The Zombie Survival Guide Rules

[Akari Tsuki]

I'm going to post these to possibly help people with their RP! Add more if you think they're good.

Each of these rules will have further details added to them every week. One rule a week will be filled in until the list is complete. Happy hunting!

1. Organize before they rise!

2. They feel no fear, why should you?

3. Use your head: cut off theirs

4. Blades don't need reloading

5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair

6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it

7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike

8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!

9. No place is safe, only safer

10. The zombie may be gone but the threat lives on  

[Akari Tsuki]

1. Organize before they rise!

Every undead outbreak, regardless of its class, has a beginning. Now that the enemy has been defined, the next step is early warning. Knowing what a zombie is will not help if you are unable to recognize an outbreak before it's too late. This does not entail building a "zombie command post" in your basement, sticking pins in a map, and huddling around the shortwave radio. All it requires is looking for signs that would slip by the untrained mind. These signs include:

1. Homicides in which the victims were executed by head shots or decapitation. It has happened many times: People recognize an outbreak for what it is and try to take matters into their own hands. Almost always, these people are declared murderers by the local authorities and prosecuted as such.

2. Missing persons, particularely in wilderness or ununhabited areas. Pay careful attention if one or more of the search members end up missing. If the story is televised or photographed, watch to see what level of armament the search parties carry. Any more than one rifle per group could mean that this is more than just a simple rescue operation.

3. Cases of "violent insanity" in which the subject attacked friends or family without the use of weapons. Find out if the attacker bit or tried to bite his victims. If so, are any of the victims still in the hospital? Try to discover if any of these victims mysteriously died within days of their bite.

4. Riots or other civil disturbances that began without provocation or other logical cause. Common sense will dictate that violence on any group level does not simply occur without a catalyst such as racial tension, political actions, or legal decisions. Even so-called "mass hysteria" can always be traced to a root source. If none can be found, the answer may lie elsewhere.

5. Disease-based deaths in which either the cause is undetermined or seems highly suspect. Deaths from infectious diseaseare rare in the industrialized world, compared to a century ago. For this reason, new outbreaks always make the news. Look for those cases in which the exact nature of the disease is unexplained. Also, be on the alert for suspicious explanations such as West Nile virus or "mad cow" disease. Either could be examples of a cover-up.

6. Any of the above in which media coverage was forbidden. A total press blackout is rare in the United States. The occurence of one should be regarded as an immediate red flag. Of course, there may be many reasons other than an attack of the living dead. Then again, any event causing a government as media-concious as our own to clamp down merits close attention. The truth, no matter what it is, cannot be good.

Once an event has tripped your sensors, keep track of it. Note the location, and its distance from you. Watch for similar incidents around or near the original site. If, within a few days or weeks, these incidents do occur, study them carefully. Note the response of law enforcement and other government agencies. If they react more forcefully with each occurence, chances are that an outbreak is unfolding.

(All rights reserved to Max Brooks and Three Rivers Press publishing company.)  

[Akari Tsuki]

2. They feel no fear, why should you?

A. Intelligence
It has been proven, time and again, that our greatest advantage over the undead is our ability to think. The mental capacity of the average zombie ranks somewhere beneath that of an insect. On no occasion have they shown any ability to reason or employ logic. Attempting to accomplish a ask, failing, then by trial and error discovering a new solution, is a skill shared by many members of the animal kingdom but lost on the walking dead. Zombies have repeatedly failed laboratory intelligence tests set at the level of rodents. One field case showed a human standing at one end of a collapsed bridge with several dozen zombies on the other side. One by one, the walking dead tumbled over the edge in a futile attempt to reach him. At no time did any of them realize what was happening and change their tactics in any way. Contrary to myth and speculation, zombies have never been observed using tools of any kind. Even picking up a rock to use as a weapon is beyond their grasp. This simple task would prove the basic thought process involved in realizing that the rock is a more effiecient weapon than the naked hand. Ironically, the age of artificial intelligence has enabled us to idenitfy more easily with the mind of the zombie than that of our more "primitive" ancestors. With rare exceptions, even the most advanced computers do not have the ability to think on their own. They do what they are programmed to do, nothing more. Imagine a computer programmed to execute one funcion. This function cannot be paused, modified, or erased. No new data can be stored. No new commands can be installed. This computer will perform that one function, over and over, until its power source eventually shuts down. This is the zombie brain. An instinct-driven, unitask machine that is impervious to tampering and can only be destroyed.

B. Emotions
Feelings of any kind are not known to the walking dead. Every form os psychological warfare, from attempted at enraging the undead to provoking pity have all met with disaster. Joy, sadness, confidence, anxiety, love, hatred, fear - all of these feelings and thousands more that make up the human "heart" are as useless to the living dead as the organ of the same name. Who knows if this is humanity;s greatest weakness or strength? The debate continues, and probably will forever.

(All rights reserved to Max Brooks and Three Rivers Press publishing company.)