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The following are answers to frequently asked questions that are presented in this pamphlet to help familiarize THE LIVING (you) with THE LIVING DEAD (the enemy). These explanations are presented in laymen’s terms to help even the most inexperienced survivor understand and be ready to experience the undead. This is in no way intended as a survival guide and should not be referred to as such. This is intended to give you a basic understanding of our enemy so that your training, experience and prior skills will save your life and aide you in the continuing struggle for human survival.
-Lazarus von Braun, Professor of Undead Studies

Q) What are the Living-Dead?

A) The Living-Dead are human bodies whose brain functions have ceased and then, by a little understood means returned to limited activity. Using only the most primitive and rudimentary instincts and thought processes they congregate in locations where their intended food source may be and wait for their prey.

Q) Why do they come back to life?

A) No one knows for certain what/how or why the brain and dead tissues reanimate, only that it occurs in most specimens and at an alarmingly fast rate. Theories range from bacteria and virus to radiation from space and ethereal entities entering our realm of existence. Most suspect an unknown bacteria or virus that, in the last decades of life before the mass resurrections, crept up from the constant pollution and expansion of human civilization into previously uninhabited areas of the planet. In most cases, the patient has to be “infected” through bites or other fluid contact with the undead. This contact is 100% fatal and usually takes 24 to 168 hours to end a patient’s brain functions and begin reanimation. The reanimation of the brain and tissue begins within seconds of brain death but can some time take as much as an hour or more to actively revive the infected as living-dead.

Amputation of the infected area, if feasible, is still ill advised. Once in the blood stream, whatever fluids have come from the living-dead to the living will seep into the surrounding tissues and nerves and will spread rapidly through out the rest of the body. Once bitten it is not a matter of if but when you will die and reanimate.

The theories of extraterrestrial radiation and “spirits” possessing the bodies of the undead are so far fetched that they will not be discussed in this text.

Q)What happens to the body when it gets back up?

A) Despite what has been seen in movies, television dramas and popular fiction, death still occurs normally within the human body even after reanimation. The first 24 hours after resurrection are by far the most dangerous as the body still posses much of the same agility, strength and muscle tone that was present during life. Rigor mortis will eventually set in and slow these abilities into the better known shambling, clumsy traits that the undead are known for, but until this natural process occurs the undead are fast, strong and deadly.

Even after rigor the dead are far from harmless. Their lust for blood and carnage know no limitations. They will continue to pursue you until another, more vulnerable victim presents itself and make up in endurance what they lack in intelligence, speed and strength. They feel no pain and will only stop when fully dismembered. The stages of decay common in pre-crisis days still carry themselves out even as the body moves from location to location. Bacteria still dissolve the flesh, cartilage and muscle and the blood and bodily fluids will still pool in the lowest lying reaches of the body. Nothing is immune to gravity. This means that the feet, ankles and calve muscles of the undead are swollen much more than the rest of the body. The stages of decomposition will gradually dissolve the undead into little more than an inert mass, however these stages are slowed by whatever process is at work reviving the brain for its ravenous endeavors. It can take months for an uninjured ghoul to die of “natural” causes.

The trademark moan of the undead is in fact gases escaping from any open orifice in the undead body.

Always treat the undead and any area or item that comes into contact with them with great caution. Whatever disease has resurrected them is only a small fraction of the plagues and diseases swirling in their wake.

Q) How do they hunt?

A) The undead have posed many mysteries to the scientific community since they first began to rise. This is all that is known for certain: they seek out living flesh, most often human beings, converge and consume in the most violent ways imaginable.

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