Zombies! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Doberman

In a wonderful action scene from the movie, star Milla Jovovich battles eight of the zombie Dobermans, dispatching the final one with some major kung fu. The poor creatures have been modified by the T-virus.

Answer: Mobilize

The word is derived from the French 'mobiliser'.

Answer: Woody Harrelson

The movie broke $60 million in less than three weeks in release, becoming the highest-grossing zombie movie to that point. Harrelson has had run-ins with the law and has been arrested several times, including once for planting hemp seeds (he meant to be arrested, so that he could challenge Kentucky's marijuana possession laws).

Answer: Marvel

"Marvel Zombies" is great fun, and often shocking. Who would have thought that the Silver Surfer could ever get eaten by Spider-Man?

Answer: Monster Mash

Amazingly, Bobby 'Boris' Pickett's song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1962. It's been covered by people as disparate as the Beach Boys, the Misfits, and (in 1978) Ron Howard in an episode of "Happy Days".

Answer: All You Zombies

The Heinlein story is punctuated "--All You Zombies--" and throws every time travel paradox one could imagine into the plot. The main character turns out to be his own mother AND father and, in fact, every character in the story. The Hooters song hit #58 in America (they had more success with "And We Danced", which reached #21).

Answer: Pennsylvania

In "Night" the survivors hole up in a Pennsylvania farmhouse, and "Dawn" takes place at the Monroeville Mall in Monroeville, PA. The third movie in the series ("Day of the Dead") is set in and around Ft. Myers, Florida. George Romero, the master of the zombie movie, got his start directing commercials and shorts, including one for "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" (a slightly friendlier neighborhood than can be found in most of his later films).

Answer: Zora Neale Hurston

She didn't believe they were supernatural. She wrote "What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."

Answer: Rum

According to Mr. Boston, a Zombie uses Gold rum, 151-proof rum and White rum (with sugar, lemon, lime and pineapple juices, passion fruit syrup and bitters). Two or three of these, and you'll feel like a zombie, all right!

Answer: Philosophical Zombie

A philosophical zombie can also be called a p-zombie or a p-zed, and is used to refute the behaviorists and materialists. These arguments are esoteric as all get out.

Answer: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

In the novel, heroine Elizabeth Bennet is not only a romantic prospect for Mr. Darcy, but a swordfighting martial artist quite skilled at destroying the living dead. A prequel (to be called "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls") followed year later.

Answer: "Gone With the Wind" (1939)

The others, believe it or not, are all actual movies. So are "Erotic Nights of the Living Dead" (1980), "Fast Zombies with Guns" (2009) and "Female Mercenaries on Zombie Island" (1998). It's a rich field. It's also a field where anyone with a few thousand bucks and a few tubes of black makeup can churn out a horror movie in a week or two.

Answer: The Cranberries

The song was about the conflict in Northern Ireland, and memorializes two youths who were killed by an IRA bomb. It reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks. The Cranberries also had hits with "Dreams" and "Linger".

Answer: Ayn Rand

Rand also wrote "The Fountainhead". She was fiercely opposed to religion and anything else that she considered mysticism, and her views on economics (including passionate defenses of laissez-faire capitalism and passionate attacks on government regulations and interventions) make her popular even to this day.

Answer: Voodoo

Voodoo (also known as Vodou or Vaudou) is native to Haiti, where the inhabitants mixed Roman Catholicism with African native religions. Zombies aren't part of the real religion, but rather an element of rural beliefs.

Answer: One that has been compromised

A zombie computer has been hijacked by a harmful program or virus, of which the user is usually unaware. Sometimes the computer that has been compromised is used to promulgate spam, and sometimes it can even attack web pages.

Answer: Synchronized swimming

Other events included the Body Bag Race and the Relay of the Dead (with severed limbs instead of batons). The event raised money for the British Heart Foundation, though I'm surprised it wasn't for the Brain Tumour Trust.

Answer: Thriller

"Thriller" won a Grammy in 1985 for Best Long Form Video, and in 1999 was named the Greatest Music Video Ever Made by MTV. The song featured additional lyrics by horror icon Vincent Price, and spooky additional music by Elmer Bernstein.

Answer: Left 4 Dead

"Left 4 Dead" did so well that a sequel was released a year after the original was put on sale. The creatures in the game are infected humans, not real zombies. At one point in the game, a memorial wall is shown, and the names on the wall are those of the game developers (with birth and 'death' dates).

Answer: Canada

By 1944, the Canadian armed forces had gone through a meat grinder in Europe and were at only 50% of their full strength, and yet there were 100,000 troops guarding Canada who had been conscripted on the promise that they wouldn't have to go overseas. The fighting troops scornfully called these soldiers 'zombies'.