A zombie walk (also known as a zombie mob, zombie march or zombie lurch) is an organized public gathering of two or more people who dress up in zombie costumes. Usually taking place in an urban centre, the participants make their way around the city streets and through shopping malls in a somewhat orderly fashion and often limping their way towards a local cemetery or other public space.
Promoted primarily through word of mouth and online message boards, zombie walks are an underground activity. During the event participants are encouraged to remain in character as zombies and to communicate only in a manner consistent with zombie behavior. This may include grunting, groaning and slurred, moaning calls for 'brains'. It should be noted that zombie behavior is a hot topic of debate. Purists who draw their definitions from the original Living Dead films will claim that a zombie would never have the ability to call for 'brains' and furthermore that a zombie needs only living (or freshly killed) flesh for its sustenance and not the brain in particular.
An advanced technique to heighten interest and 'realism', some zombie mobs will actually 'eat' victims to create new zombies, in sight of horrified onlookers. The better coordinated zombie mobs will establish a route and an easily recognizable signal, so that participants can plant themselves as 'civilians' (ie not zombies yet) along the route in old tearable clothes, and as the mob shambles along it can continually discover and 'devour' new victims. As the zombies surround the new victim to loudly 'feed', concealing him/her from witnesses' view, they tear clothes and quickly apply greenish makeup and fake blood, to create a new zombie, who then shambles along with the ever-expanding pack to find new victims.
The earliest Zombie walk on record was held in the summer of 2001 in Sacramento California. The event, billed as The Zombie Parade was the brain-child of Bryna Lovig who suggested it to the organizers of The Trash Film Orgy as a way to promote their annual midnight film festival. A few dozen folks gathered to be made up as zombies and then paraded around town. They were driven to various parade routes in a white school bus owned by The Gallery Horsecow. The event was a success and has continued annually ever since, with a Zombie Pub Crawl and Zombie Art Walks added.
Organizations like Zombie Squad have used zombie walks to raise awareness for community service events being sponsored such as food drive and blood drives. This is normally associated with blood drives for the American Red Cross as a play on the spread of zombie infection through blood contact as popularized in films such as the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead and George A. Romero's Land of the Dead .
Via : www.wikipedia.org
