You're standing in the middle of a circular landing in front of the dorm hall. You're surrounded by people wearing different colored headbands, with only a nerf gun and an assortment of darts at your side. Next to you is your friend, shaking as heavily as yourself, holding a rolled up sock in their hand, ready to let loose as soon as they decide to charge. The air is still, tension rises.... And they lunge at you.

Such is a typical standoff in the game of Humans vs. Zombies, a nationwide game played on college campuses. So what is Humans vs. Zombies? (HvZ for short) Well, as one of the moderators of Webster University's game of Fall 2015 called it, it's a "glorified game of tag." Everyone who signs up (note: you have to have medial insurance and sign a waiver to play it, because things get intense fast, but it's oh so worth it) starts out as a human, with one original zombie. Humans can use nerf guns or throw socks at zombies in order to stun them for a certain time period, but if a zombie tags a human, they are "turned" into a zombie.(Everyone is given a headband, humans wear it on their arms, zombies on their heads, when tagged, a human puts theirs on their head.) With a few certain exceptions, this is how the game is played at its core. And this game, at least at Webster University, lasts five days. And it was the best five days of my semester.

I played most of the game as a human. This being my first game, I was impressed because a lot of other first year students were turned into zombies just in the first day. Things didn't really escalate until the first mission. Oh did I forget that? Yeah, there are missions. Which is rad. We had two every day until the final day, one day mission and one night mission.

Let me preface this next paragraph by saying how absolutely anxiety-inducing it is to be a human. But I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT. You have to watch your back every time you leave a safe zone or building, keep a brisk pace, and be aware of your surroundings at all times. All while trying to get to class on time, get some food (maybe), and keep up with homework? It's an insane task, but when you get to it, you really feel like there's an apocalypse at hand.

The first real day, the Wednesday after the initiation, was when the typical college day changed to become the real life movie that HvZ feels like. Your daily commute, walking from dorm, to class, to cafeteria, back to class, becomes almost a stealth mission as a human. You don't want to lose that precious humanity, because once it's gone, it's pretty much gone forever. So you find new routes, you change things up. And the beauty in it is, when you do this, you find places on your campus you've never been to before.

Besides being stealthy and finding new routes, the main way humans survived was the way the people in so many movies and shows did: stay together. If the humans bound together, our bullets and socks outnumber the hands that the zombies had, and we could make it through a large "horde" (note: The terminology in this game is freaking awesome) with only about four well equipped people.

So with all of this talk of "travel in groups" people were almost forced to talk to other students who would've been perpetual strangers. I even had an intense standoff with someone I had only spoken to maybe twice, and because of this, we've since became friends. (It's Facebook official, y'all.)

Why do I think every campus needs HvZ? Because it promotes friendship making like no other event I've ever seen. How else do you make friends but by blasting small darts at other students, all while hyped up on adrenaline? So please! If you read this and your college doesn't have an HvZ division, make a petition or something because this event was one of the greatest things I've ever done! (And there's one every semester..... see you all Spring 2016 ;) )