'Zombies': A Show of Defiance

   As a previous post stated, coming up with a topic for this final blog post was hard as it seems we've covered just about everything.  So I did a little research (a.k.a. google searching) and found this somewhat troubling article: http://www.channel3000.com/news/-Zombies-game-blamed-for-two-UW-campus-gun-reports/-/1648/19813958/-/ld10ylz/-/index.html . Its title reads, "'Zombies' game blamed for two UW campus gun reports."  Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with their own tradition of playing a tag-like game called "Humans Versus Zombies."  The game entails participants running around with bandannas around their heads and wielding Nerf guns.  Apparently, a few spectators mistook the toy guns for real guns and called 911, thinking they were about to witness a school shooting.  UW police arrived on the scene only to find students wielding toy guns, and were understandably outraged at this waste of resources.  They are concerned that, especially in light of the recent bombing in Boston, that such a game will only alarm non-participants and lead to further misappropriation of resources.
   It isn't hard to understand where the UW police are coming from; imagine if a real public danger were to arise when they were responding to a misguided report about nerf guns? However, I think that the pros of this 'Zombies' game and what it represents far outweigh the cons. If the students of UW were to cease playing this game due to recently heightened awareness of public threats, it would simply be caving in, and contributing, to a collective consciousness of fear.  This might be somewhat of a stretch, but I thought that this article exemplified some of the points that Sara Sutler-Cohen sheds light on in "Plans Are Pointless".  Sutler-Cohen demonstrates how it is that zombies have evolved, in popular culture that is, to become part of a survivor narrative, rather than simply a representation of total apocalypse.  If the UW police were to put an end to the "Zombies Versus Humans" game, as is implied might happen in the article, their actions would be more in line with the now obsolete conception that zombies are the end-all be-all harbingers of the apocalypse.  The police, regardless of their motivation, would be treating the "zombies" as a threat, rather than a manageable problem. As Sutler-Cohen points out, we are well beyond this; zombies are here to stay and we, including the UW police, must come to terms with this fact.
    On a practical note, rather than demand that the students end this tradition, which has grown to include over 250 participants, I think a much more positive solution would be for the participants to go to greater lengths to publicize the nature of this event. That way, spectators will not mistake their toy guns for real ones and police forces will be where they are needed most.