During the first week of September, the Religious Life Community put on a campus wide game of Humans vs. Zombies—and the humans made it out alive.

Over the week, students and faculty participated in the game. Professors Proctor and Magalhaes participated and ended up tagging several students themselves.

The game started with a single student in character as the original zombie, who in turn tried to turn all of the humans into zombies in order to win the game.

Sophomore M Leonard was the original zombie, and he said the experience was fun—especially the first 24 hours when he could blend in with the humans by wearing his bandana on his wrist.

“I enjoyed the period of stealth mode most because I was able to sneak up on other players instead of having to chase them,” Leonard said. “I also felt a lot of pressure to tag as many people as possible in the first 24 hours to get the game going.”

He said keeping his identity as the original zombie a secret that day was challenging because more people kept seeing him tag others.

The humans warded off zombies by throwing socks at the zombies to stun them for 15 minutes. Zombies were unable to tag humans during that time.

Everyone participating in the event wore a bandana: The humans wore theirs around their arms, while zombies wore them around their head. If a zombie was stunned, they switched their bandana to around their neck.

Lewis Cox, the event’s organizer, said, “We were hoping for around 50 students, but we ended up getting around 160 students to sign up.”

The humans managed to get an advantage—a nerf blaster— in the final event by collecting several bandanas that were hidden around campus and in Smith Chapel.

However, the zombies got an advantage, too. By checking in at the chapel before the event started, they received stun immunity for 10 of the 30 minutes during the final event.

The final event of the game was a helicopter escape where the campus was deemed too dangerous to stay.

Therefore, the humans were forced to evacuate in the helicopter, which was in reality a yellow school bus. In order for the humans to win, at least one human needed to keep their hand on the bus for 30 seconds.

Fortunately for them, the humans survived the zombie apocalypse and lived to tell the tale.