ZOMBIES: THE BASICS

As many of you know, the word zombies begins with a Z which is the last letter of the alphabet and though some of you may find it too radical a step to cope with at this stage of your training I am going to cover ‘the Z word’ first as I feel it’s important we all know what we’re dealing with. 

There is certain knowledge that I will take for granted during the book as I assume you are all aware of the basics of Zombie Mythology. For those who aren’t, here’s a brief introduction:

1) A Zombie is dead!

In recent films and in the media (28 Days Later and Left 4 Dead) zombies have been portrayed as humans who have become infected with some form of virus that has made them crave human flesh and become a bit grumpy. These are not zombies. These are people who want to eat other live human beings and are more commonly referred to as cannibals (and this is not the Dictionary of Cannibal Survival – that book will be available soon). The only zombies being dealt with in these pages are those that have been previously human, became infected, died and reanimated again.

2) A Zombie bite is infectious.

There are various ways in which a human can become a zombie (see Classification) but we do know one thing for sure. If you are bitten by a zombie you will die and rise again as a zombie yourself. Zombies attack with their mouths and this has given rise to the misconception that they are trying to ‘eat’ you. As the zombies’ digestive system is no longer operational it is highly unlikely that this is the case. The instinct to bite is merely the virus’s way of spreading and increasing the zombie masses.

3) Zombies can only be ‘killed’ by destroying the brain.

A zombie’s Achilles heel is not its heel but its brain and the only way to destroy a zombie is to destroy its brain. As all other bodily functions and systems shut down on death, the only thing that keeps the zombie going is its brain. This means that zombies are impervious to pain so will keep coming until you achieve a head shot (the reason you go for a head shot is that the brain is kept in the head – that’s the round thing on your neck with hair on top and a face on the front). This is why your choice of weapon is important – but more of that later.

4) There is no cure.

There is no cure for a zombie infection. Once you are bitten, you become a zombie. So stop thinking there is a cure because there isn’t. Even if there is it’s important that you think there isn’t. Because thinking there’s a cure will give you hope, and hope will make you weak, and weakness will make you lose, and losing mean you die, and dying means you rise, and rising means you become a zombie – for which there is no cure. So stop thinking there’s a cure because that will give you hope and hope will make you weak and… You get the message.

Those are the basics of zombies and that is all you need to know so far. Don’t worry about why the dead have started to rise or indeed how the dead have started to rise. Once they rise it does become somewhat of a moot point. Your only concern once the apocalypse begins is to survive – not to question the whole affair.

Remember, the zombies won’t be bothered why it happened – they’ll just be focused on biting you. You need to focus too. On living.

Let us continue…