Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary

by Dr Dale Seslick

  Medium range

  These are non-propulsion weapons that will cause damage to your victim up to a range of between 3 and 6 feet, including gems such as scythes, spears, big pointy sticks, whips, lengths of chain, fishing rods, coat stands and standard lamps.

  They are generally useless once your attacker gets too close, purely due to the length and the manoeuvrability. However, with quick thinking these can be broken down or grasped further down the shaft in order to cope with closer attacks.

  Melee

  Close combat weapons. Although allowing a member of the undead to get too close to you is inadvisable due to the risk of infection it is always handy to keep a melee weapon on you. A melee weapon will generally fit in your pocket or on your belt and is effective at short-range strikes (e.g. katana, kitchen knife, hammer, rock, candle-stick or lead piping).

  Stabbing

  The stabbing weapon has a point and is able to puncture. The point does not have to be metal and it could be glass, wood or even plastic whittled to a point. The focus of choosing a good stabbing weapon is whether the point will be able to penetrate a skull. It is all well and good choosing an item with a weak blade and planning to go through the eye socket or ear, but what if you miss? You may only get one chance at this.

  Bludgeoning

  The easiest weapon to find, as all you do is hold it in your hand and strike down on the zombie’s head. As with the stabbing weapons, the focus with this weapon is whether the striking force would be strong enough to crush a zombie’s head in one blow. A stuffed womble can be used as a bludgeoning weapon, but it may take one or two strikes in order to break through the skull and destroy the brain.

  Live

  Animals can be used as weapons, but remember when sending a dog to attack a zombie that the zombie will probably eat the dog. More effective live weapons are pools of piranhas and those beetles that they use in CSI and Bones to strip corpses of dead flesh. If a zombie fell into a pit of those it would be stripped bare in a day and will no longer be a threat (just don’t fall in yourself). You can also class throwing your little sister at a zombie as both a long-range and live weapon.

  Damage

  Damage weapons will not be capable of doing the job of destroying a zombie’s brain, but may slow the zombie down in order to facilitate your own escape. Explosives fall into this category (see Explosives) along with any weapon that may decapitate or remove limbs from the zombie but not kill it. A huge bag of stuffed wombles dropped on the zombie thus burying him would also be classed as a damage weapon as it will slow him down leaving you time to escape.

  Slow-acting

  Weapons that will kill a zombie, but not immediately. You will need to be at a safe distance or have a quick escape route planned in order to use these weapons. Corrosive acid burning through a skull takes time but will ultimately do the job. Although fire is a hazardous option for you to use as a weapon (see Fire) it will eventually burn a zombie away to nothing so is therefore very useful.

  Pointless weapons

  Although it is possible to use absolutely anything as a weapon, sometimes it does take time to come up with a reasonable plan to turn the items in your possession into zombie killing mechanisms. Bearing that in mind, there’s no need for you to carry a box of confetti and a bottle of Ribena with you just because I told you that anything can be used as a weapon. It is much better to arm yourself sensibly in the first instance and only become inventive when the need really arises. Then you can make your confetti-Ribena killing machine – can’t think how, although I bet the A-Team could. Or MacGyver.

  WEATHER

  You put on a coat and take an umbrella when it rains. You wear shades and shorts when it’s hot. You put on a scarf and mittens when it’s cold. Currently, the only way most of us are affected by the weather is by planning our daily wardrobe around what mother nature throws at us. Trust me, though, when the apocalypse takes hold the weather will help and hinder you in equal measure and it will become much more than a topic for small talk with the cashier when you’re buying your egg and cress sandwich on your lunch break. Consider the following:

  Rain

  Most of us see rain as a bit annoying. It gets us wet and makes leaving the house an unpleasant experience. However, in a zombie apocalypse, our perception of the weather is likely to be flipped on its head.

  Rain will have many plus points. First, it is water and it is falling from the sky. Water will be in short supply. The mains supply may have become compromised, you’ll have scavenged every bottle of Evian from the local stores and drinking your own urine is will have become repetitive. So, when it starts to rain, simply place a few buckets on your roof and you will have all the supplies you need.

  Rain will also have a cleansing effect on the area around you. Bloodstained streets will be washed clean and chunks of rotting flesh will flow down the gutter, helping to remove things that may cause disease and smell.

  From an aesthetic point of view, rain will also clean up any zombies that are caught outside in it. Removing dirt and congealed blood making them easier on the eye and less terrifying to look at.

  Rain will also help things grow should you be trying to cultivate your own foodstuff in a safe area of your sanctuary.

  Do be aware that rain isn’t always a good thing, though. As basic drainage systems degrade due to lack of upkeep, flooding will become more likely. This may compromise any areas that you inhabit on ground floors or below (see Underground) but as long as you keep high and your building is strong enough to withstand a flood, you should be safe.

  Heat

  As I said, our perception will be flipped on its head and intense sun and heat will no longer be something we look forward to.

  Prepare o dread those hot summer days – ice-cream and building sandcastles will be a thing of the past. Long periods of heat will cause drought and will mean that you will find water supplies harder to come by. Heat will also cause lethargy and exhaustion in your team members, especially if there is a low supply of water. High temperatures will aid in the rotting process, and although this will speed up the demise of our undead friends, it will also increase the smell of rotting meat and increase the amount of disease-spreading insects which will be buzzing around.

  The only good thing about the sun is that you will get a lovely tan, which will stop you being mistaken for a member of the undead by other survivors.

  Cold

  In extreme cold temperatures, zombies will freeze. This does not mean that they will ‘die’. It means they will freeze solid and then reanimate again once they have thawed. The unfortunate thing about this is that you will also freeze in extremely low temperatures and you are unlikely to carry on as normal once you have thawed out – because the extreme cold will have killed you. In cold weather it is best to stay within your safe house and attempt to keep warm until the temperature heats up as cold weather can slow down a person’s response time and, like heat, induce lethargy.

  Snow will also be a problem. Zombies will become buried in snow banks meaning that you have to be extra careful when making what would normally be a simple walk down the road as you don’t know what could be concealed beneath the blanket of snow. If snow can be collected, though, it can be melted down to increase your supply of water.

  Fog

  Do you really think it’s a good idea to go wandering out into thick, pea-soup fog when there’s an apocalypse on? Do you not watch horror movies? Or any movies for that matter? Fog isn’t good. It holds all kinds of scaries. Including, but not limited to, zombies. That you can’t see. Because of the fog!

  Extreme weather

  With a big red X as warranted by the cable TV show title. Typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, force ten gales; all these extreme weather conditions are generally associated with certain places on the planet. Surely it would be sensible then, should a zombie apocalypse occur, to move out of an area that is likely to have a typhoon season or is regularly battered by hurricanes. I know that it might be home. But
what are you trying to prove? You just have to survive. You don’t REALLY have to survive. No one’s going to be impressed if you survived the zombie apocalypse AND a tornado. It’s not a competition. Hey! Once you’ve got through the tornado why not move to San Francisco and see if you can survive an earthquake too! And there’s an active volcano in Skamania County. Then you could go to space and see if you could get through a supernova. In fact, once you do, why don’t you just stay there, eh?

  WILDCRAFTING

  What was once the simple art of foraging in the wild for edible plants has now become a minefield of ethical and ecological legislation and laws that could land you in more trouble than eating the wrong kind of mushroom. You would imagine that all of these laws about preventing the extinction of certain species, retargeting what you sow and ensuring sustainability will become null and void whence the dead do rise and begin eating us, but you can guarantee – irrespective of the calamity to hit earth – there will always be some bleeding heart tree- hugger knocking about spouting on about the error of our ways, the raping of the planet and how we must leave this earth the way we would want our children to find it. I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a suggestion should you come across one of these jolly sorts on your travels, hit them with a shovel.

  As it stands, I completely believe that the human race is doing a damn fine job of buggering up the planet what with its continual urbanisation, pollution, global warming and sucking the land dry of all its natural resources whilst giving little or no regard to any other living creature in the process.

  In fact, I can state with pretty much 100% certainty that mankind will in no small way be to blame for the rising of the dead due to one or all of the reasons listed above. I also think that these people who I previously referred to as ‘bleeding heart tree-huggers’ have a very valid point to make (which would be made more effectively by them if they shaved occasionally, washed once or twice and didn’t wear hessian all the time) and god bless them for trying to get us all to come to our senses about the mess we’re making of this planet we call home. But, once the apocalypse begins I’m afraid that it’s every man for himself and sod the humble dandelion.

  The tree-huggers’ aim is to prevent species becoming extinct. So, by eating a dandelion, I am actually protecting the human race from extinction. You’d think that would please them, that they’d thank me for the effort I’m making to save myself and thus mankind? But no, you can guarantee that they will harp on about sustainability (they love the word sustainability – almost as much as they love the word ecostructure, and they love that word a lot) that is why they need to be hit with a shovel and then fed with that very same shovel to the zombies. The undead also need sustaining so that they don’t become extinct too. It’s the circle of life my tree-huggy friends. For one species to survive, another species must become dinner and I can assure you although I make my donations regularly to Greenpeace and WWF (World Wildlife Fund, not World Wrestling Federation – John Cena does not need my money), come the apocalypse, if the need arises I would roast a giant panda over an open fire and serve him up with side order Arakan forest turtle if it ensured I would survive.

  Note: In the event a giant panda is unavailable, nettles, wild rose and Japanese knotweed are also edible and a lot less endangered.

  WINDOWS

  ‘Oh! Look outside, look, there are zombies!’

  ‘Shouldn’t we really board that up?’

  ‘No. Look. There are some zombies.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. That’s why I think we should board it up.’

  ‘But we need to look outside. At the zombies.’

  ‘Well, can’t I board it up and just leave a gap to look through?’

  ‘We wouldn’t be able to see many zombies through a little gap, would we?’

  ‘I’ve got some wood or some sheet metal…’

  ‘We need to be able to see how many zombies there are outside.’

  ‘There are lots of zombies outside. We know there are zombies outside. Why do we need to see them?’

  ‘Because if we can’t see them how

  ‘Because it’s a zombie apocalypse?’

  ‘Oh! Look! They’re coming to say hello! We wouldn’t have known they were going to come in through the window if the window wasn’t there would we? Hello? Hello? Where’ve you gone?’

  XYLOPHONE

  OK, I know that I’ve been through musical instruments in this dictionary previously, but give me a break. There’s not really that many things that begin with the letter X so I had to use my initiative and Xylophone seemed to be my best option, otherwise we’d have been talking about the X chromosome which could have opened up a can of worms with those folks who believe that all gender should be abolished (talking about scientific proof of gender difference can sometimes put the willies up these folks).

  Or maybe I could have tried Xerox but frankly the only use for a photocopying machine during the apocalypse is to either drop it on a zombie’s head from a great height out of a window (and as we’ve already discussed, using a heavy item for zombie killing is never a sure thing); or you could while away a few hours of boredom by photocopying your own face and/or genitalia.

  Besides, I’m not even sure I can use the word Xerox as it’s a copyrighted trade name so I would have had to put any of that advice under ‘Photocopier’ which I wouldn’t need to because I had ample entries for the letter P.

  The Xylem is plant tissue that conducts water and minerals from the root to all other parts of the plant and, as interesting a fact as that might be, it’s really not important information to have when considering your own survival during a zombie apocalypse. Then, of course, there’s the X-ray – a machine that operates by using radiation. Just trust me, keep away from it. You’ll do more damage to yourself than you could ever think of doing to a zombie with the radiation from an X-ray machine. Which frankly, only leaves me with Xylophone to work with and is vastly more useful than any of the other X words because it can be used as a bludgeoning weapon and will naturally make pretty music as you batter the zombie’s head.

  YMCA

  First, just let me tell you that there’s no need to feel down, there’s quite an easy and accessible way to pick yourself off the ground and especially if you happen to be relatively new in the town (that’s none specifically, any town) there’s really no need to be unhappy because there is actually a place you could go that will deal with all the aforementioned woes that could have befallen you, especially but not exclusively if you are short on your dough. You can stay there and there a also apparently many ways in which to have a good time (again, which particular good time you will be privy to isn’t specified, but we are assured that whatever time it is that you have, it will be classed as ‘good’). Where is the wondrous place? Well, it’s a place called the YMCA or the Young Man’s Christian Association.

  Heavily endorsed by the leather-clad biker, Indian, policeman and cowboy of the Village People fame (which surely pleased the Christian aspect of the YMCA no end), this institution helps young people improve their mind, body and spirit both mentally and physically (much like what I am attempting to achieve with my survival training, except that they don’t talk quite as much about the undead as I do). They also help young people by dealing with issues such as homelessness, crime, education and families.

  As important as their work is in building community spirit and helping young people succeed in the world today, the only thing that people identify with when you mention the YMCA, is the dance. You work hard putting together a charitable organization for 160 years and all anyone can ever remember is that bloody dance!

  The dance can be used for both a simple exercise routine or as a short choreographed movement in battle that when repeated can kill multiple zombies.

  THE YMCA DANCE

  Y: Holding your arms aloft will set yourself up as an open target to a zombie and it will move forward to attack.

  M: Bringing your hands down in an inward sweeping movement,
grab the zombie’s hair or ears, ensuring that its mouth is kept at a safe distance from your face.

  C: Whilst still holding the ears/hair twist your arms into the conventional ‘C’ position. This will twist the zombies head from its body. Release the right ear, so that the head is raised at the top point of the ‘C’ once it is detached from the body.

  A: Forcibly bring your hands together in the A movement. This will effectively crush the zombie’s skull (and therefore brain) between your palms. Repeat as necessary.

  For those who can’t be bothered to train in any form of official martial art, this technique can be applied to most other movement-based ‘party dances’ for either attack or defence technique. E.g. Agadoo, Around the Old Camp Fire; Court of King Caractacus, Time Warp and the entirety of Steps’ playlist.