We Hate Zombies

Holy Crap! There’s a lot going on here, so don’t piss yourself. Just take a moment to relax and read what’s going on. Once you understand a few things, it will all be a lot more interesting.

This is a zombie simulation, not with real zombies; there’s no need to get a gun. In the applet that should have loaded below, you’ll see the layout of a city at night. All the little dots represent people (pink) or zombies (gray), and all the blocks are buildings. The green building is the armory, and when people go to the armory they get a gun and turn green (like the Hulk). When people turn green, they get to shoot zombies, which is awesome. More information after the simulation…

The Story:
What’s really happening here? Basically, there is a happy population of civilians wandering the streets of buildings they can’t enter, probably shopping in open markets or looking for prostitutes in the red light districts. Then, it’s almost like shooting fish in a barrel when a single zombie is added somewhere in that population. It will probably be hard to find him at first, until the spreading zombiism helps point him out, but he’ll be the little gray dot somewhere on the map.

The People:
The people are the pink/red/green colored dots. They are happy when they are a medium color of pink and panicking when they turn light pink. When they turn green, you know they are ready to fight back. Normal people wander around at will, sometimes almost randomly, but they are always on the look out for danger.

Sometimes, when a person sees a zombie or a man carrying a gun, they will panic and run for their lives, dashing like mad in the hopes of escaping certain doom. Panicking people don’t see as far but move a lot faster than normal people. Also, sometimes people will panic just because they see other people panicking. This seems kind of like parents freaking out over Elmo toys, even though everyone hates Elmo toys, just because other people are freaking out over Elmo toys.

When a normal person goes to the Armory, the green building, they get a gun and turn green. When a person has a gun, they can kill zombies. Of course the gun has a chance of missing, but for the most part these people seem to be armed with assault rifles or lasers and fire a thousand rounds a minute. Whatever, it makes it more interesting when a gunner mows down a crowd of croaks. Booyah!

The Zombie:
The zombie is the gray guy. It moves slower than a normal person, but when it sees a meaty meal it speeds up a little and runs after them. The zombie can only chase a person a little ways before it gets distracted or falls behind, but it might be enough to spread the infection. The zombie makes another zombie by running into a normal person. Then there are two zombies. When a zombie dies, it turns dark red and is no longer an issue. Also, dead zombies don’t infect normal people (although they should, I just got lazy).

The Conlusion:
You can make your own conclusions, but for those of us who are curious as to why slow moving zombies might be able to infect a city, this little view into a simplistic world of terror might provide some insight. The simulation was based off the ground-breaking work by Kevan and the original can be found here. Thanks Kevan!

Also, if you found this interesting, you might find the rest of this site interesting, where we discuss strategies on how to survive zombie attacks in everyday situations (mostly). Click here to see what I mean.