Tag Archives: zombee

Gainesville Police Department uses zombies to warn against theft

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Posted: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 1:14 am
Chris Alcantara, Alligator Contributing Writer
http://www.alligator.org/news/local/article_9105e726-5c53-11e1-b20d-001871e3ce6c.html

The Gainesville Police Department wants students to be prepared when the walking dead strike.

The GPD Crime Prevention Unit aired the first episode of its Zombie Campaign series Saturday on Police Beat, a GPD television show.

The video features Mikel Mazlaghani, a GPD officer, as he arrests zombies for stealing a bicycle, snatching a stereo out of a home and lifting a student’s backpack from her car.

The campaign was designed to inform college students about the threat of burglary if cars, homes and bicycles are left unlocked, but with a pop culture twist, said GPD Lt. Art Adkins.

Adkins said 50 percent of vehicle burglaries that occurred in the first week of February in Gainesville happened because cars were left unlocked.

To raise awareness of burglary in the city, Adkins said Mazlaghani came up with the idea of sending out a crime prevention message through the use of a Hollywood icon: the zombie.

Ernest Graham, a GPD crime prevention officer, said the Zombie Campaign is a way to reach the student population.

“You take something serious, like property crime, and put a fun twist on it, like zombies, and that makes it entertaining,” he said.

Property crimes are, a majority of the time, a crime of opportunity, she added.

Chas Reynolds, a 19-year-old chemical engineering freshman, was a victim of burglary in October when someone broke into his car and stole his iPod, a friend’s iPhone, four credit cards and $100 in cash.

Reynolds said he thinks the Zombie Campaign will help prevent burglaries throughout the city.

However, Brian Ware, a 20-year-old information systems and operations management sophomore, does not see the new campaign in the same light as the department.

“I think the use of zombies is a little childish,” he said. “Theft is a serious crime and should be treated as such, especially in raising awareness.”

Zombies invade Rhodes campus, South Africa

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Zombies invade Rhodes campus, South Africa
21 February 2012
DAVID MACGREGOR
http://www.dispatch.co.za/news/article/2922

ZOMBIE fever gripped Grahamstown yesterday as hundreds of paranoid Rhodes University students fought running campus battles with “the living dead”.

More than 350 students – and even a  history lecturer – signed up this week  to take part in the four-day Humans vs  Zombies (HvZ) bloodfest that has fast  become a global phenomenon since  launched in America 15 years ago.

Held in South Africa for the first  time late last year when the Rhodes  University Gaming Society dug deep  in their pockets to host the Zombie  Apocalypse, this time round HvZ has  been given the thumbs up by campus  management – who even sponsored  the event as part of their Live Smart  Week.

Larissa Klazinga, student services  officer in the dean of students’ office,  yesterday said the focus of Live Smart  was student wellness.

“We hope teaming up with a diverse  group of roleplayers to host unorthodox events like HvZ on the one hand  and traditional sporting events like  athletics on the other will ensure that  for this week at least, students spend  less time in bars and more time enjoying themselves without drinking  excessively.”

Described as a “massive game of tag  (catchers)”, Klazinga said besides encouraging newcomers to make friends  with “returners”, HvZ also attracted  those who were more at home in front  of a computer than running around  outdoors .

According to former GameSoc chair  Monique Mulholland – who got the  HvZ concept going at Rhodes last year  – new technologies played a huge part  in keeping “humans” informed of the  whereabouts of the ever increasing  hordes of “zombies” who stalked the  campus.

“New media plays a big role.”

Besides shouting verbal warnings  to each other, players also use Facebook and Blackberry Messaging  (BBM) to try and outwit and outlast  the opposition.

Starting with one randomly picked  secret “original zombie” – who is given a purple bandanna to wear on one  arm just like the humans for the first  few hours of the game – the aim is to  tag as many humans as possible before all the zombies are forced to wear  the bandana around their heads to tell  them apart from their living enemies.

The only way for humans to keep  the zombies at bay is to throw “anti- undead projectiles (AUPs)” – clean,  rolled up pairs of socks – at them to  stun the undead for 15 minutes, while  the only way for zombies to notch up a  kill is to tag touch their human prey.

At least one tag must be recorded  every 48 hours on the GameSoc website or the zombie dies of starvation.

Dressed from head to toe in a custom made camo ninja outfit , star HvZ  player Matthew “the chain soldier”  Funcke, 23, said people who knew  nothing about the game got nervous  when they spotted him skulking  around the campus bushes.

“I also get a fair amount of mockery,” the computer science honours  student admitted – before adding he  even attended lectures in his camo  fatigues and resorted to using a night  vision monocular as he lurked in the  shadows at night dodging zombies.

Areas like buildings are off limits  and hordes of zombies are known to  lay siege to canteens and lecture halls  waiting for human victims.

Veteran GameSoc member Will  Walters said the idea of HvZ was to try  to break away from the clich�d idea of  gamers being stuck in “caverns” behind computers doing nothing.

He said the best way for humans to  survive the zombie onslaught was to  adopt a herd mentality.