At least 1,000 zombies were stunned with socks on the ISU campus during the past month. The “zombie game” had 1,853 people attending on Facebook by the last day of the game, which ended Monday. The game had a list of rules on how humans could stop the pending take-over of the zombies. In order to get into the game students had to buy a red and green bandanna and then watch their backs.

The red bandannas represented the humans and the green bandannas the zombies. Each zombie would have to tag one human a week or he would starve.

The game was to stay inside campus limits, unless the zombie or human wore his bandanna off campus, which made him fair game for an attack. Academic buildings, dorm rooms, dining centers, Parks Library, Jack Trice Stadium, Lied Recreation Facility and stairwells were off limits. Zombies didn’t have to lurch.

The fifth rule was, “There is no visible limit to the strategies zombies or survivors can employ in groups, or solo, to further their respective species.”

Micah Morgan, senior in liberal studies, came to the game prepared when it started the Friday of Homecoming Week. 

“I think I took it too seriously, but I had a lot of fun with it,” Morgan said. 

He made it to the end of the game as a human, but said it wasn’t easy.

Morgan had to dodge many zombies and had to face some that were on bikes and scooters. He had a narrow escape with a zombie on a bike.

“I jumped in a building, but then he started circling the building, so when I thought he was gone I ran out a back door. He was still there, though, so I ran toward the building I needed to be in for class and there was another guy in front of the nearest door,” Morgan said. “I yelled, ‘open the door,’ and he looked around and then opened the door and I dived in.”

He said during the past month he got used to navigating around the campus buildings. “I just kept moving from building to building. I avoided large open areas and I learned a lot about the buildings on campus,” Morgan said.

In order to better defend himself, he had a Nerf gun with a vest of bullets stuffed with socks. Socks would stun the zombies for 10 seconds. He said some people didn’t like the Nerf gun idea, but he had heard of zombies jumping out of cars, and said he figured if they could jump out of cars, he could shoot a Nerf gun at them.

Morgan said he thought the whole game was started as an event similar to those held on other campuses such as the University of Minnesota Duluth. He would like to see the game expand into a club, or have an online database for the next game, as he had heard of other events assigning numbers to each person, then they could report if they were a human, zombie or if they had starved so it was easier to tell when the game was over.