Wednesday, October 28, 2009

How To Make Your Very Own Zombie

If horror movies have taught us anything (oh, and they really have), it's surely that Zombies can occur anywhere, anytime, for any conceivable reason. Like the recently re-born (har har) Vampire craze, the screen's love of a good Zombie movie has faltered very little from its early days of the classic Romero 'Dead' series. Oh sure, they've tossed in hyperactivity (Zack Snyder's ode-de-Romero), selective intelligence (Romero himself with his calculating lot from 'Land'), and even small cases of obedience (Fido), but the basic blueprint remains relatively unchanged: re-animated dead person (or damn near dead) shuffling the countryside killing the living. But how would one, say, in any given circumstance (see: want), create a Zombie for one's self? Well, luck for you, there are numerous and varied ways a person can have a member of the living dead working for him or her. Let's explore, shall we?

Create a Virus

How hard could this be, really? There are millions of virus strains floating around at any given time, so, hire a professional and have him or her get to work! Many of the hundreds of Zombie films have given us a great deal to go on with this plan, so let's turn our attention to a few. First of all, the classic Video Game-turn-Film Franchise, Resident Evil. As it turns out, each and every viral mutation in this collection of media all started with the very basic, Progenitor Virus. Yes, sir. Thanks to this bad boy and its tragic mishandling, hordes of the dead have become a blight to Raccoon City and the surrounding areas. Nice job, science guys! Or, what about the Rage Virus? Yep, straight from 28 Days Later (and 28 Weeks, as well as the 2011 release of 28 Months) we now know that you don't even have to be dead yet to be turned into something eerily similar to a Zombie. And these bastards are quick! With a body full of the Rage Virus you get the convenience of being alive (for a while) and still hungering for humanity! Go viruses!

Toxic Substances

Ask around, it's not too difficult to locate a surplus of toxic waste. If it's another fact we've gleaned from film it's that enormous barrels of oozing and deadly toxic liquid are pretty much strewn around willy nilly. And this is the stuff you really want to get your hands on to create some exceptionally nasty Zombies. Remember the hazardous chemicals that gave us not only the basis for Return of the Living Dead, but also the great a wonderfully creepy Tar Man? Yeah, that stuff was called 2-4-5 Trioxin and it was not screwing around. Those Zombies were just plain mean! Perhaps you'd prefer a nameless substance to keep your dirty, dirty fingerprints off the plethora or paperwork. Oh, we've got you covered there, too! In Dead Air, the Zombie masses are brought to life by a wicked Toxic Viral Gas (nasty) and in C.H.U.D., those subterranean freaks were mutated (in surprisingly similar to TMNT fashion) by Toxic Waste dumped into sewers. So, get your hands on some 50-gallon drums of this shit, and the living dead will beat a path to your door. Literally!

Military Weaponry

When it comes to creating some of the nastiest substances around for the soul purpose of mass destruction, it's hard to look much further than the Military. For years, chemical weapons have served history's desire of eradicating the opposition all in the name of Natural Selection (see: War). Agent Orange, Mustard Gas, you name it: if it could be stored in a facility and eventually dropped or sprayed all over an unsuspecting population, the Military made it. But few have been so wantonly destructive as DC2, the wicked chem's from Planet Terror. Not only did this stuff make you a card-carrying member of the walking deceased, but it rendered your poor body lousy with boils and pustules. Awesome. Or, strangely, if you happen to be a pilot in a crippled fighter plane on a broken runway and you're suddenly hit by a Loc-Nar training plane full of… something, you, too can have a mess of re-animated dead soldiers on your hands just like in the B-17 episode of Heavy Metal. Yay, Military!

Human Diseases

A bit like viruses, but more along the lines of being 'food borne', this particular way of getting yourself your own Zombie is spread by disease. In the new mega-hit, Zombieland, the general populous of earth has been infected by a mutated version of Human Mad-Cow disease turning them into blood thirsty, brain hungry living dead. As always, there are always small pockets where, evidently, people are safe from the disease, but they're never all they're hyped up to be. Oh, and if you caught this past Sunday's Simpson's Tree House of Horror XX, Springfield gets turned by bad diseased meat from Krusty Burgers. So you see, a disease is really a great way to go to infect a ton of people. Get some today!