Zombies, Run! discussion

In times where we are sometimes forced to take shelter with other survivors, the Ministry of Recovery gives us a thorough lesson in Building a Community.

Group Meals

The first suggestion for team-building – group meals – helps to remind us of a time before, and plays an important part in stress relief. If you have rising tensions with someone in your community, sitting down to break bread has long been the way to dispel any hard feelings.

Besides, fighting off zombies is arduous and endless, whereas preparing a feast for my friends helps me, at least, feel like I have accomplished something, even if just in the short term. On top of that, it provides in-jokes, getting to know your community and provides much needed nourishment after a hard day of zombie battling.

Do you enjoy cooking? What are your favourite “rustic” meals? Have you tried either of the recipes in the book?

Recreational Nights

The Ministry clearly knows that it’s foolish to ignore the mental and social health of a community, and only concentrate on immediate needs and physical training. Everyone is sure to burn out if you don’t take time for yourselves and for your friends.

Over here at Six to Start, we hold a board game evening every month, which gives us all an opportunity to unwind over beer, snack food and long-term strategising. Just don’t go for Monopoly or Risk. I’ve heard many a horror story of townships breaking down and ending in bloodshed after a single game.

More of the roleplaying kind of Runner 5? You can always go for Sam Yao’s favourite, Demons & Darkness, which has the added bonus of allowing you to work as a team and requires little other than a pen and paper for the character sheets.



There’s also the suggestion for acting out your favourite TV shows or films from the time before, which you can turn into performances for the rest of the community. This year, we’ve heard that three different townships are putting on productions of Die Hard as their Christmas pantomime.

Remember those research projects suggested in Home Front? Well, they pay off now with the idea of putting on a lecture series using the expertise cultivated by your community. Did you shudder at the thought of public speaking in the time before? After battling off half a dozen zombies every week and training to run 5k, you really have nothing else to be afraid of!

Getting together for a jam session while those rhythmically challenged amongst us listen in is also a great way to build friendships, laugh and sing. Just don’t be too loud in case you annoy your neighbours - or, worse, attract zombies!

What are your favourite ways to unwind with friends, family or your community? Now you’ve read this section, will you plan any new recreational activities?

Train Together & Group Sport



Organised sport such as rugby or basketball is a great way to build fitness while having fun and forming bonds with new people, as long as you can do it without attracting the attention of zombies. It’s especially useful in the winter months, when dragging yourself out solo for a run through the snow can be difficult. It’s much easier to brave the cold when you have a team relying on you.

Do you play any organised sport? How has it improved your fitness in other areas?

Make time for Rest & Recreation, Celebration and Mourning



Making time for recreation is easily done by organising the above suggested activity nights. Rest is harder. With life being always so busy, especially when we have responsibilities in our townships and communities, it can be hard to take time for yourself.

As suggested in the case study, meditation is a great way to centre yourself, and to prepare you for a day of zombie fighting. Recreation and rest are essential to stop yourself from injuring yourself, and for improving your mental wellness.

Celebrations include religious or cultural holidays, but the Ministry also suggests marking the day of your community or shelter’s “founding”. There is also the Ministry’s instituted “Survival Day”, which is 1st May.

Finally, we come to mourning. While the Ministry has suggested 22nd July to mourn the collective dead, it’s important to mark any days significant to those you lost. Those days will be contemplative, and you can take time for yourself. Let your community know which days you have designated, so they can support you.

What days do you have marked to celebrate? For instance, I’d like to mark the day I first tried to outrun zombies, as well as cultural holidays such as Christmas.

ROFFLENET

Perhaps you aren’t in a community, or it isn’t possible for you to take part in the above suggestions. That’s okay, because you’ll always have a friend if you’re on ROFFLENET, which has replaced the internet from the time before. We already have a welcoming and friendly online community of Runners 5, and you’ll always find others with shared interests, no matter how niche, if you look hard enough.

If you don’t have a real-life community, do you have any on ROFFLENET that help you feel supported?

Tell us what you thought of this section in general, including anything not included above!

I cooked the risotto, scavenging ingredients from around my home. It was quick, easy, prevented waste, and was delicious!

Recipes that are flexible to adapt to what you have lying around and your own dietary requirements are fantastic for those of us who have no patience to slavishly follow a specific recipe with ingredients and equipment that require planning and can be hard to find even in the time before!

I enjoy tennis and imagine where I play to be a good place for the community to meet, being quite a quiet sport to avoid attracting zombies in the first place and high fencing on all sides to keep out those who do crawl past. Plus we have a small building where communal meals could be prepared and enjoyed.

Could Celebration days be combined with achievements in the game itself? Wouldn't it be cool to to get notified on the anniversary of arriving in Abel / First 1000km run / First VR / Gallon of whisky scavenged / Personal Best Day / the New Canton alliance, and other major milestones in the story that I should avoid listing in the interests of spoiler alerts? I imagine it would be quite motivating to keep going out there and running...

And what if you could post external events into the app, like doing some of the things from the book - the anniversary of using the Ministry's risotto recipe for example?

I do enjoy cooking and I hope that it's something that will make me valuable post-Z day. I'm not sure I have a favorite rustic meal, since I'm always cooking new things, and I haven't tried either of the recipes from the book specifically. Although I often make risotto and stew! My last risotto had roasted brussels sprouts in it - delicious.

My favorite ways to unwind with others do involve things like gaming. I have large collections of boardgames and roleplaying games - hopefully these would also benefit my community after Z day. Singing with others is always a great experience as well.

I don't play any organized sports, but I participate in yoga, tai chi, and pilates classes. I probably have enough knowledge of those things from my studies to be able to guide others. These have helped my flexibility, core strength, balance, and social skills as classes are a social experience!

I'm not big on celebrating specific days, but I like the ones proposed by the Ministry. I'd also try to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes.

The FB group for Runners 5 is pretty wonderful and supportive!

I thought about how I could contribute to a group, what useful skills I bring to the table. I know where to find wild garlic (pretty far away, though) and blackberries (not quite as far away), but that's about it. I'm not fast or strong and I'm not good with my hands. I can knit and crochet, but that's only really useful if I can find a cache of yarn and there are no stores near me.

But then I thought, there's a library close by and with the computers all down, it will be really useful to have someone like me, who knows where different books are shelved. I know where to find the books about first-aid, about hunting and fishing, about mushrooms and other edible plants, about fixing bikes and cars. I can grab them and be in and out in no time.
That's pretty useful.

Personally, I'm something of an introvert, but I think that's okay. I won't be the only one. I kinda like the idea of boardgames and quiet evenings with books.

And I was really touched by the section on being physically or mentally disabled. It was so great to see affirmed that not only will there be people with disabilities after the zombie apocalypse, but they'll have valuable skills and strategies to help others.

The building a community chapter had some great ideas. This one really resonated with me as our community has actually been implementing some of these ideas to help the community bond over the last year. We've had a number of community meals, recreation activities, workshops, etc. it's been a lot of fun getting to know my neighbors better and know who I can rely on for different kinds of help when needed!

My husband is a great cook and already makes variations on the two recipes included. I need to learn to become a more creative cook like, maybe I should practice with these!

I appreciate the reminders to find time to have fun, bond with others, and also to find time for yourself and to mark important Holidays. Sometimes we get so caught up in the drama and chaos that we forget to live. This was a very meaningful chapter!

Ben - Great to hear that the risotto recipe worked well for you! It's definitely much easier, like you say, then having to find a really specific spice or some obscure kind of vinegar for your cooking! I'm sure any tennis courts you didn't use could be turned to farming. The one thing to remember is that crawlers can burrow under the ground, so ensure you dig that fence in deep if you use that as your settlement!

We now have our milestone emails, so you know when you've passed certain distances, and will soon have some that let you know about other achievements too (I won't say too much so as not to spoil them!).

Cari - Oooh, I'm going to have to keep a brussels sprouts in mind for the future - especially if we (somehow) have any leftover after Christmas this weekend! What board games would you recommend for bonding, Cari? The more I hear, the more I'm sure I want to stick by you for the zombie apocalypse!

Eva - Garlic and blackberries are both wonderfully flavourful, and I'm sure we'd all be grateful for some flavour these days! Knitting and crocheting could be very useful if you find yarn - blankets for the winter, scarves and hats, and well as possibly knitting a flag for your settlement! I wonder if you could use old jumpers or clothes to make your own yarn?

The library skill sounds good too - especially since libraries have plenty of hidey-holes for zombies, and you wouldn't want to stick around! Even having worked at a bookshop, the Dewey Decimal system always defeats me. Everyone is equally valuable, just in different ways, and it's never been more obvious than in these post-apocalyptic times :)

Carol - What kind of workshops have been running in your community? That sounds great, especially as it sounds like you might live in the boonies from your previous comments! Practice is the only way to learn, and I'm sure your husband can point you in the right direction if something doesn't taste quite right. It's very true, and it's oh-so-important to look after ourselves and our friendships without getting to caught up in zombie-hunting!

Eva, as a librarian-in-training, I totally agree about the usefulness of knowing how to retrieve information! I'm also learning bookbinding, and hope to learn papermaking next year, which would be useful skills in a world without industrial book production. And, with very limited internet, books are a much more reliable medium for storing information, which is always important no matter how severe a disaster might be. I have a decent amount of knitting and other fiber arts-related skills, too, having coordinated fiber arts club for two and a half years in undergrad. I can spin yarn with a drop spindle, and even built my own drop spindle from a branch in my backyard and a piece of soapstone I had carved myself.

I appreciated the recipes in this chapter, and hope to try them out soon! And I can confirm the usefulness of tabletop roleplaying games for building community. I've built multiple friendships on D&D, and many of those friendships are some of the most important ones to me.

I love to cook - I cook a mean game pie. I'm also partial to sweet and sour ANYTHING. I also like to hunt - deer, duck, pheasant, I am proficient with both the shotgun and rifle. My previous military experience tested my physical and mental mettle and leadership skills under pressure. I am also a dentist by trade. My boyfriend is an engineer and can turn his hand to anything, mechanical or electrical. He also hunts and is a crack shot, much better than me. I think between us we'd be useful assets in an apocalypse. On the duff side, I'm partial to bouts of eccentricity and being highly annoying, so I'd probably wind some people up the wrong way! Overall I think the plusses outweigh the negatives - pick us for your community!! :-)

That's really impressive, Denali! It sounds like your skills will come in useful, and I'd love to hear how you managed to build your own spindle.

Karina - Like Sara Smith's, it sounds like your military background is definitely going to come in useful. That, and with limited resources, being a dentist will be sure to be handy whenever anyone in your community gets a tooth ache. Eccentricity is always welcome - look at the mad bunch in Abel Township!

The workshops we have been having lately have been very recreational oriented, a wreath and bow making class, a painting and wine class, a bucket decorating class. These definitely help take your mind of things like zombies. They also help you bond with your neighbors. I did get into a chat with one of my neighbors at the painting and wine class all about being a runner for my township (the app) here during the apocalypse. She loves running so was going to check this out too!

I imagine knowing how to craft a wreath would make you very popular around the holiday season, Carol, with the lack of decorations around! I hope that your neighbour enjoys getting stuck into the app.