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Zombie Camp! Recruiting Members! Come one, come all!

Our Zombie Survival Class includes:
-Comprehensive course in how to deal with the Zombie apocolypse.
-Firearm, Cross-bow, Sword-wielding training.
-Survival/Utilitarian class
-Staying healthy now and then!
-Acquiring Transportation!

Come live at our house in New Jersey for a weekend! Only if you're 21 though.


These guys made me laugh out loud. They're charging people 150-500$ to come to their house in New Jersey and shoot guns and crossbows in black T-shirts, at least that's what it looks like. These “classes” also feature lectures on what to do during a zombie apocalypse, because hands-on training just isn't enough. People need to get their money's worth.

On a more serious note, what does this say about culture and how it's been effected by the zombie phenomenon over the past few decades? If George Romero had never created our mainstream representation of Zombies, would these people be teaching classes on other topics like spontaneous combustion, the loch-ness monster, or how to slay a vampire? Or would they be unenthused at the prospect of teaching martial defense in the name of something other than Zombies?

It's hard to say for sure what they would have done without Zombies. But the point is that Zombification has become such a stigmatized “threat to existence” in a world that actualizes any form of media it can. Panic and fear and uncertainty make certain that the public is always fearing something, even something as fictionalized and sensationalized as voodoo or zombies. These people saw a few zombie movies, maybe watched a few seasons of Walking Dead and said, “You know what, that looks scary as hell. Maybe we should prepare in case that happens to us.” This (seemingly stupid) revelation presumably started small, a few guns from the sporting goods store, a few target practice set ups and some google-searching for survival tips, all in the name of surviving a zombie apocalypse. Then, (and this is where it gets profound) they gradually grew their operation so much that it is now a business. Other victims of popular culture can now pay someone 450$ over a weekend to quell their fears of the undead. Handing them a crossbow and showing them how to aim at a soda can should suffice.  

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2 Responses so far.

  1. In their defense, even if you don't buy into a zombie apocalypse, a lot of that course looks pretty fun. If I could even conceive of something like disposable income, I could see dropping $150 to dick around with guns, hotwire a car and play zombie hunter for a bit. Maybe leave feeling a little more bad-ass, haha.
    But I definitely see your point. It seems like there is a strange sense of anticipation in the current zombie craze. It's an apocalypse you can fight and in theory, survive. There's much less of the ambiguity/uncertainty present during a traditional plague. It's a little disturbing that the unrestrained violence of the zombie war has such a real-world appeal to some people. Of course, even if we're not building a bunker, we're still in a zombies class. There might be more of that mindset present when I'm making my hypothetical zombie plans than I'd like to admit.

  2. One thing I really don't understand is why they offer crossbow and sword training. It seems to me that these are two objects one wouldn't have on hand when a zombie apocalypse occurs. It also seems very unlikely that one would find these weapons scavenging. Given these two facts it seems that a zombie survival camp should focus on more practical weapons based on ones ability to scavenge and what they may have with them when the outbreak occurs.

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