Events: OzApocalypse - Zombie Apocalypse

I had the opportunity to go and run through the Oz Apocalypse Zombie Experience over the weekend, and wanted to give you my thoughts on it.

There has been quite a bit of controversy around the event, primarily as it changed hands very late in the piece and there was quite a disparity between what the original promoters/organisers (IRL Shooter, who ran Patient 0 in 2013) and the Zombie Apocalypse Survival Experience: LAZARUS event being put on by OzApocalypse and Horror Corp Entertainment. This mostly stems from OzApocalypse "buying up" the Pozible Campaign that for whatever reason IRL Shooter found itself unable to present.

This was NOT the sequel that IRL Shooter had promised, this was an event put on by OzApocalypse that drew on that event, its fanbase, and premise. I think that in several aspects it was not as impressive as IRL Shooter's Patient 0 (it wasn't nearly as large or sprawling, and didn't have the embedded story).

However, it was also superior in several ways. The technology for one, I felt was significantly better.

The irM4's from iCombat sync wirelessly to the smart bandoleer we all wore, which recorded shot data, accuracy, and more.  The irM4's were fitted with a 150 round SmartMag and additional magazine kits can be purchased. If a player is eliminated, their gun shuts off for a period of time preventing cheating! The best thing about the new weapons were that they had CO2 powered sound and recoil. you could feel every shot, hear every rapport.

I knew if my teammates were firing, even over the din of the event space, and that was  a crucial improvement in the experience.

The bandoleers were tied to our irM4's wirelessly, and reported back to a central computer, and more importantly, they tied into the headbands worn by the Zombies, these were similar to the bandoleers we wore, and acted as emitters to make proximity to the zombies damaging. Get too close, and they "bite".

Shoot the sensors and they flash and go solid with a kill, and the actors dropped. All this data was fed back through to the behind-the scenes control and scored were generated, and passed against the membership cards we were given at registration, giving you reciprocal rights at other iCombat sites, and the ability to accrue rank in the network.

The OzApocalypse website made mention that there was the ability to customise your irM4, but this is a bit of a misnomer, in that there were a second set of weapons, the short barreled, and Picatinny rail mounted short barreled "Commando" irM4's in their armory, fitted with vertical grips, there wasn't really the facility during the Zombie Apocalypse event to do any customization other than adjusting the buttstock and in my case, fitting my own sling, the trusty 215Gear sling.

Other than this it replicates one of the most known assault rifles in the world, the M16/M4, and is used by law enforcement and militaries all over the world.


It has the same form, fit, and function as the real thing and brings the word realism up to a whole new level. I really enjoyed the "Tap, Rack, Bang" functionality. Removable clips, internal sensors and fully functional parts, from mag-release to selector switches . The weapons and sensors made the event for me. No more reload button or hard to hear electronic sounds. You hear and feel every round, in a longer engagement, if you were kitted out with spare mags you could drop your mag and slam a new one home. They bypassed this by assigning everyone a cylume glowstick, and had a reloading station where we were restocked by a technician, but you can see how it could be easily enough facilitated in a more longterm event.

And that's all before we even get to set dressing, gameplay and the actors! I was really happy with what we faced when we passed through the containment doorways.

 When OzApocalypse took the event over, they brought on Horror Corp Entertainment from the US, engineers who specialized in Haunted House and Zombie Apocalypse Experience "in real life" gaming environments. They have three decades of experience in visual, sound, event and multimedia production, creating theatrically-based, interactive horror and genre projects. The event at the Melbourne Showgrounds takes place in a blackened-out, light-controlled battle zone, it doesn’t matter what time of day it is,  – players will step into an ominous world to fight ravenous zombies. The Prop and Set Designers as well as Makeup Artists create a film set style environment that immerses players in the Zombie Apocalypse survival experience.

Combinations of lighting, (and lack of lighting), selected use of smoke, as well as a really harrowing and oppressive sound-scape really put pressure on the player as they navigate a maze or debris and horrific scenes.

I had the good fortune to get to go backstage and saw the interconnected passageways the actors could take to move from area to area, where they would emerge and lay in wait for the passing players, in and around the sets. The hospital area bugged me the most, as I work in them, and have done the graveyard shift...

The maze was a CQB nightmare, with blind corners, concealed alcoves and all manner of cover for the zombies to lurch from and come at us. Importantly though, for all its twists and turns, it was a "safe" environment, from an OH&S perspective and you could easily cope with the 6-8 person teams recommended. We ran it in a team of three, and were like a well oiled machine. I didn't have to worry about anyone actually getting hurt for real during even an intense simulated combat.

We weren't rushed along as we had been in the Patient 0 event, and even though the maze was relatively small, much more in line with a Haunted House event rather than the sprawling warehouse/factory sit utilised for Patient 0, and we went through the maze twice, as a part of the gameplay, I certainly didn't feel any less fearful of my life when zombies came at us from dark corners, or rattled on us from behind chainlink walls as we faced more direct threats.

Back in the registration area, the stark lighting, clean floors and all too living other players was a more jarring experience. I wanted back in to my comforting darkness, screaming and sirens. The one upside of the "real-world" was that I got to fool around with both the Glock training weapons. The Glocks had the same "real features" as the irM4's, removable clips, wireless targeting and scoring, and ammo-counts. Unfortunately due to limited battery capacity, and high accuracy, they weren't really suited to the spray-and-pray zombie hoard threats the game presented with.


A regrettable technical difficulty, but one the organisers preferred to keep it out of the game, but available for range use! I also got to use the notorious pain-belt! It was a really, really unpleasant experience and I heartily recommend it for all gamers. Again, it apparently was not suited to use in the zombie game, but us perfect for PvP shooting. I tried it on the low setting, which was startling and also all the way up at high, which was curse-making, but didn't hamper me as soon as it stopped. Incentive not to get shot, for sure.

So, all in all I was really pleased with the OzApocalypse Zombie Apocalypse event. I was a Pozible campaign ticket holder, and I feel it was pretty amazing that they would offer to honour the IRL Shooter LAZARUS ticket holders at all, which was super generous. It certainly is NOT a sequel to the Patient 0 game, and its really hard to compare the two events as apples and apples. I really enjoyed it, and really look forwards to going back for more.

The Zombie Apocalypse Experience is running for two more weekends, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays while weekdays and weeknights give those who love games like Call of Duty the chance to combat team vs team combat in the BATTLE APOCALYPSE arena, which is the same area as the Zombie Apocalypse event, but with the connecting areas opened up, some walls opened up, and more personal threats, with pain belts available on request, I believe. I'd really recommend you get along and enjoy it, in either its Zombie Apocalypse, Battle Apocalypse or even the kid-friendly FAMILY versions, before it finishes.

AND, thanks to the organisers, I can offer all my readers a whopping 35% discount with the code "COYOTE0415" (thats charlie-oscar-yankee-oscar-tango-echo-zero-four-one-five).

TICKETS: Lazarus www.flavorus.com/ozapocalypse
Battle Apocalypse www.flavorus.com/battleapocalypse
Group Bookings (minimum of eight players) email tickets@ozapocalypse.com

Facebook and Twitter OzApocalypse
Instagram ozapocalypse.com.au

Interview: Zombie Dog Tags

I ran into some fun folks when visiting OzComicCon, who made and sold custom dog-tags. When I wast told they had a Kickstarter going locally to me, to take their product to the next level. I got in touch with Sgt. Slaughter from Zombie Dog Tags.com to talk about their products, vision and their Kickstarter Project.It finishes Thu, Feb 6 2014 1:00 PM AEDT.

So, in a departure from my usual style, here's the interview...


Q: What is a Zombie Dog Tag?
A: Zombie Dog Tags are your way to show your support for humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. Zombie Dog Tags come in a range of styles and designs from engraved Zombie hunting permits, to the fully personalised MILSPEC embossed dog tags. Our hand anodised aluminium, USA made tags are engraved in Melbourne Australia and offer a smorgasbord of colours, images and text so you can dish out zombie carnage in style. Our super tough battle proven military grade dog tags are USA made, and embossed in Melbourne Australia on the same military equipment that has already seen action in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are built to last and will ensure you will be ready to defend the world when the invertible happens.

Q: What made you think to design and make your own dogtags?
A: We were involved in a Zombie related website that photographed models in their apocalypse gear with knives and swords.
Each model had their own unique serial numbered dog tags which they got to keep after the shoot. The dog tags proved so popular we ended up having to buy more and more. We were paying a fortune for crappy quality embossed dog tags and we had no flexibility when we wanted to change them as everything had to be ordered a month in advance. So we decided to buy our own US Military Dog tag embossing machine. After the massive crate arrived with our new pride and joy, we sat around talking about how great it would be if we could put images on our tags and create other Zombie related dog tags. After a bit of investigation, our options were cheap crappy production in china or invest in our own equipment and make high quality ones ourselves. We talked to friends and family and everybody said we were crazy as no one would want a Zombie Dog Tag so that was good enough for us, we love a challenge so we purchased a machine and here we are. Of course it was an overnight success and these days we have primetime shows like the Walking Dead and Hollywood movies with Brad Pitt fighting Zombies so of course everyone gets it now!

Q: How did zombies in popular culture influence your designs?
A: I’d say our biggest influence is when we’re sitting around watching Zombie movies and one of our team says ‘That person needs a tag that says …’. We love the classic symbols used like the biohazard sign, but we’re also trying to create our own, for example the crossbow in the Daryl Dixon quote tag we make ‘I ain’t nobody’s bitch’.

Q: What about other apocalyptic disaster situations?
A: Not so much currently, we’re fixated with Zombies right now, but we do have future plans to expand into different genres.


Q: What uses do you foresee your dogtags playing in survival situations?

A: I’d say the most important tag would have to be our bottle opener tag, just because the world has been overrun by Zombies, doesn’t mean we should stop drinking beer! But we do also have a more serious side to our tags. We’ve created tags with parental contact information for children with disabilities, tags with vital medical information and tags for sports people with next of kin information (who takes ID with them when they do things like jogging at 5am in the morning!). ICE (In Case of Emergency) doesn’t need to be boring, and we’ve found people are much more willing to wear a tag like ours rather than a generic ICE tag.

We’ve also supplied members of the US Military with embossed tags which i’d say was our biggest challenge as we had to setup our machine to perfectly match tags from photographs, which was completely different than the usual army tags and in a layout we’ve never seen before.
The end result came out perfectly and was approved for use, we created MILSPEC and Special Ops Black tags so who knows where these tags are right now or why this different layout was approved. Maybe we have a bunch of top secret Zombie killing super soldiers running around wearing our gear!


Q: What are your KickStarter design options, and what do they represent?
A: Via Kickstarter we’re introducing a whole new concept, the personalised Zombie Hunting Permit, each tag has a personalised name and a unique serial number. This has never been seen before! We have 7 different tags suitable for Zombie haters, Zombie Lovers and we even have ‘INFECTED’ tags for Zombies! We’re also giving away FREE embossed tags with some pledges. We’re currently running a vote so the Kickstarter community can decide what goes on these bonus tags.

Q: What conditions do you expect your dogtags will survive?
A: We have the 2 types of tags, embossed and engraved. Embossed tags are battle proven and the same as used by the US military and are created by punching the letters through the steel so they are raised, just like the plastic letters on a credit card so you can’t get much tougher than that! The engraved tags is diamond drag so we actually remove metal from the tag rather than just burning the coating like laser engraving. We even engrave the tag twice to get the perfect deeper shine. I’d say both types of tags will outlast all of us in most situations!

Q: What materials do you use, and why?
A: We use the best materials we can source. This does come at a huge cost to us but we feel its the only way we can stand behind our product. The embossed tag blanks are USA made and our supplier also supplies them to the US military.

The Aluminium engraved tag blanks are also USA made & hand anodised in the US too. The chains we use on all the tags are also USA made. Both types of tags are embossed or engraved by us in Melbourne Australia. We have many options for cheaper materials and faster production, but that's not what we want, we don’t want to be the biggest seller of tags in the world, we just want to be the best!



Q: How did you get started in finding the equipment you needed?
A: A lot of phone calls! This isn’t standard equipment you can buy locally. After months of research we ended up managing to get the last military embosser available at that time from the USA.

  It was a big struggle for us as we could of easily purchased a ‘commercial embosser’ that would of produced a similar result and been much cheaper and faster, but we wanted the same as the US military use but you don’t just walk into a shop and buy that type of machinery. We ended up getting hold of the same machine that has seen action with the USA military in some of the worst hotspots on earth, if works for them, then its good enough for us. The engraver was easier and we imported that from France.

Q: What resources would you need to keep going, if SHTF?
A: Our embosser is classed as portable as the US military would obviously move it around a lot. It has a hard steel outer shell and a handle plus a few pins you can put in to stop things moving around on rough journeys but as far as moving it goes, its a very heavy machine! It works on both 110v & 240v so wherever we go in the world it’ll work. If we lose electricity then we go old school and we can use our manual embosser. Our manual embosser can be tailored to work with any piece of metal, so if things got really bad, I think we’d be cutting up old car panels up and using them for dog tags!

Q: What designs do you have in mind in the future?
A: We’ve been having a lot of fun at conventions like Comic-con, Supanova and Armageddon so we’ll be increasing our Zombie range for those shows. The biggest thing in our future will be more customisation, we’d really like to offer a whole range of personalised Zombie Dog Tags. We are getting close to making this happen now so stay tuned as we might have some nice surprises coming up this year!


So there you have it, my thanks to Sgt. Slaughter and the ZombieDogTags team.