Welcome to the home of CU HvZ

What is Humans vs Zombies?

Brad Sappington and Chris Weed at Goucher College invented Humans vs Zombies (HvZ) in 2005. HvZ is a game of moderated tag commonly played on college campuses. The game is essentially a grown-up, modified, and much more fun version of the childhood game of tag. The game is played with two teams, humans and zombies. Each teams goal is to survive through the duration of the game without being "tagged." Humans and zombies each have their own set of rules they must abide by during the game.

Everyone is registered into an online computer database, and that site is responsible for tracking which players are humans, and which are zombies.

On Monday, everyone starts as a human (except one person) and wears a bandana around their bicep. The goal of the humans is to survive as long as possible by not being tagged by a zombie player(bandana around the forehead). The goal of the zombies is to tag every human player before the week ends. All game-play takes place outdoors: buildings are safe-zones and streets are restricted.

Throughout the week, objective based missions will challenge your strategies, speed, and team-work skills. The team that fails a mission will have negative consequences. Missions are not mandatory, and you can attend as little or as many as you'd like. Missions will be off-campus and allow the use of Nerf Blasters. Additionally, kills made off campus count towards the game on campus.

Humans are able to defend themselves from being tagged by running away or stunning the zombie. Humans can stun a zombie for 10 minutes (this is subject to change depending on mission outcomes) by throwing a sock at them or hitting them with a foam dart (foam darts are only allowed off campus).

If a human player is tagged by a zombie, they must give up their "human ID card" to the zombie. Once a zombie collects this card, they must go to the online computer database to enter the ID number within one hour. Zombies can share a kill with two other zombies. If a zombie does not eat in 48 hours, they will die.

All players should be familiar with the rules before playing the game.