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Hello survivors, while I gather information for a series of reports on different locations across Canada (and two special locations outside of Canada) I have been tardy in my daily posting. I would like to share with you however, thanks to my favorite zombie forum two link to books you may enjoy.

The_Zombie_Survival_Guide_Download_Instructions.txt

How_To_Survive_Zombies_Download_Instructions.txt

I will be providing in depth studies of the survival advice and tactics provided in both of these books. So you may want to read them to have reference to what I'm saying or you may want to read my notes first before cementing any ideas in your mind. The advice in Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide will get many potential survivors killed. However some of the advice and information presented is quite useful.

Now and then I also like to play games. I believe they are a fundamental part of surviving in the world before or after the fall in order to keep sanity. To that end it is important to have a deck of cards or some dice in your survival kit and know a few games to play with them. Either on your own or if you run into others.

Here are a few online games I enjoy:

Zombie Lane
It's fun and easy and takes a long time. The routine of re-establishing one's house and family is an important one as is the regular upkeep of barricades, farming and slaying of zombies. All of these things the game instills while being light hearted and simple.

Zombie Slayer
A game a kin to Mafia Wars or any of those. Simply building a group of friends and killing zombies and zombie bosses around the world by clicking them to death.

Pandemic
Not necessarily a zombie game but this game does a surprisingly good job of depicting how a virus might spread. Through water and airports, infecting the entire world in a matter of days. Often wiping out entire countries before they have a chance to even start work on a cure.

Infectonator
This is a fun strategy game of sorts where you infect and destroy the world one city at a time. While the "game" aspects of it make everything more game-like and less real, some interesting parallels to real life can be made. Watching how the zombies naturally group together where there are more people. The people who hold up in a corner seem to last the longest but if they stay there too long they get over whelmed. The faster police and military are on the scene and recognize the threat the better chance of keeping the outbreak contained. The patterns of both the humans and zombies in this game can be watched and obvious mistakes leading to death or smart tactics leading to a single person surviving the horde can be observed.


Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.

Space Zombies part 6

In the future mankind has finally come to peace with itself, now being called the Alliance. Many other alien races have been found and they all have a sort of co-existence that is led by a counsel of representatives from the most influential races. However all cannot remain peaceful forever. A robot race known as Geth wage war on all bio-organic life, led by God-machines known as Reavers. This is the world of Mass Effect.

The Geth use a particularly nasty weapon against the organic species: their own dead. The Geth capture creatures and impale them on large alien spikes dubbed "Dragon's Teeth" due to the Dragon's Teeth Jason sows in the ground to produce skeletons. These Dragon's Teeth are Reaver technology which converts all the organic material in the body to cybernetic material. The body is then reanimated with an electric charge and set loose to kill all organic life.

The husks have no intelligence, no fear, no emotion of any kind unless counting the look of frozen pain and horror on the face of the person they once were. They cannot use weapons that are not built into their bodies, husks created from different races have different abilities but all have the same simple minded, single goal, destruction of the nearest living creature.

Any attempts to domesticate or revive husks has ended in horrific failure and lose of life.
Cause: Alien Technology
Undead: Yes
Body: Humanoid (augmented)
Freewill: No
Infectious: No
Fear: No

Well survivor I present to you another true space zombie. The husks are mindless killers with no intelligence or motives. As a bonus they are even undead, although a futuristic version of such. They only thing that could make these sad creatures more zombie-like is if they were infectious. And as Mass Effect shows zombies in the future pose a similar threat as they do now. Little to none if encountered in small numbers but potentially the biggest threat of all if faced in overwhelming numbers.

Stay vigilant, may the indoctrination never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.

Space Zombies part 4

Now this space creature is a little closer to home. In the setting of one of the most iconic enemies in video games. Half-life, in the near future mankind of experimenting with alien technology and well, all goes wrong. Enter the aliens and the aliens food, the headcrabs.

The headcrabs are a small parasite, roughly the size of a pumpkin which is all mouth and legs. It latches onto a host and starts to mutate it. Causing the host to grow a large mouth and claws itself. And then to search out food. Oddly enough for such an iconic character in such an important game to the industry there isn't a lot on the way headcrabs work. What is known is that they do not kill the infected host and thus must feed so both the host and headcrab can continue to survive in this strange relationship. A rather inefficent process compared to many other parasites. The headcrabs take control of the body while leaving the host's mind conscious and in control of unimportant functions such as speach. This may be a strategy of the headcrab to induce fear in further victims but sinse the headcrabs show no other signs of higher intelligence (even in their methods of attacking, using claws to beat instead of stab or tear) I feel safe in assuming this is not the case.

Cause: Parasite
Undead: No
Body: Humanoid (mutated)
Freewill: Somewhat
Infecious: No
Fear: No

While Half-Life was called by many people one of the scariest games ever I am glad and slightly disturbed to say headcrabs are infact nothing like a zombie besides being a parasite. Infact the biggest difference and the part that would make them scary were they real is the fact the human infected is still alive. Which also thus makes Gordon a murderer of countless innocents in addition to unleaching the alien hordes on humanity.
Stay vigilant, may the necrotics never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.

Space Zombies part 3

Now here is a setting that needs no introduction but for the people who haven't been around for the last ten years and at risk of upsetting the elitists I will offer one. Humanity has expanded, colonies stretching across the galaxy, nothing stands in our way. Except for the Covenant, an alliance of alien species unhappy with humans continued growth and virus-like expansion. Also the fact humanity itself grows too large and hates being controlled so the colonies verge on civil war. Thus a new kind of soldier is made, a race of super soldiers called Spartans is engineered from young children to face the threats against humanity both from without and from within. Wars have come and gone, eventually mankind has been reduced to much less then it once was and only a single Spartan remains. And if things weren't bad enough suddenly a new menace resurfaces. A parasite that once wiped the galaxy of all life, was contained and has now found new hosts a plenty in the wake of the human/Covenant war.

This is the setting of the Halo universe. Very science fictiony and super-hero, standard first-person shooter fair really. Until suddenly The Flood arrive; a race of parasites from another galaxy which were treated as a virus instead of as an enemy in a war and thus they grew to destroy most of our galaxy. The parasite attaches to the body of a dead, sentient creature and reanimates and mutates the body into a killing machine. With the sole purpose of killing more to create more corpses for other Flood to infect. Called Inferi redivivus (the dead incarnate in Latin, a name also given to vampires in other lore) the Flood works by reanimating dead hosts.

The Flood take the memories and intelligence of the creature they infected and assimilate it into itself and eventually the Gravemind, a powerful being which simultaneously controls all of the Flood in the area it has access to. The Flood use combat tactics, weapons and stratiges, becoming ever more dangerous as they infect more intelligent beings.

The Flood can infect a living being by connecting directly into the nervous system via tentacles all of the combat forms develop. It is possible to be immune to the Flood or to cure someone who has been infected but not yet killed. ORION genetically altered soldiers are immune as well as it is possible to kill the infection with electric charges without harming the host.

The Flood are an extremely complex race from another galaxy which has evolved at incredible speeds and continues to evolve to survive in whatever circumstances it is in or to assimilate whatever species it can find. The Flood can also reproduce among themselves but this is viewed as a last ditch effort if all other avenues of infecting fresh hosts are gone.

Cause: Parasite
Undead: Yes
Body: Humanoid (mutated)
Freewill: Yes
Infectious: Yes (tentacles)
Fear: No

Flood while at first glance appear to be standard zombie fair are in fact very far from being zombies it would seem. While a parasite they are extremely intelligent, causing the first major reason they are not zombies. Add in the way infection works and the fact it can be cured are nothing like a zombie virus. Not to mention being able to reproduce without new hosts to infect. All in all a terrifying enemy but not a zombie horde as much as it may feel like one running through dark tunnels gunning them down in scores.

Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.