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Zombie in My Pocket is a game mentioned in the Halloween Gaming, Part 1: Zombies post I linked to in my last post. I wanted to post quick about this game since I got a chance to try it out. Zombie in My Pocket is free, you just download and print out a PDF file. After you cut out the pieces (best to use cardstock, but I just used regular printer paper) you are ready to go. It's a great solitaire game. A session only takes 5-15 minutes, and it is really easy to learn. If you need a little diversion from time to time do yourself a favor and print out a copy of Zombie in My Pocket.

The Make: Blog linked to a series of excellent posts on Halloween games by Defective Yeti. I've played a couple of these, but my list of games to try has just increased after reading these.

1. Halloween Gaming, Part I: Zombies
2. Halloween Gaming, Part II: Vampires and Witches
3. Halloween Gaming, Part III: Miscellaneous Malevolence

Board games, and to a lesser extent card games, are two things my wife and I really enjoy playing together. When they get a little out there in the realm of the fantastic she tends to get a little turned off, but I may need to pick up a zombie or vampire game and see how we like it.

I wrote a post back in March about a couple zombie books I had read. I figure it is time for more zombies, especially since we are getting close to the Halloween season. That, and I watched Night of the Living Dead on my iPhone this week while eating lunch over the course of a few days.

Night of the Living Dead is of course the classic Zombie film. You really need to watch this movie in order to judge all the others. I don't want to go into the plot too much if anyone would read this post and then want to see the movie. The real brief synopsis is there is a small group of people trapped in a farmhouse that is surrounded by zombies. In zombie films it's important to keep things simple. Too often filmmakers try to get fancy and come up with a good reason why there would be zombies running around. There are zombies running around, or more often shambling around, you really don't need to spend time on coming up with a great reason for it. Night of the Living Dead used the excuse of a spacecraft that brought back some weird radiation from Venus. There was some good news footage to establish that, but otherwise it was left alone. Night of the Living Dead is a classic, you should really take the time to view it. After watching Night of the Living Dead to get a little history on zombie films, there are a couple recent films I can recommend that will probably scare you a bit more. I'm actually kind of a big baby when it comes to scary movies, my wife can confirm that for you. For some reason I still watch the damn things though. If you are like me make sure you have someone's shoulder to bury your head into for these next two. Dawn of the Dead is a remake of a 1970's film of the same name. I've actually never seen the original, but this was a good movie. It got going really quick and didn't really let up. The big change in this movie, and something that seems to be happening in recent films, is that the zombies didn't shamble around. They ran. That alone made things really edgy at times. Dawn of the Dead is a great movie to watch late at night with the lights out so your imagination can take you away. Watch Night of the Living Dead before this so you can pick up on the homage to the original zombie movie. 28 Days Later is another pretty good zombie-like flick. I say zombie-like, because the zombies aren't really zombies. In this movie England sees an outbreak of a "rage" virus. People are infected by coming in contact with infected blood or saliva. It's a pretty scary premise. The infected aren't seen very much, but when they are there is definitely tension. The movie opens with a bike messenger waking after being unconscious in the hospital for a month. He has no idea what has happened, and all he sees is an abandoned city of London. He has his first run in with the infected in a church, and luckily for him, is saved by a couple other survivors. This was another pretty good zombie flick. There is a sequel, 28 Weeks Later, which I have not yet seen. It is on my list though. I would be remiss if I didn't mention a couple more light-hearted takes on the zombie movie phenomenon. Shaun of the Dead is a wonderfully campy take on the zombie movie. They do a wonderful job of making a zombie apocalypse funny. Shaun is a bit of a slacker who can't seem to do much right, but when the dead rise up he sees his chance to turn his life around. Another great comic zombie movie is Fido. It seems there was a great war fought after the zombies rose up, and now we all live in wonderful 1950's era communities surrounded by scorched landscape crawling with the dead. Thanks to the people at ZomCom the upwardly mobile family can have a zombie of their own. The movie chronicles the story of Fido, one such zombie. It's a great boy and his dog type movie, except it's about a boy and his zombie. That's it for my second zombie post. I'll have to read some more zombie books or watch some more movies if I'm going to keep this up. If you have any suggestions feel free to leave a comment.

Make no mistake, the zombie hordes are coming. I wanted to post about a couple books I've read that have helped prepare me to survive the coming holocaust. The Zombie Survival Guide is in general a pretty entertaining read. Should the zombies attack you'll be glad you've got this book in your emergency kit. The author, Max Brooks (he wrote both books) does a great job of spelling out what you ned to do to survive in some common scenarios you may find yourself in. Brooks goes to pains to educate the reader about the physiology of the zombie, tactics to use when defending against them, long term survival strategies, and even some documentation on zombie outbreaks throughout history. He does a great job of making the material seem very serious in light of it's absurdity. I'd recommend you pick up a copy of this one.

World War Z is more of a documentary style novel. It chronicles "The Zombie War". Made up of interviews of individuals from different parts of the world throughout the fictional war some sections are better than others. The book starts with an interview of a Chinese doctor who talks about the first couple infected he saw. It then goes on to talk about the virus spreading throughout the world. This build up and the battle of trying to stop the progression of the zombies is excellent. The interviews are very good and the story is gripping. In many case you can feel the tension he is trying to communicate. My biggest complaint about this book is once the war is basically won (that's not a spoiler, you knew we had to win otherwise there would be no book). As things settle down the novel starts to drag a bit at times. Still an enjoyable read, it just gets a little slow near the end. I recommend both books highly. You can get them at your local bookstore or amazon.com.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
• The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead