Humans vs. Zombies
The Campus wide game that consisted of about 150 students this past week was full of thrill and a good relief from school-related stress. With humans using Nerf guns and the zombies using two hands to capture humans, this game was intense. I’ve written short daily messages to myself on Facebook describing how my days had gone throughout the game as a human until I suffered the slightly shocking fate of getting caught by a zombie because I forgot to watch my back. Overall this game was fun, especially when becoming a zombie because you can play with a human’s mind since they are more afraid of not surviving until the week is over. This is how the days went by for Humans vs. Zombies:
Monday: The day after sign up day, I personally forgot to sign up and wished I would have joined. Instead, I participated in the unique mission the game had at 8pm. It was an hour long and it was a mission where we had to find a bucket in 3 locations. From what I remember, 2 of the 3 locations were the Shineman Center and the Glimmerglass Lagoon. The zombies were released to go to these locations first, and then the humans had to wait 5 minutes before heading out in 3 small groups (The lagoon group being the largest since most of the zombies were spotted going that way). The area was very dark and circling the lagoon was a large task to find a white bucket. To the humans’ unlucky turnout, the zombies found the bucket first and were defending it. With the loss of some humans and the addition of a few reinforcements from the other small groups that had finished collecting their buckets, humans succeeded in this mission in the allotted time. The savior of the mission who collected the bucket by the lagoon was Cody who later turned to a zombie as we were running towards Hewitt Union (the location where we had to return from where we started). Since I wasn’t signed up, I was allowed to be around the humans during the mission, the funny part was that I was running with the humans and a zombie assumed I was one of them. Turned out I was a good decoy!
Tuesday: This was the day I finally signed up at 8pm. Luckily, signups were still allowed for this last day only and since I didn’t have a Nerf gun, I was safe to be a human the next day whether I became a zombie during this mission or not. Me and my friend Fernando went and signed up only to figure out we had to pay for a donation to sign up, but thankfully Fernando helped me out and paid for me. I told him I’d pay him back and stay human as long as possible. This mission, however, turned out to be a survival of the fittest mission. Humans had to make groups of 10 by the Quad and had to go through to the end of the corridor between the Penfield Library and Lanigan. In that corridor, we had to fight through hordes of zombies. Since there were about 60 humans in this mission, the first two groups both had ten people. However, because those first two groups almost completely failed, the last couple of groups had to combine to 2 more big groups of 20 humans. The first two groups failed pretty badly with an average of 2 to 3 humans surviving each of them. The third group was very successful with having most of the humans survive. I was in the fourth group with Fernando, and since most of the humans that failed in the earlier groups turned to zombies for this mission; we had to deal with the largest horde of zombies. For our group, we had four decoys, me, Fernando, Kinsey, and this one guy with a blue coat. Two of us survived, that being me and Kinsey. The whole group had us decoys in the front, walking by the wall of the Penfield Library. Zombies jumped at us from the front and from hidden locations like the windows. By the time we had gotten rid of the zombies patrolling the area in front of the library, we confronted all the rest that were relaxing in the corridor. There were a huge number of them and it finally ended with us humans running it and hoping to get to the end. A quarter of us made it especially me and Kinsey as we bolted through the grass, going around the zombie and human crowd. This was a thrilling mission overall with the goal of not getting touched with two hands by a zombie. My first night as a human was successful despite the fact it wouldn’t have mattered if I had turned on that day or not. I went to my dorm and wrote on Facebook:
“Day 2 9:50pm… joined late as a Human in Oswego’s humans vs. zombies event. I’m officially in the game and surviving a night. Tonight’s mission was completely suicidal but I survived it >:) till tomorrow and every other day!!!”
I also had supportive comments from a friend named Devon who was also a human at the time:
“Just follow your instincts and survive. You’ll find a way!” – Devon
Even later that day when I left to Oneida, I had to come back to Cayuga and spotted some zombies relaxing in the front entrance for a couple minutes. I thought I was going to be tagged; however there was a rule that as long as a human or zombie is within 5 feet from a building, they cannot be turned, so therefore I walked by the grass and to the front door. I reminded them about the rule and they were sad and went back inside. When I got back into my dorm I went on Facebook once more and posted:
“Made it back to my dorm safe… tomorrow is going to be fun”
I even had friends who weren’t supportive by posting:
“I was hoping you would get caught” – Bree
Wednesday: This day was probably the most intense one ever. Before the mission at 8pm, a floor mate named Mario wondered if I’d like to go along with him and his roommate to pick up a friend at Mahar and escort her to the library. So we went around the parking lot towards the lake and went along the road towards the back of Mahar and picked up Dominique. Along the way we did see a few red headbands [indicating that person was a zombie] and luckily had no confrontations. We all got to our locations safe and sound until the 8pm mission. Also known as Mission Impossible, we had to escort a person from the Quad to the lagoon and then back into Hewitt, and if we failed, the humans had to face a nuke that would go off by Friday and thus spell doom for the humans. As we heard this, me, Mario, Kinsey, Shawn, and Ian all huddled and previously decided that if this mission at some point turned out to be far too much to handle, we would run away from the mission and save ourselves by running to Cayuga. Sadly, we had to go with this decision by the time we escorted the person to the lagoon because too many zombies were surrounding and jumping at us. We saw our numbers dwindling until it was only us 5 left and Kinsey reminded us about our earlier plan. She ran alone towards the Quad having zombies run after her while me and Mario ran bolting through the back of Seneca and around the wind tunnel and into Cayuga. I had the image in my mind that this was seriously an intense mission we really couldn’t have managed on our own. When I arrived to my room, I was out of breath and as I was catching it I wrote this on my Facebook wall:
“I’m still aliveeee!”
I was then filled with comments on that post with questions about how am I still alive. People assumed I was tagged because what spectators saw were zombies pretty much annihilating the humans in that mission. People who were zombies commented saying I will get tagged by them and that really can make someone paranoid, but overall thrilling to have gone so far.
Thursday: This was the end of my reign. I had to go to class and went through the Quad and past the Campus Center until the last exit toward the Shineman Center where a zombie was hiding by the door. I was walking along with my friend Fernando and got caught from the back hearing the words “Gotcha!” and I looked back and saw this guy with a mask. I remembered this was Halloween and so I was sort of freaked out. After class, I changed my headband from blue to red and posted on Facebook:
“Humans… You all are screwed now. I got turned.”
Of course I received some laughs from friends, especially Bree. However, it was actually so much more fun being a Zombie. I found a fellow zombie player and we grouped up with a couple others then found humans getting ready to leave Mahar. It was Mario and Ian and they saw me. They were surprised I was tagged and since I was with a group of zombies, we attempted to go for a tag. This is when we had a chase from Mahar and through the back of Seneca into the parking lot where they were safe. Zombies and humans couldn’t be in combat in parking lots. Mario had a Nerf shotgun so it was intimidating. This is when we gave up and went back home while I posted on Facebook:
“Day 4: At 10AM marked my 38th hour as a late-joined human…I got tagged right outside of campus center as I ran to Shineman. So close. Red headband time…”
This is when Tim commented with the idea of coming up with an interesting blog about this campus wide game. Thankfully I went about it and enjoyed writing about it. The mission for today was a full day mission where humans had to find bright orange rocks marked “HvZ” hidden throughout the campus and bring them to the campus center before 6pm. There were 26 rocks total which equaled the amount of humans left. However, only 4 rocks were returned by the humans while the zombies returned most of the ones left over. Humans failed two missions in a row and zombies therefore won the general game. I also heard an interesting story about how two friends were tagged. Their names were Bageot and Mohammed and they were surrounded by friends who were turned into zombies. When one of the zombies turned Mohammed into a zombie, Bageot didn’t think twice about realizing that every zombie was stunned except for Mohammed. Therefore Mohammed tagged him and he sadly turned to a zombie. This was pretty humorous and he was out of luck at that point.
Friday: This was the last day of the HvZ event. Humans had until 12pm, but because of the failure of Wednesday’s mission, zombies won according to the moderators of the game. Later in the day, there was a just-for-fun mission that was pretty much a send-off mission. It was at 6pm and anyone could be a zombie or a human if they chose. We were left with an even amount of zombies and humans for this event, with 12 of each as we started. The mission was that humans had to defend the doors to Hewitt Union from the waves of zombies that came in every time all 12 zombies were stunned. There were many waves approaching the humans and the only goal the zombies had was to turn all the humans into zombies rather than reach the doors. The zombies’ goal was fulfilled and we won. I was lucky enough to be the only zombie to tag Mario, Shawn, and Kinsey—the same group of people that I ran with from Wednesday’s mission. When the mission was done, the moderators congratulated us and we were sent off until next time…
I encourage everyone to try out this event. It is very thrilling, exciting, and of course it can make a human paranoid. I hope you all come to enjoy it as much as we all did because I’m sure we are going to see the same faces again from the last game.