In case you haven’t heard - there are machines nowadays called computers, and these wondrous devices are used for all manner of things, not the least of which is allowing us to simulate a zombie outbreak on a populated environment.

Call it, preparation, or research or fun! - these flash (and one OpenGL) programs create a virtual city, with little red dots representing virtual human stock - then introduces some green zombie dots to eat and infect them, allowing you to watch the result as the human population steadily declines.

The first simulator we will be looking at is created by Kevan Davis and is called “The Original Zombie Infection Simulator”. As Kevan provided the source code for the simulator - new variant programs have been build by various fans and I’m going to cover the two of these variants, below.

Kevan Davis’s Simulator

In Kevan’s simulator, the NPC’s are split up into Zombies, and Humans.

The zombies - represented by grey dots - lurch around randomly and when they see something moving then they follow it until they get “bored” and start to randomly move around again.

If a Zombie sees a Human standing directly in front of it, that human becomes infected and becomes a Zombie dot.

The Humans, represented by pink dots move faster than the Zombies If they see a zombie, they turn around and panic - where they get to move at double speed.

If a Human sees another panicked Human, they also become panicked.

This is pretty simple behavior and does not really come close to reflecting the real life panic behaviour of humans (most of the time the simulated panicked humans run away from the zombie and the run straight back into it) and the simulator does not offer any way to really play with the simulation,  but, creating a high population city (By holding down “+”) and slowing down the simulation (By pressing “s”) and switching the zombies from Grey to Green (Press “g”) does offer some interesting results - and always ends the same way, everyone turned into zombies except for some unreachable pockets of humanity.

There is a 3D OpenGL version of this simulator built by Alan Gordon available for download here. Its written in C# and the source is provided in the zip.

While at Kevan’s site - you might also want to check out his Massively Multi-Player Web-Based Zombie Apocalypse Game “Urban Dead“

Matt Cordes Simulator

Matt Cordes Simulator is a direct implementation of Kevan’s Simulator source code, but with more complex behaviour.

In Corde’s world:

Zombies do not have a definite chance of turning a Human into a Zombie and instead the human has an ever increasing chance of killing the Zombie! This chance is dependant on the number of human survivors at that time.

Whenever a Human encounters a zombie, they make a flight or fight decision which could lead to them killing the zombie, or panicking and running-away. A panicking human is not able to kill a zombie until they calm back down.

I’m guessing that these new behavioral rules are intended to make the simulation more realistic - and they are definitely a step in the right direction… if you ignore that all the zombies and the humans still run around like headless chickens.

This simulator does not give the user any real insight which Kevan’s simulator did not already give. The simulator also sometimes ends immediately (with a human killing the first generated zombie) which is a little irritating.

Hardcorepawn’s Simulator

This is a fun and interesting variant on Kevan’s original simulator - except this time you get to click on the simulation to drop a random sized nuke on the population!

This is actually quite entertaining and satisfying when you can actually save some humans from being eaten.

Sure, you can only really defeat the undead horde by bombing the hell out of your own kind - but who’s counting?

Unfortunately the “+” button to increase the population is buggy - and sometimes crashes the application.

While at Hardcorepawn’s site you might want to try out one of the two other zombie related games available there.

The Zombie Hunters is a online webcomic created, written and drawn by Jenny Romanchuk and it follows the life of some survivors of the zombie apocalypse - a life which has a lot more entertaining moments than I would have expected.

From its web page description: “The Zombie Hunters” is a comic which follows a team of zombie hunters as they go though life as survivors of the undead outbreak, earning their keep by collecting salvage, gladly trading the freedom of the wastes for the safety of the Argus Research Campus…

And it’s good - really good, professional level good, and free!

Jenny has created a unique world, with a unique spin on the Zombie monster which is very refreshing and entertaining.

The Meat

The character dialogue and responses to the various situations that crop up in this world are written fantastically, and I think realistically. The art is beautiful, dirty and gory and compliments the story perfectly.

The Zombie Hunters takes the undead horde that we all know and love and splits it into several different classes. The most stereotypical zombie class (our buddy from most zombie films) is known as The Crawler but this split has also introduced zombies with interesting twists - such as the Basilisk zombie who paralyzes their victims with a fear gaze and the Mercy Zombie - which… you will need to read the description for yourself.

The Bones

There is currently no way to buy the series off-line and that is very disappointing - I certainly will be buying a copy if she decides to release it in book form.  - (4/4/2009) There is a book in the works!

The webcomic generally updates once a week, and while that is the norm with webcomics and entirely expected when dealing with art of this quality - when the storys characters are stuck in a cliff-hanger situation (say, stuck on a rooftop swarming with zombies) for upwards of three weeks - waiting for the next comic gets exausting and frustrating.

This is not necessary a bone with the comic, as it boils down to me complaining that I can’t read all the comic - right now - but there you go.

The Taste

Click here to start The Zombie Hunters from the start of the comic.

…

Why are you still here?

So, recently, Frog, myself and our control group of friends sat down to watch the 2008 Zombie flick - Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane. This film was described to us as “Like Snakes on a Plane only with Zombies!” so how could we resist?

The parallels between the moves are easy to see, especially since this movie is intended to be a parody, but it also manages to shine brightly with very memorable scenes, characters and plenty of brilliant, outrageous dark humour.

The Meat

Now, If I am going to be completely honest, I did not expect to enjoy this film. I expected this film to be another generic terrible Hollywood spoof/comedy genre movie, and with parody contenders such as the million Scary Movie movies - can you really blame me?

I was very surprised when I not only enjoyed the hell out of the film, but our control group of friends (who think zombies are ok, but don’t get fanatical about it like Frog and myself) enjoyed the hell out of it as well.

The Zombies are the yelling fast type which is so popular nowadays, and even saying that the zombies are depicted in their full gory, woundy and missing limby self very realistically is a mute point with the current level of skill in movie computer graphics technology - It’s still wonderful to see a zombie with its legs missing moving along using just it’s arms as feet, and its entrails dragging on the floor behind it.

And while the computer graphics portion of the movie is top-knotch, the fact that the make-up department could use some funding - actually adds a certain charm to the movie, with its over-the-top facial wounds and dark eye-shadowed zombies.

The Bones

It’s hard to pick apart a film like this, as you are unsure which parts are parody and which parts are just bad writing. For instance - is the plane supposed to be of infinite length? Is that some sort of clever joke that I just don’t get?

However, confusion aside, the film is very hard to get though at points - as seems to swing wildly from parody to serious horror leaving you a little jarred.

Plus you feel bad when you laugh at the dead nun zombie.

The Taste

Since I loved this movie, I suggest you see it and stick it out until the end, its well worth it - definitely a diamond in the rough of zombie films.