Zombie Setting

As I'm sure all of you know zombies vary from story to story. Some zombies can only be stopped by destroying their head, others don't care if they have a head or not. Some are corpses animated by magic, others are simply diseased people who have lost their minds. The only thing that seems universal to zombies is the desire to eat and/or brutally shred human flesh. Now I want my own sandbox zombie infested world that I can tinker with and write stories in. So after a bit of thought this is what settled on. (I have also decided to only tell you what most people in the US would know in this sandbox world. This lets me make stuff up on the go and lets me sneak in surprises.)

First, this is still Earth and not much has changed ecologically or geographically. For the most part the only countries dealing with zombies are Canada and Mexico. The US is sadly only a area and not a global power. Federal government has been eaten, and was in fact, the first thing targeted.

Zombies was created by a mad scientist around the end of 2009. After this monumental, but hidden, break-through he gathered an army of soldiers and like-minded people. During the Fall of 2010 he unleashed his his disease into the water system of a medium sized city of which I have yet to chose.

The zombies are not truly dead, but rather mindless drones of terror. They seek to consume human flesh for food and reproduce by biting. They were spread by the mad scientist to all over the US from which they started spreading zombism at an incredible rate.

I will likely link back to this post often and update it as I post stories in this setting. I also want to explain some of the reasons I chose some of the details. First, the is no magic. This is for a more realistic setting to draw the audience (you) into. Make it feel like this could be you counting your remaining ammo and food.

Next, for the most part the world is the same. Especially outside North America. The reason the zombies haven't been wiped out by a joint group of world powers such as the United Nations is because no one knows whats going on and they're too scared to find out. A good part of this the doings of the mad scientist who has his own personal army and who's motto is “Today the States, tomorrow the world.”

There is a Bad Guy. This give Heroes a chance to appear. This is important to stories. Heroes typically need some goal to step above and beyond the normal man, or woman. Because I put a central Bad Guy, who has lots of smaller Bad Guys I can create Heroes to do battle with them, and not just hordes of mindless zombies.

There is some hope of outside rescue. The other countries could get off their tails and do something like save some of the survivors or take on the mad scientist. I would like to say here that I have a good deal of respect for most of the countries that I'm talking about. But for the sake of the story they have to be frightened, for good reasons of course.

I also let things open for me to chose different elements. I can say “Well this town dealt with the first wave of zombies fairly well so they don't have as many problems.” can say that because I gave nothing away as to how the zombies spread other then biting, and even with that I didn't say with what kind of regularity the bite would cause the bitten to turn.

For the most part I just left my options open so I can make stuff up as I go, because that's what I'm best at.

Zombie killing technique #99: First find a narrow ally. Then take and slaughter one, two-headed cow. Take a long length of rope and suspend the cow in a way that will cause the cow to ram into a zombie triggering a trip wire. (Please note that two-headed cows should be plentiful after long term nuclear fallout. Also note that this zombie killing technique could be non-discriminating as to zombies and survivors alike.)