something
to do during the day if you’re not swamped with homework,” said human participant Katrina Schnell. “It gives you an exhilarating
feeling as you’re running across the quad, and you’re being chased by bloodthirsty Bradley students.”
Hall encourages people who are interested to register.
“Those who are thinking about it should definitely join,” he said. “The worst that can happen is they become zombies, in which case they mostly win anyways. Usually only 10 percent of the humans live and make it. The first day and a half is really slow, but then the zombies skyrocket by like 20 per hour.”
The next Humans vs. Zombies game will take place sometime next semester, either in March or May, or possibly even both, if the moderators are able to fit two in.
“There’s nothing better than starting your morning with a Nerf gun,” human participant Victoria Lueker said.
Last year, the University Police shut down the second game 24 hours before the game came to an end.
“This year we had a meeting
with the police to discuss issues,” Hall said. “Last year’s problems came from the fact that they were not well-informed. This year, they’re now aware of all the times and missions
