Guidelines for Z
Although Z is set during the zombie apocalypse, it is essentially about people and their struggles to survive.
In this world, we’re writing to other survivors like ourselves. We presume our readers have all had firsthand experiences with the living dead and know as much about them as we do. There are exceptions to this, however. E.g. your character might be military and leak classified information about the results of testing being done on the living dead. You may have gone insane and relate the ramblings of a madwoman. The more diversified the perspectives of the survivors the better.
The living dead are carnivores. They eat warm bloods, human and animal. Only humans become zombies. They cease their feasting at the moment the(human) victim dies.
Physically, they’re your garden variety George Romero zombies. However, they do not rise from the grave. A person must be infected while alive in order to return as a zombie.
The zombie infection is transmitted through the mouth so it’s primarily the zombie bite you and the other survivors are most concerned about. Zombies can carry other diseases, such as cholera, so any contact is unwise.
The living dead smell as bad as they look, that is to say they smell like what they are, rotting meat.
Zombies are breeding grounds for flies and disease.
Ways to kill a zombie or put them out of commission: electrocution, cremation, decapitation, lock them inside a room or car––actually, just close the door, no need for the lock––collapse any fair size building on them, most any high powered explosive device will do the trick, and of course there's old reliable, the large caliber bullet to the brain. Any variation on these techniques is acceptable. Nothing new here, destroy the brain; destroy the zombie.
Z history
The zombie agent(as yet unknown) went through three stages of evolution.
The first stage is unclear though one theory is that it’s the result of a parasitic fungus. Stage one lasted for many months and was responsible for a rash of cannibalism acts. These atrocities were blamed on designer drugs like Bath Salts.
It’s believed stage two began with a resident of Moulder, Arizona. This person apparently contracted the stage two agent in Florida and spread it through physical contact at three connecting airports on her way home to Arizona. From the airports, the agent rapidly spread across the nation and the rest of the world. Those infected died within forty-eight hours and rose as the living dead, the third and final stage. It’s thought that the stage two agent died out after three days. By then, it didn’t matter. The apocalypse was in full bloom.
Except from Oct 31st post, "Who Goes There?":
The CDC estimated one out of five hundred people were immune to the stage two plague. Out of six billion people, that would leave about twelve million humans. That’s twelve million against six billion living dead. Out of the twelve, how many survived the stage three zombie onslaught? A third? A quarter? Even if half of us have survived this long, the number is staggeringly low, and I can’t imagine the military has not suffered a similar reduction. With such diminished numbers, I simply don’t see how they could maintain civilian utilities and services across the nation––even without the zombie menace to hinder them.
Hopefully I’ve set the stage for you to have fun creating your own survivor/survivors accounts of the end of the world. There are surprises planned for further down the road. Help spring therm with me.
Please email your submissions to: z@zworldnewz.com
Questions and comments may be posted here. For private correspondence, contact me at: z@zworldnewz.com
Primary Z website: http://zworldnewz.com/
