7 Famous Zombie Movie Weapons (That Would Get You Killed)
Zombies are the best imaginary enemy because they let you indulge in psychotic fantasies while still pretending to be the good guy. You're not a demented serial killer, you HAVE to slaughter your way through the crowds of people you see every day! Except they're all brain-damaged and incapable of teamwork! That's less sporting than an ice hockey team versus a figure skater, and even more fun. But it's only fun because, like all daydreams, you only imagine the good bits. Very few people daydream about their own failures and pointless unnoticed deaths (and those that do are safely channeled into reality TV). Here's how seven spectacular anti-zombie weapons will get you killed.
Shotgun
Why it's awesome:
The shotgun is a better anti-zombie strategy than cremation. Whatever magic makes corpses immune to bullet-holes gives up when those holes are a foot across, because even things that don't need a heartbeat find limbs quite useful. And as games like Left4Dead teach us, headshots become head-erasers.
Sixty down, 6 billion to go.
At close-quarters you don't even need to aim: pump-actions turn you into a chick-chacking death machine, while double-barrels convert a crowded hallway into an escape path lightly misted with Eau De Corpse. Undead ups the ante with a triple-barreled monstrosity which can only have been built by MacGuyver's evil twin.
That's 300 percent more phallic than an actual penis.
You're now a zombie because:
A shotgun has a worse "safe area" to "huge noise area" ratio than a Space Shuttle launch, which at least takes people places zombies can't follow. Firing a shotgun clears a few meters ahead of you while summoning everything in a mile radius to fill it again, so every shot generates a net increase of zombies.
Repeated shotgun blasts are the zombie equivalent of ringing a dinner bell. It says: There's food over there. And every time it fires there's one less zombie ahead of them in the queue. You serve by stopping to reload. The multiguns are even worse: Undead's trishotty is about as wieldy as an angry rhinoceros and even worse for your survival chances. Burning through ammo at triple the rate instead of bothering to work at aiming makes it the Hummer of guns. It's a more impractical use of multiple barrels for defense than Donkey Kong.
Flamethrower
Why it's awesome:
They're the ultimate in crowd control as long as you remember to laugh maniacally and do air quotes for "control." Because the Geneva convention doesn't give shit about zombies. Flamethrowers kick so much ass that even countries who've decided they're going to spend the next few years murdering each other -- but it's totally cool with every other country because they called it first (war is weird) -- agree not to use them.
After World War II, even the people who'd just fought through World War II thought "Jeez, maybe those things were a bit much."
The usual downside is carrying a huge flammable tank on your back but zombies can't take advantage of that. It's like an alien spaceship boss finally fighting a colorblind pilot: massively overpowered weapons and they can't see your weak point! The zombies' only advantage are numbers, and that only makes your Flamesgiving Day bonfire that much brighter!
You're now a zombie because:
Burning sucks for people because it uses up all the air (which zombies don't need) and causes incredible pain (which zombies can't feel). A real burning human body doesn't melt away like an ambulatory enemy candle, either. If you are fighting a tinder-dry undead monster which ignites like it's been wrapped in kindling, you're fighting a mummy. And dead, because all you've done is burn them down to a Cursed Charred Skeleton which is +5 invulnerable to your fire.
Zombies are gooey so you need to keep applying external flame to keep them lit, and unless you're using an oxacetylene torch you're not actually getting rid of any zombie in the process. You're just making sure they enjoy flame-grilled flesh when their burning jaws bite your face off. You'd be better off handing them primed grenades and hoping you've run away before they work out how to drop them. Oh, and since you also tend not to fight zombies in space or underwater, now the entire area is on fire and you can't see or breathe. But that won't be problem for long.
Lawnmower (Braindead/Dead Alive)
Why it's awesome:
Before Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson made movies for people with severe mental problems. Dead Alive is something a scriptwriter would write as a meat packing plant insurance scam, be caught because it's retarded, then found innocent by reason of insanity. New Zealander Lionel Cosgrove ropes a lawnmower onto his chest and charges into a zombie-packed hallway. This scene shreds so much disgusting fake flesh that hot dog makers consider it a motivational seminar.
Hey zombies, who's on the right side of the spinning blades?
Not you!
There are more body parts flying around than a mannequin factory, and more bodily fluids flying in larger arcs than every other video clip on the Internet put together. It goes on so long that liquefying people actually starts to get boring, which is wasted cinema, because if you've watched this movie this far you don't need to imagine what it's like to be a serial killer. The creation of oil didn't spend so long killing things into liquid. Hannibal Lecter would watch this and lose his appetite. And in some horrific movie sexism, Lionel kicks zombie limbs down the hall to where his girlfriend is doing the same thing in the kitchen, with a blender.
You're now a zombie because:
Dead Alive zombification is passed on by fluid exchange so running around at ground zero of an infection-slurpee fountain is problematic. Lionel bathes in so much blood vampires in other movies start to smell him, and so much soaks into the floor that people in Madrid start hungering for human brains.
Most men only look like this after being born.
A weapon where enemies can get within headbutting range will have literal teething problems. Luckily New Zealand lawnmowers are apparently powered by a miniature black hole: the zombies queue up to reach into the whirling blades like it holds the Meaning of Death. Assuming that your zombies don't know that they're almost at the end of the movie, the only dent you'll make is carving a chest-hole into the first zombie to bite your face off. Though your shambling rotomatic corpse will be slightly better at stumbling through underbrush than your zombie colleagues.
Why it's awesome:
Anything named after Nikola Tesla has to kick electrical ass, and Dead Rising 2 uses it to kill more infection victims than the plague. The Tesla Ball reverses the polarity of a metal bingo ball: instead of keeping people alive just this side of death, it kills the shit out of them on the other. It's like the Japanese copied the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark, only the new version is miniaturized, electrical and completely insane.
When even a video game tells you, "Stand back, we got this," you know it's going to kick ass.
More ball-based testosterone and voltage than Zeus's testicles.
The lightning extends around three meters, meaning he's ramped two car batteries to 9 million volts. Each bolt lasts a few seconds so they're producing more electrical power than every nuclear plant in the world combined, and even more destructively. With the game selling over 2 million copies that means this sphere has killed more fictional things than the Death Star. And has no stupid flaw.
You're now a zombie because:
Chuck Greene grabs a bare metal frame carrying enough electricity to overload Cybertron with his bare hands because HELL YEAH! (Ditto Frank West In Dead Rising 2: Turbo.) They're simply too awesome to die, despite -- and this is the problem -- being the only ones who possibly could. (Well, apart from the game's "survivors," but those suicidal bat-magnets could kill themselves in a coma so they don't count.)
Electrocution kills humans because it overwrites their heartbeat and nervous system. Two things zombies aren't known for. In fact, lightning bolts is exactly how you get a pile of corpse parts to stand up and start murdering things in the first place (citation: work of Dr. Frankenstein, incomplete). This weapon would kill negative zombies. Larger currents can cause burns and cell damage, but burns are already useless and it's hard to damage a cell past "rotting."
Kung Fu
Why it's awesome:
Anyone who doesn't enjoy a Resident Evil movie is an idiot, because they knew exactly what they were getting into before they watched it. The movies' mission statement is "Milla Jovovich improbably kicks all zombie ass," and they stay so true to that statement they even have her kick zombies to death despite that being stupid and impossible. Because in the Resident Evil world those are both synonyms for awesome.
Clip dubbed in foreign language, because the words in a Resident Evil movie totally matter.
She goes up against a dead security officer armed with only a cocktail dress. Her first response is to shove both her bare fists at its biting mouth, then leap two meters straight up and jam her leg in there too.
That punch wouldn't even work against a regular corpse.
Either she's trying to confuse its mind by giving it too many limbs to choose from, or she's forgotten that Milla doing splits only stuns living men. Luckily we're more than five minutes into a Resident Evil movie by this point so physics has already given up and gone home. Which is why the standing jump-kick shoves the zombie twice her mass five meters back (to death), instead of bouncing Milla off the door behind her into its open mouth.
You're now a zombie because:
If we have to explain why shoving your naked flesh into a zombie's face is a bad idea, go right ahead. Your intelligence is so low you'd slow even them down, giving the rest of us more time to escape. Even an abrasion would have you T-virused and rotting, although Milla's okay -- the one thing the movie got right is how she's a genetically superior being.
Katana
Why it's awesome:
A lone hero wields the noble samurai blade against mindless hordes, though if you're the sort of person who says, "noble samurai blade" you'd probably refer to them as sheeple. Be warned that the zombie apocalypse will destroy all your wall scrolls.
Pajamas, sword, I don't see what else I could need!
Swords are cool because all guns are starting pistols for the "Chase the human" zombie marathon. And katana are the coolest swords. Light, fast and ridiculously sharp, the only problem is how the hordes won't give you time to pose dramatically and whisper haiku after each killing stroke. But you'll know that they're dramatically falling slowly in half several seconds after you sprint into the sunset.
You're now a zombie because:
The only monsters less worried about cuts than zombies are zombie lumberjacks. You might as well insult one as slash it. Sure, there's decapitation, but if you can cut through 50 spinal columns in a row then stop showing off, Superman, and enjoy the one time you're actually allowed to burn people with your eyes.
The katana is single edged, so it sucks in a crowd compared to proper swords. It's designed for quick draw because that's how samurai won every argument up to and including "most overly romanticized group of poverty-stricken servants who slept with little boys." Quick draw is the one fighting skill you don't need against zombies. With a decent pair of binoculars you have time to dig a moat against the buggers.
Or use a Suzuki Katana to get the hell out of there.
Katana are also higher maintenance and less useful in survival situations than a Hilton. Real ones need to be polished, powdered and gently sung to in perfect Japanese or they'll rust into flakes, and are ridiculously easy to chip and notch. In the extremely unlikely event of surviving your first zombie crowd you'll be left holding a handle and a foot of what looks like crinkled tin-foil. And it's useless for everything else. Adventuring through the ruins of mankind, you'll need to be able to rip open doors and steal mankind's stuff. Trying to lever open a wooden door with your katana ends with your sword losing a fight against dead tree, never mind dead humans.
When you have to fantasize about the end of society for it to be useful, and still be wrong, you'd be better off using your life-size catgirl pillow as a weapon. At least that'll reactivate the buried instincts of female zombies to move away from you and reduce the horde by 50 percent.
Chainsaw
Why it's awesome:
The iconic anti-zombie weapon and the greatest proof that zombie plans are practice for mass murdering. "I'm not saying I will, but if I was to kill thousands of unarmed people who can't run I'd say Leatherface had the right idea." That's the sort of thing you tell psychologists to score a supply of free sedatives.
Because there's no better problem-solving strategy than having drugs AND a chainsaw
Chainsaws work on the dismemberment strategy, the safe bet that the average undead is not Voltron and is therefore harmless when broken into pieces. They're the black hole singularity of zombie movies: Inescapably pulling in every undead for miles and then doing physically impossible things to them.
You're now a zombie because:
Fantastic, you've found a melee weapons which needs to be reloaded. Which means you need to find gas. Two acts no one has ever survived when facing zombies. It's the jumping-split-kicks of movie weaponry: Looks awesome but ignores everything we know about the human body. Chainsaws are designed to cut through trees, not fleshy sacks full of sinewy wiring, and even without jamming it takes far too long. The only animate target which moves slowly enough and wouldn't jam it is an Ent.
Their only defense is kind of hoping you won't.
There's also the range. You can swing other weapons at arm's length, but have to hold the saw close to your body because swinging a chainsaw around saves zombies the bother of tearing out your intestines. They're also the loudest weapon in the entire world, a zomboid dinner invitation: "Lone human, already surrounded, bring friends."
Special Exception:
Ashley J. Williams knew exactly what he was doing. When the choice is "chainsaw" or "no hand," chainsaw is the right choice in every situation but masturbation, and every time he used it was a one-on-one combat situation (Ditto the shotgun). We might go around poking holes in movies, but Bruce Campbell's ass-kicking is 100 percent documentary.
A right-chainsaw for a hand might castrate you, but he clearly doesn't need to masturbate.
Luke McKinney recently drank the hottest sauce in the world, then told Capcom how to make Dead Rising 3. He also tumbles and has a website.
For more weapons porn, check out 6 New Weapons That You Literally Cannot Hide From and 5 Famous Sci-Fi Weapons That They're Actually Building.
