Not Everyone is Prepared...

So today when I was in the common room and should-have-been-doing-English-Language-Coursework-but-was-having-a-bad-day-and-felt-depressed so I had a chat with Shawn about zombies, we were getting really passionate about how we'd survive. Amy&Lotti (who were sitting near us and couldn't help but hear us) joined in the conversation but where really rather uninformed, this worries me. Tell your friends children. They need the help.
Here are some more pointers:

• In the event of an apocalypse listen to the radio and watch TV if they're still working because they may be able to offer help and inform you of safe ways to travel, safe locations, food rations etc.
• Don't bother trying to get the help of public services (e.g. emergency services) unless instructed to do so by the TV, Radio or 999 
• If you have access to a boat or even better, cruise liner, take it! Zombie's can't swim so you'll be safe at sea and if you find an island uninhabited by zombies with a food and fresh water source, even better!

Also, the reason why zombies wont be coming out of the ground and graves is because zombies can only be infected when they are living, the virus is carried around the body by the pumping blood and then the person will die and come back as a zombie. Dead people who died of natural causes / being shot in the brain cannot then be infected. Get it right.

Nut Up or Shut Up guy'th <3

Weapons

Soooo...

How are you finding the lead up to the apocalypse? Tense? Yeah, me too. So today I thought I’ll tell you about what to, and what not to use as a weapon, and I mean household objects, not proper weapons – because as much as we don’t want to face up to the fact that we won’t have any guns or anything.

So here is a list of things that you can use:

·         Cricket bat (dah – in fact, you should keep one near your bed, if there’s something you need to learn from me it’s that you never know when the zombies are coming)

·         Marble chopping boards (I know it sounds stupid but I have one and I’m thinking it could be really helpful to bash a zombie over the head with)

·         Any sort of walking stick or wooden post

·         Blunt objects, if you were really desperate and you were just in your house anything could work with enough force, chairs, lamps, vases, picture frames, fat old books, computer monitors – i think you get my point

Here’s a list of weapons to avoid trying to use:

·         Knives (it’s very close contact and by the time you drive it through their skull you’ll probably have been bitten)

·         Soft stuff (that’s not going to kill a zombie)

So I was also thinking, what would you do if you were on a train and the zombies come? I have to say I’ve thought about this many many times, because when you’re on a train and it stops randomly (not at a station) it feels to me like they’re letting on the zombies or that the train has been stopped because the train driver has been turned into a zombie and can’t drive anymore (zombies can’t drive trains) or if someone looks really ill on the train and then you’re like ‘OMG they’re going to turn’.  Well have you thought about what you’d use to fight them off? How you’d get off the train? There aren’t many available weapons on a train because they have health and safety regulations, if they bins are loose you might be able to use them to block the zombies but it wouldn’t kill them. So you may have to consider what you have on your person.

When I was younger I used to carry around a Nutella jar in the winter because when I walked home from the bus stop it was dark and I was scared of rapists, I knew that I could hit them round the head with the heavy jar if I needed to. (Also I was a bit of a fatty and I used to eat the Nutella out of the jar, I then got bored of Nutella and moved onto Gale’s Lemon Curd and eventually stopped because they changed the recipe and it wasn’t very nice anymore.)

Something like this might be helpful in the apocalypse but I understand that carrying around Nutella isn’t always practical, so consider what you carry round every day. My laptop has a battery which I can easily remove  and use to whack a zombie’s head with, it’s not ideal because it’s fairly light but it’s quite blunt and so will be good as a short term weapon until I find something better.

Consider what you carry around with you every day, have you got something that you could use? Is there something that you could easily replace with something heavier or blunter that use could use to fight zombies? Just something to think about.

No I’m not going too far! How dare you think that...

Until next time my beauties and don’t forget, Nut Up or Shut Up <3

My Review and Analysis of the 2008 remake of 'Day of the Dead' (contains minor spoilers)

So Ellie lent me her DVD copy of the 2008 film 'Day of the Dead' which is a remake of the classic by George A Romero ' a.k.a the Godfather of all Zombies', as part of the 'living dead' series. I have also seen the original but the story lines are very different and the characteristics of the zombies are also quite different, but I will go on to explain that later.

Let me just explain more about George A Romero's films and the remakes:
In 1968 Romero created the first film in his 'living dead' series 'Night of the Living Dead' which was co-written by Romero and John. A Russo, after a dissagreement in when the sequels should head the pair split and Russo went on to write books which were later adapted to films but the films where never quite as popular as Romero's 'living dead' series. In 1978 Romero created the film 'Dawn of the Dead' on a budget of just $500,000 but it earned over $55 million, because of it's popularity Romero went on to make 'Day of the Dead' in 1985, 'Land of the Dead' in 2005, 'Diary of the Dead' in 2007 and 'Survival of the Dead' in 2010.
Something that seems strange to me was that while Romero was still making films in his 'living dead' series, remakes of the earlier films where being made, probably because of how popular they where and also the way that they revolutionised Zombie films. Although in 'Night of the Living Dead' Romero never referred to the living dead as zombies he was the first to make Zombies something other than a strange voodoo belief (I think anyway). So the remakes are:
'Night of the Living Dead' in 1990 directed by Tom Savini, 'Dawn of the Dead' in 2004 directed by Zack Snyder, 'Day of the Dead' in 2008 directed by Steve Miner. We are still awaiting the remakes for the other three.

So after having seen the 2008 remake of 'Day of the Dead' I have a few questions and criticisms but I'll start by listing some characteristics of the Zombies:
- They can run
- When people turn their flesh mysteriously changes to green and their skin peels in a strange pattern of circles
- Eyes glaze over to white
- When they come in contact with fire they 'melt' and their heads explode
- They retain some characteristics of the person they where before they turned e.g. a mother recognises her son's voice, a vegetarian becomes a tame zombie and takes commands, he also seems still attracted to the woman which he was attracted to before he turned and he works with the living to fight the dead.
- The virus starts of as air borne, some people are immune to it, but as soon as they are bitten they turn as well
- The virus was created by scientists working for the army who wanted a virus to temporarily paralyse enemy troops so they could take them captive instead of killing them, this virus mutated to create the zombie virus

These are interesting characteristics, in Zombie Land (you probably don't need to be told that this is my absolute favourite Zombie film) zombies that catch on fire just carry on running so I was surprised that the zombies in 'Day of the Dead' were able to be defeated by fire. I wasn't expecting the zombies to be green skinned because I believe that they'd turn pale but not green, but I was more surprised by the fact that their skin looks like they've been injured as soon as they turn.

The man in the photo above hasn't been attacked, his bite wound was on his hand yet these sores just turned up on his face as soon as he turned. This seems strange to me because I think Zombies' eyes would change to white (as they do in the film) but I think the skin would just turn pale (because they're dead so there is no blood pumping through their bodies) but the wouldn't turn green at first (they may a few days/weeks after turning because their bodies are decomposing) and I don't think they'd have these sores just from turning.

In the original 'Day of the Dead' the zombies also turn a pale green colour, but they don't have the sores. The story line is very different and although it's not the type of Zombies which I believe will curse us with their apocalypse and end up eating our brains, it is a classic film and any true zombie film addict should have seen at least one (if not all, which is my aim) of the George A. Romero originals from the 'living dead' series.
A similarity between the films are that 'Bub' in the original (shown below) is tamed by a scientist and taught to listen to music and use a phone, eventually he uses a gun on someone. 'Bud' (above) is tame and follows commands given by his superior officers (possibly because he was in the army before the apocalypse and recognises these people as authority figures), a reason that some of the living characters give is that 1) he was a vegetarian and 2) he fancied Sarah (a fellow army member). I think the idea of being able to tame zombies seems appealing but don't count on it children, I think there's a very very small chance that we'd be able to tame a zombie in the apocalypse that we're about to experience and so if your mother/father/brother/boyfriend/friend/neighbour-that-gave-you-sweets-as-a-child do turn, don't try and keep them, they'll only eat your brains. 

I hope this hasn't been too long and boring and that you've picked up on the lesson of this (don't keep zombies no matter what you see in films, although we can take tips from films we have to decide what we believe to be true about zombies).
Until next time my friends, sit tight but be ready, the zombies are coming and don't forget Nut up or shut up <3

My Friends are all Zombies

Hey ya'll.
It was Halloween recently so I felt like doing a bit of (not so) crazy photo editing. Some of my friends volunteered to be the victims of a sort of basic transformation from general retards to zombies. Kidding I love all you guys (except Tabs, it's self centred to love yourself, Tabs & I are the same person) here they are:

Yeah, I know that zombies would have more blood and that the last photo (the one of me) is TOTALLY unrealistic because the last thing on a Zombie's mind would be taking a photo of it's self, secondly I don't think that a pair of glasses would stay on a zombie for long, but the lack of blood is due to the fact that the photo editing software I site used is pretty basic (www.picnik.com) and I was mainly focusing on the fact that zombies' eyes glaze over and their skin goes pale. 

Don't forget to Nut Up or Shut Up <3