By Mike Barham
There seems to be a trend sweeping the nation. A virus if you will. You’ve seen our coverage of so called “escape rooms” in a previous edition of The Ocelot, but what if pitting yourself against the mental challenge of being locked inside four walls just isn’t spine tingling enough for you? What if it needs more of an undead vibe?
Springing up across the UK are centres that cater for your zombie cravings, such as the Zombie Apocalypse events run by the Wiltshire Outdoor Learning Team in Roundwoods, near Brokerswood Country Park and the now famous (thanks to LAD Bible) Zombie Shopping Mall in Reading.
The Wiltshire zombie experience is a little different from the running around that comes with Reading’s action packed shopping centre apocalypse. It’s very much a case of survival.
You can choose your scenario from two movie based trials; one sees you teaming up to face the undead like characters from the TV show The Walking Dead and the other features the more adrenaline pumping, violently flailing, rage virus infected of 28 Days Later in an every man/woman for himself type scenario.
The objective of the experience is to literally survive the evening. The perfect corporate team-building exercise you would think. Try convincing your boss it’s a good idea!
The problem with either scenario is you have 40 acres of Wiltshire woodland that you have to work your way through, in the dark, to avoid the ‘zombies’. Not to ruin the illusion or anything, but these infected actors probably know this woodland much better than you ever will, so it presents an interesting mix of cunning, evasion, stealth and teamwork to keep out of their flesh eating clutches.
The Wiltshire Outdoor Learning Team offer some respite after you’re chased by the undead in the form of a complementary barbecue and drinks, although getting drunk out of your mind BEFORE running around the woods is probably not the best idea.
Those of you who really want to scare themselves witless will probably choose the 28 Days Later scenario, and I wouldn’t blame you. Aside from being one of the best zombie style films (in my personal opinion) it revitalised the undead into a genuinely dangerous and terrifying foe for modern cinema. To have those infected people chasing after you in real life would be terrifying. I don’t care if you know they are actors or not, if you’re stuck in a woodland you don’t know with unknown assailants hunting you down, your natural fight or flight senses are going to kick in. Don’t act all macho, you know it’s true.
I can only imagine that going along to one of these experiences is similar to the craze known as “LARPing” where (primarily) Dungeons and Dragons fans head out into a woods and pretend to turn each other into worms or carve each other apart with foam swords. Zombie experiences may just be the ‘cool’ alternative, but it’s still a fantasy experience in a wood.
www.wolt.org.uk/activities/zombie-apocalypse