For the next 24 hours, Josue Rios will endure an agreeable sense of paranoia.

The seventh edition of the campus-wide game Humans vs. Zombies brings students together as they engage in a three-day cat-and-mouse game.

“[The best thing is] being scared all day,” Rios said. “You have to look around all the time wherever you’re at, you gotta be careful for stalkers and things like that, and then you can find some people and then you can team up and maybe go to a building together,” he said. “Toward the end it gets really, really competitive.”

The rules forbid participants to venture into the halls — the actions must transpire outdoors and within university limits.

Humans may throw socks at the zombies in order to keep them on a timeout for 10 minutes, yet the latter merely have to place one hand on their opponents to “turn” them.

 In order to tell each other apart, humans wear a bandana around their arm, whereas zombies do so around their head.

“If you break it down it’s just a big game of tag,” said SAC adviser Jeff Nilsen. “We had 60 people sign up this year, and you start with one original zombie, so that person’s infecting everybody else, and then you’ll see the game spread.”

The game started at 8 a.m.; around 5 p.m. both parties get together in front of the RSC for a joint mission.

Humans need to stay “alive” until Wednesday to achieve victory.

Nevertheless, should the zombies manage to infect all involved humans, they will win the game.

Freshman Craig Lehman, original zombie at the west campus, expressed his joy to participate in the event despite his disability, which he stated actually helps his team achieve their goals.

“It’s a good experience to get to know people here on the main campus,” he said. “It isn’t just that I’m disabled — they’re also using me as an asset. It’s working so far.”