Sabrina's Word Wednesday: Headshot

Sabrina's Word Wednesday: Headshot

Warning: This particular blog post includes content about a specific type of violence.

Zombies can be created by a couple of things; voodoo, demon/evil possession of corpses, viruses, and sometimes even strange bacteria or parasites. The resultant zombies of any of these can have a bunch of different symptoms (on top of, you know, wanting to eat brains) like being slow and lumbering, or being superhumanly fast and cunning. 

Luckily, there is a sure-fire way to kill a zombie, no matter whether it is the product of some voodoo queen's curse or an experimental virus accidentally released to the public: headshot.

A headshot is a slang term that means exactly what it sounds like: shooting in the head. Any gamer, hunter, or assassin can tell you that a headshot is the most efficient way to kill something as quickly as possible. But for zombies, it is just about the only way to do it.

You may have noticed that zombies, although they are technically dead, can still sort of function, even if it's in a primitive, shuffling fashion with not much else going on. But in order to even do that, a part of the brain MUST still be active, even if it is a virus or magic that is activating it. 

Biology tells us that the brain is the cockpit of the body; nerves and all kinds of other fascinating and hard to pronounce bodily components take messages from the brain and send them to other parts. So something is telling that zombie's legs to jerk forward and walk towards the smell of fresh brains. How do you stop the message from getting to the legs? Take out the connection between the brain and the rest of the body. 

You could technically accomplish this by surgically removing the head from the body, but who has time for surgery when the zombie apocalypse is happening? Your best bet is to fire a leaden projectile at a high velocity into the brain, which will scramble up everything inside it. Headshot. 

In almost every zombie story I have ever come across, the survivors already know the deal. Have a gun of some kind, and aim for the head. It's effective and quick, but it doesn't leave much room for creativity.

So that being said, aside from headshots, what is the most creative way you've seen someone kill a zombie? If you need inspiration, check out this collection of crazy zombie kills by Todd Gilchrist on Blastr.com.