Humans vs. Zombies is an event that will be coming to Mercer University’s campus from April 7 to 10. Students will take on roles of humans or zombies and will act out the scenario of a zombie “plague.” This is the second annual Humans vs. Zombies event and is put on by the Residence Hall Association (RHA).
Humans vs. Zombies event was hosted last year by the Merterwood Hall Government. Some of the members then went on to create the RHA on campus, who is hosting the event this year. Last year’s event was taken well by participating students and was considered an overwhelming success and RHA decided to repeat the event.
“Humans versus Zombies is a week-long game that focuses on providing a fun method of stress relief to students before finals. Throughout the game, zombies will seek out humans to quench their hunger. Humans in turn will have to defend themselves from zombies using only paper-based materials,” said the public relations contact for the RHA, Leslie Graham. “The game plays out like a giant, more awesome game of freeze tag, where humans can ‘stun’ zombies; but if a human is tagged, they are converted to the zombie ranks.”
During the Humans vs. Zombies event there will be different “battles” between the zombies and surviving humans, activities and organized opportunities for “humans” to create tools that will aid them in the game.
The event starts of with a “Humans Self Defense Workshop.” This is a chance for humans to meet and create tools to help defend themselves against the “zombies” they are trying to avoid.
The next activity is a game of Capture the Flag. “The stakes are high as humans and zombies face off between Cruz Plaza and the Historic Quad. The winning team will be given three power ups that will last for the next 24 hours,” said Graham.
The second to last day will have an event called the “Escort Mission” that is focused around a story about a character named Sasha Zlatojev. “Sasha Zlatojev, the daughter of renown biochemist Susannah Zlatojev, is frantically searching for the cure that her mother invented to defend humans against the zombie plague. Her latest research has indicated that the cure is still somewhere on Mercer’s campus. Join the remaining humans to defend her as she tries to recover her mother’s last works,” said Graham as she describes the story around one of the game’s activity.
On Thursday, the last day of the event, the activity planned is the “Final Battle,” where the game wraps up and the remaining human players try to fight and survive against the zombie players.
“When students register at hvzsource.com/mercerhvz they will automatically be enrolled as a human. Randomly selected humans will become “OZs,” or original zombies, and will be notified before the start of the event,” said Graham.
After students registered they are encouraged to come by the Connell Student Center between March 31 and April 6 to receive the supplies they need to start the game.
Humans vs. Zombies returns to Mercer’s campus
