Cock-Up has EAS warn of Zombie attacks!

An internal investigation began Monday concerning a serious and embarrassing malfunction of UNPASID’s control of the United States’ Emergency Alert System [EAS] which would in theory be used only in the event of a Zompocalypse.

On Monday afternoon, a CBS affiliate KRTV in Great Falls, Montana, which was broadcasting the Steve Wilkos talk show, had it’s sound temporarily replaced by the EAS. The audio signal alerted: "Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from the grave and attacking the living." And warned not "to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are extremely dangerous."

The incident is suspected to have arisen due to an effort to merge the UNPASID control with the UNETIDA control of the EAS which would be deployed in a similar manner should local authorities be unable to contain a sudden Extra Terrestrial landing before the arrival of UNETIDA.

A UNETIDA/UNPASID Counterintelligence team quickly fabricated a convincing story about a group of hackers attacking TV stations to post “hoax messages” about a zombie scare. “We have ways of convincing people of anything we need to to avoid revealing the truth,” said Colonel “Whopper” Creedon, Director of Intelligence, UNETIDA/UNPASID. “Hackers are in the public conscience and there are thousands of nerdy fanboys with access to the Internet and watching stuff like The Walking Dead on TV, Zombieland in the cinema and playing Left for Dead on their games machines. So it’s very easy to implicate them in something like this as they’re well known for their mischief.”

Most news outlets in the areas affected carried stories concerning what is, due to UNETIDA/ UNPASID’s actions, now considered a hoax which, as one law enforcement officer who received a 911 call put it, "Gave us a chuckle".

Source: USA Today / Youtube /  I09

Zombies "nothing to worry about"

Major General “Skullcrusher” Shaw, Director of the United Nations Paranormal and Supernatural Interdiction Directorate [UNPASID] in a rare public address at UNHQ New York says that the recent so-called 'flashpoints' being reported in US news media are "Nothing to worry about" and not a sign of either the so-called "Zombie Apocalypse" or "the end of times".

The director recounted the Miami Causeway Cannibal, the worldwide reported attack on Miami, Florida homeless man Ronald Potto by an enraged and naked Rudy Eugene on May 26th as not a case of zombification. The allusions by the media as to being so are considered to be "without merit" and instead the result of the abuse of a synthetic LSD known as "bath-salts".

In Baltimore, Maryland the case where one Alexander Kinyua killed his housemate Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, then ate some of his organs - is being treated as classic cannibalism as opposed to zombification according to General Shaw. On May 31st, in police custody, Kinyua admitted to killing Kodie, cutting him up with a knife and further stated that he consumed Kodie's internal organs -- specifically his heart and portions of his brain.

General Shaw also dismissed reports that Wayne Carter, the 33 year old man who stabbed himself and threw pieces of his skin and intestines at police officers trying to subdue him was a victim of Zombification. He was doing harm to himself, not others "so we haven't even investigated," said Shaw.

The director was very critical of news media irresponsibly reporting older stories with similar gruesome incidents as current events in order to fuel hysteria. One such story, Otty Sanchez's brutal and gruesome murder and dismemberment of her one-month old boy in San Antonio, Texas back in 2009 is being implied as being a recent event by an Associated Press article in circulation to many news outlets worldwide.

It's widely speculated that UNPASID fund zombie and horror movies as UNETIDA do science-fiction media in an effort to subliminally prepare and educate people. To this end, Shaw asked that members of the public exercise common sense in an age where everyone is aware of the threat proposed by a zombie-apocalypse from watching TV shows like The Walking Dead, movies like Zombieland and the Resident Evil series and playing video games like Left 4 Dead. "Quite frankly" said the general, "we do not want you to do fucking stupid shit" like Vitaly Zdorovetskiy who was almost shot for his grossly immature and ill-conceived plan to chase a number of African Americans about dressed as a zombie.

UNPASID's primary role with regard to zombies is of course containment, nullification and eradication. The Centers for Disease Control [CDC] still remains the US Government's arm for preparing the populace for the eventual outbreak. In 2011 the CDC began using using the "apocalypse" in its emergency preparedness blog. It was a success, attracting younger people who ordinarily wouldn't have read the agency's guidance on planning evacuation routes and storing supplies. However last Friday in response to public hysteria, CDC spokesman David Daigle sent an email to the press saying "CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead," he wrote, adding: "(or one that would present zombie-like symptoms.)"

Source: CNN / ABC / FOX News / NSNBC / Ghana Nation / i09

Zombieland: "Where are the fucking Twinkies?"

The Zombie movie is indeed as tired a genre on the silver screen as WWII is in the land of video games. Even the godfather of the zombie movie, George Romero himself now produces woefully substandard movies of a genre he once pioneered and dominated. It took some British comedy writers to pave a clear path for what can really be now - due to over-saturation - the only future of the Zombie movie [save the Resident Evil franchise which is consistently innovative and more Sci-Fi then Zombie horror at the end of the day] and I speak of course of the Zombie-comedy. Edgar Wright’s 2004 movie Shaun of the Dead worked because it took an idea that everyone was more then familiar with and turned it on it’s ass in the best way possible way through a hysterical lampoon of the genre. Seeing the success and the status of Shaun stateside, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick set about creating a proposed TV pilot that would not only address a Zombie outbreak in the US and put an American slant on the zombie-comedy using the somewhat more familiar Zombie-movie setting, but also due to it’s location: serious, easily available firepower. It eventually became a movie and attracted the likes of Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray so [hopefully] a new movie franchise was born in the from of Zombieland.

The opening credits present a gleefully gory yet hilarious series of slow-motion images of what must be the Zombie outbreak. Like many of it’s contemporaries, it doesn’t investigate what caused the Zompocalypse or delve too much into what happened, a throwaway narrative comment is sufficient and enough to specify a virus [stemming from mutated mad-cow disease] as opposed to evil risen undead etc., and as it’s the subject of Robert Smith?’s paper – a virus is far more chilling these days. The style of the movie is seen from the protagonist’s perspective, one Columbus played by Jesse Eisenberg. Columbas is a likeable yet neurotic nerd who enchews human contact and a social life for pizza and World of Warcraft. He has applied his organisational skills with great effect to create a series of several dozen rules which he uses to combat the Zombies, these include "Cardio", "Seatbelts" and "Double-tap" and all are supported as exceptionally good ideas throughout the course of the movie and they even appear as large text on the screen whenever a rule is followed as you would find in an instructional video adding to the hilarity.

Columbus is supported by Tallahassee [Woody Harrelson] who seems to have been born to kill Zombies and take quite a delight in coming up with new and innovative ways to sadistically yet humourously send them on to the afterlife. His quest in search of Twinkies crosses his path with Columbus and later Wichita [Emma Stone] and her sister Little Rock [Abigail Breslin], a pair of young con-artists who trust no-one, not even our beloved heroes. Their journey stems from Austin, Texas along the road to Hollywood to partake in a lavish respite [a rest which took slightly too long on screen] from Zombie hunting before the finale in Pacific Playland in California, where the movie explodes with insanity – just think of how many unique ways there are to eliminate Zombies in an amusement park!

If anyone is going into this expecting a horror movie in the run up to Haloween, then forget it, this is a comedy through and through, while Ruben Fleischer has not directed a tale to trump Wright's Shaun, he, his writers and cast have created a worthy and highly entertaining addition to the genre and without a doubt, the funniest movie I've seen all year.

Colonel Creedon Rating: *****

Official Site / IMDB / Wikipedia

Zombies: "Hit them hard and hit them often" says report

It appears that the BBC is finally taking the Zombie threat more seriously than most. Researches in Canada published a scientific paper within a book entitled Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress. There, they theorise a zombie "plague" resembles a lethal, rapidly spreading infection. The researchers say the exercise could help scientists model the spread of unfamiliar diseases through human populations. They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the zombies and conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often". They added: "It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble."

"This is exactly the advice that governments should be getting", said Colonel "Whopper" Creedon of UNETIDA [the United Nations Extra Terrestrial Invasion Defence Agency]. "The analysis contained in this book reveals that a strategy of capturing or curing the zombies or some other namby-pamby wishy-washy nonsense would only put off the inevitable - that we must eradicate the threat instantly, without any form of consensus or consultation with scientists or government. The military should have a mandate to neutralise this threat decisively as soon as it manifests itself without any civilian oversight - after all is it not those civilians who could be turned into Zombies themselves..."

Creedon went on to say UNPASID [the United Nations Paranormal and Supernatural Interdiction Directorate] of which counter-zombie defence is part of it's mission, has barely 20% of the funding that UNETIDA has "yet it's arguably just as likely that the planet will find itself under threat from the Zompocalypse than an Extra-Terrestrial invasion." He concluded by pleading that "funding must be addressed to equip world forces for issues pertaining to the undead."

Be sure to read the BBC's full report here.

Zombies! Run!!!

Austin, TX drivers making their morning commute were in for a surprise when two road signs on a busy stretch of road were taken over by hackers. The signs usually warn drivers about upcoming construction, but Monday morning they warned of "zombies ahead."

A city spokesperson said the hacked messages were only up for a few hours, until the construction project manager saw them during his morning commute and immediately ordered them to be changed back. "Even though this may seem amusing to a lot of people, this is really serious, and it is a crime," said Austin Public Works spokesperson Sara Hartley. "And you can be indicted for it, and we want to make sure our traffic on the roadways stays safe." She said the city will discuss more secure safety measures with the manufacturer of the signs.

Personally I think that it's a good thing that folk are reminded that the Zombocalypse could come upon us at any time. Hollywood and it's ilk have damaged the perception of zombie and all undead-related threats by branding movies in which they feature, as "fiction" and bestowing them fictional abilities such as "running" which was denounced by zombie expert Simon Pegg when writing about the British series Dead Set - "You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can't fly; zombies do not run."

The threat is real folks, don't end up unprepared like the poor folk in Pittsburgh, PA. I have weapons ready for removing the head and destroying the brain - do you?


Source: Bruce Russell, ABC, The Guardian, The Onion, Wikipedia

28 Weeks Later: Not a Sequel

Three things before I start here:

1. Let me tell you that 28 Weeks Later is to 28 Days Later as chalk is to cheese. It shouldn't even be called a sequel.

2. 28 Weeks is vastly superior to 28 Days.

3. I've forgotten about Spider-Man 3 now, the satisfactory experience from 28 Weeks has expunged it from my memory.

The most terrifying invention of the 21st Century is not some new WMD chemical weapon or an iPhone; it's Fast Zombies.

Danny Boyle was rather adamant that his 28 Days zombies weren't really zombies as they weren't dead but just suffering from the effect of a virus that could potentially be cured unlike true zombies. I tend to disagree and call them zombies because they have their singular purpose: to get you, they infect or kill you like real zombies and they bleed out through their bodily orifices- sounds like zombies to me. Some folk didn't believe they were true zombies because they were fast- Boyle's zombies could run while true zombies were slow and lumbering. When Valve created their sequel to Half-Life, they made some of their new-improved zombies quite fast and they became twice as deadly and much more terrifying (bastards!). Zack Snyder jumped on the bandwagon and remade Dawn Of The Dead with fast zombies too and it worked.

Fast Zombies are fuckin' scary.

Alien sucked in comparison to Aliens, Why? Because Ripley and her crew were not a group of heavily armed combat marines with a magnificent array of weapons. I'm not to partial to what in video game terms is "survival horror" and I'm growing increasingly bored by it on screen. I'm not really entertained by a bunch of schoolkids or some Joe-Soap running from a monster-of-the-week. It's much better to have trained heavily-armed military personnel up against such beasties. Case-in-point: The greatest Werewolf movie ever made was Dog Soldiers.

28 Weeks Later has Boyle's zombies but there its similarity to the original ends. While 28 Days was a "Horror of Armageddon" film with a pinch of military combat. 28 Weeks is half a military combat film and half "Horror of Armageddon" and it's all the better for it. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo does an excellent job of surpassing the original and exceeding all expectations.

Just to sell you on the story: 28 Weeks Later picks up as you may gather, 28 Weeks after the Rage virus outbreak. The Rage victims have died of starvation by now and survivors have gathered to the East End of London where the mighty US Army has established fortifications and brought evacuees and others who were obviously not in Britain at the time of the initial outbreak. One of the survivors is Don (Robert Carlyle) who is reunited with his two children who were in Spain at a British refugee camp.

Obviously even with security the way it is there is inevitably a second outbreak. The military commander, Brigadier General Stone declares containment is lost and orders the Army to kill everyone, infected or not. Which is fuckin' awesome and exactly what I would do, but by different means. There's some excellent sniper action here and clear evidence that that the director has played many video games- which is a good thing.

One sniper is Sgt. Doyle (Jeremy Renner) who defies Stone's order rather than shoot a kid and so he and a group of people go on the run both from the zombies and the military. It does get a bit survival-horror halfway through the movie but Doyle is armed with an M4A1 so we have at least one character periodically spitting lead which kept my attention.

I think Renner works much better as a good guy here after seeing him in the dark-side in S.W.A.T. Robert Carlyle is excellent as guilt-ridden father after cowardly leaving his wife at the mercy of zombies. Sadly he is under utilised for half the film and he fails to impact on the screen as mush as he did when he was a Bond-villain. Mark Tildesley's production design especially the devastation of London is exquisite. John Murphy returns to deliver a vibrant electric score to supplement the spine-tingling narrative pace.

The body count thankfully high due to the carnage unleashed on screen. I will ask you to take note of something I've always wanted to see a helicopter do to people, but zombies will do instead. Don't miss this.

Colonel Creedon Rating: ****1/2

Zombies are here. Be prepared!

One of the finest news-sources on the planet "The Onion", has just released an article detailing the inadequate defences in the city of Pittsburgh, which indicates that the city could easily succumb to a devastating zombie attack. It provides from some sobering reading here.

I myself am a veteran of many attempts by the undead to walk the earth but usually these incursions are on a small scale limited to secret underground military installations. The true danger nowadays is that they could surface during the day and learn to use weapons armour or even vehicles or some freaky shit like that.

The end of this month is a prime time for them to 'surface' and feed off the living so I'd suggest arming yourself with something deadly, anything that could remove a head would be good, but a few well judged whacks with a hurley should do the job too.

Be aware as well of young zombies posing as "Trick or Treaters". I came accross one poor fucker who got his arm bitten off by a group of them one year before my team arrived to liquidate the little shits! So if they do call to your door this year I'd suggest crowning them with a hurley before they do their thing- if it does turn out to be a genuine kid: just think of the fortune you save the parents in the future on schooling and college fees.