In reading some of the posts, I was struck by an idea so genius, so amazingly original, that most of you have probably thought of a version of it as well.

The military, police, etc, always run wargames (BluevsRed and whatnot) to have the troops gain a practical knowledge on both tactics and what ifs... um lets call it training.

Consider;
A live action, zombie scenario in which you physically have to use snap judgement and cunning, with no outside help to withstand a typical zombie outbreak.

Set up.
A dozen or more (..the merrier) set up locations, say an abandoned air field, an empty or derelict building, possibly a wooden area, gain permission from owners and even go so far as to let the local authorities know what's up (Preventing funny and even funnier embarrassing situations from occurring.)
Each person brings their own supplies, call it a 24bob for training purposes; and clothing appropriate for a paintball throwdown.
A bag is held open, each person draws a sheet of paper, on 10 to 15 percent will have written "Zombie" the rest are blank.
Those who receive zombie designations are to keep it quiet, they are currently infected, but not turned.

Rules.
Each Zombie will go to a hidden location to retrieve their zombie kit; several small balloons filled with paint.
(Do it subtly, after all as a zombie, you can also learn important tactical skills by the set limitations, plus it's fun to be on the other side from time to time.)
Zombies must abide by 'their' limitations, no weapons, and paint balloons are to be smashed against victims, further infecting others
Who in turn also turn zombie. No throwing, but collaboration, running, anything a recently deceased my get away with.
The rest is fight off with paintball guns, both a limited supply of ammo (Besides what they take from other 'victims' or redistribution amongst themselves.)
Everyone should wear full protection headgear, after all the only way to kill a Zombie is headshots, no bodyshots count.

The endgame.
Survive, set a time limit of at least 24 hours to insure things like fatigue and stress occur, this is after all, a training scenario, the more realistic the more benefitting.

Note; moderating should not be necessary, the honor system should work well enough.

This probably has some bugs that I'm sure would be ironed out by the third or fourth try...

whattyathink?

Sounds like an insanely long time to play paintball. Considering the number of people that are likely to be participating, I reckon I can take out the zombies in I dunno, five minutes tops?

Not if the Zombies wait until night, or if the number of names in the hat is increased.

Not perfect, but good training nonetheless...


Well, i'd love to do it anyway.


And lets face it, if your selected as a zombie, you'd kinda want to go a little native, so screaming running, all they have to do is slap a paint marker on you and it's game over.

Then again, it was an idea, needs some tweaking.


The point of the exercise is to train, if it's over in five minutes, then you just have to make it that much harder.
We go camping to get used to leaving civilization and the farther away we go, the more remote, the more realistic.
We start camping near a walmart or typical campground, then we strip down to see what is necessary and what is luxury.
A week in a state park in off season, I've had several days of seeing no one but my family, cooking naught but what I bring, it should be fun, but it also should be about learning, and no tv, no phone, that is actually pretty jarring the first few times.

Some tweaking, and I think the training exercise would at best give people insight into what they might have done wrong, or right, and expand on that.

At worst, it's a half hour of fun?

I've always wanted to try something like this. There's a college game (have to Google) that I think is called Zombie Tag. If I remember right, it sounded similar to this.

Another thing I always wanted to try is to split a group into two teams and have one team run recon on the other team and see if they can hide/be found and then switch to have the second team do recon on the first team the next day. Kind of a tactical hide and seek.

Its a zombie LARP!

Ive seen them played before.