Nony Dutton photo

Anna Wingfield, a sophomore at Goucher College in Baltimore.

Of all the majorly fetishized cult characters — ninjas, pirates, vampires, etc. — zombies are by far the least sexy. They groan and lurch and their limbs fall off. But people go nuts for them. In 2005, Brad Sappington and Chris Weed of Goucher College (in Maryland) created a game called Humans vs. Zombies, which caught on and has since been played in schools all over the world. It even landed itself a number-one spot on Stephen Colbert's "Threat Down."

Humans vs. Zombies (recently nicknamed "H1Z1" — haha) is an intricate game of tag that involves Nerf guns, bandanas, socks, computers and superior survival skills.

The game generally goes like this: You get a big group of people. (Two-hundred-and-fifty played at Wesleyan this past September, and Connecticut College recruited about 74 for their game, which started Oct. 25.) One person is designated the Original Zombie, and it's the O.Z.'s mission to tag Humans, which "kills" them and converts them to Zombies. Humans can only stun Zombies for 15-minute spurts by shooting them with Nerf guns or hitting them with balled-up socks. If a Zombie doesn't tag a Human for longer than 48 hours, that Zombie "starves." Class- and dormrooms are safety zones. Everyone has a serial number, and if you get killed or if you starve, you log it on a Web site and move the position of your bandana. (If you're a Zombie, the bandana goes around your dome.) Zombies win if they kill all the Humans, and Humans win if they starve all the Zombies. Get it?

There have been fall and spring H1Z1 games at CT College every year for the past three years or so, estimated Alex Marcus, a senior and administrator for the most current game. He e-mailed me a few details about his "third or fourth" year putting together the event. Because H1Z1 is largely Web-based, Marcus has been in touch with Sappington and Weed, whose Web site, humansvszombies.org, serves as the place players keep score and get some tips or advice. The game's creators help coordinators all over the country, sometimes traveling to different campuses.

Marcus says one of the biggest challenges in getting the game together is "plotline." Plotlines are crucial for keeping the game "flowing nicely" and "allowing zombies plenty of opportunities to feed on humans, etc.," he wrote.

Wesleyan's game was over in about a week, the game's administrator, Frazer Goldberg, told me. The Humans won.

After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, a handful of schools banned H1Z1 for its use of toy guns and its violent premise. In 2008, Alfred University in New York was put on lockdown for two hours after a faculty member claimed to have seen someone with a gun. The someone was a student named Dan Bourlotos, just a Human with a Nerf gun, trying to survive a high-stakes game of Humans vs. Zombies.

Many schools have lifted those bans, but some, like Washington State University, have kept them. Lt. Steve Hansen, of the WSU police department, said the school didn't feel the use of toy guns was appropriate. In light of escalated college-campus violence, and the murders of students at Wesleyan, Yale and UConn, it seemed there might be concern about or sensitivity to the game and its use of guns. But both CT College and Wesleyan University said they hadn't heard any complaints. And Marcus said the school's president even helped promote the game by sending out campus-wide e-mails encouraging students to participate.

"As long as we follow the honor code and are being safe and all, we can do pretty much whatever we like," Marcus said.