Chris Banyas

Staff Writer

What do you get when you cross a love of zombies with a strong desire to promote preparedness, especially in emergency situations?

You get the Zombie Emergency and Disaster Survival Skills Club.

Called ZEDSS for short, the club is a newly formed campus group, which embraces both of the aforementioned things and has fun doing it.

Officially formed during the fall 2013 semester, ZEDSS offers students a unique combination of fun activities as well as practical ones.

“The goal of our club is to have everyone be prepared for emergencies of every kind and just to also be able to have fun with it as well,” said David Tashbook, the club’s treasurer.

Tashbook made a distinction between his club and some other more extreme survivalist types.

The extreme survivalist types are the kind who have the approach of, “‘I have a ton of ammo in the back area. I got a bunker in an undisclosed location,’” he said.

“We aren’t that unsociable kind of survivalist group,” said Tashbook. “We’re like, “All right, yeah, let’s get together, make a couple emergency plans. We hold movie nights for our club members; we can’t do it for anyone else besides our club members due to legal reasons of showing the movies.”

The movies which Tashbook refers to are a mix of disaster and zombie films. Just as one might  imagine, some of them contain explicit content, which is where the restriction on movie night comes in.

Perhaps the most distinguishing features of this club are the events which have been held, and some which are still in the planning stages.

Survival camping trips are some which have already happened.

“We just go out and test our skills for camping. It’s not really survivalist at the moment but we’re hoping to get to a point where we can just grab a get out bag and all just head over to Scout Mountain for a few days,” said Tashbook.

Events which are still in the planning stages include potential zombie runs and a zombie survival night.

“The idea is we get a fair amount of people and have them dress up like zombies and act like zombies. We’re talking the slow zombies, not the runner zombies,” said Tashbook. “Then we get this abandoned style place, like, say, the old hospital across from Turner, and then we get some other people from the club, who are either not wanting to be zombies or people who are not in the club.”

Tashbook explained that items, foam weapons, food and medical supplies would then be hidden around the venue in order to simulate a zombie apocalypse.

“World War Z” is the movie Tashbook said he felt most accurately represents what an actual zombie apocalypse would be like.

“It follows a more realistic style of how the zombie apocalypse would actually go global, if something like would actually happen,” said Tashbook. “We are not crazy, thinking that zombies are actually out there, by the way. We’re just saying ‘if.’”

Because the ZEDSS is still a relatively new club, the group does not yet have a website. However, the members are very much on the hunt for new members.

Those interested can contact Club President Connor Liebenow at ude.usinull@nnocbeil.