The Zombie Apocalypse Dream
On March 14, 2025, I had a dream about a zombie apocalypse. Oddly, it was set in the same world as a dream that I had a few months back. This story will cover the contents of that dream and give some analysis on why my brain created the events in the dream the way it did.
The dream began at night in some sort of building with yellowish lighting. A few people were in that building including me and an adult who I know in real life (I will call this person Edward from now on for anonymity purposes).
We heard someone say there was a zombie before we actually saw one, and we needed to run out the building before one caught us. Here, Edward gave me some advice, explaining that you might not be faster than a zombie, but you can be smarter than one. This wasn’t in any way deprecating the zombie’s critical thinking capabilities. It was largely based on a scene from the Iliad that I had read the night before, where during Patroclus’s funeral games, Nestor gives Antilochus advice in winning a chariot race. Antilochus had the worst horses, but Nestor advised him to “use all your skill and wits” (Il. 23.313), similar to Edward’s advice.
We both ran outside (in the dream, the running wasn’t actually included, I think it just skipped that part). There was a square playground area surrounded with a tall, dark-green tarped gate. I entered the playground, and I could hear Edward and some zombies fighting at one of the gates but couldn’t see them (it was pretty much pitch black). I scurried towards the opposite side of the playground (kind of like a spider crawl), and opened a different gate while Edward distracted the zombies. The use of the two different gates followed the advice that Edward had given me of being smart rather than fast. We ran away with zombies chasing us. I remember being slightly scared the zombies would catch us, but also I recognized I was in a dream, and therefore I couldn’t die.
The dream cut to a community consortium for humans. It looked vaguely like a science fair set up with people wandering around. We were trying to choose an element to represent us. I immediately thought of water, because I figured zombies would melt when hit with water. This was probably based on the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz, who melted when Dorothy threw a bucket of water on her. Oddly, zombies as far as I can tell don’t actually melt in water, even in the dream world. Another person who I knew in the real world (who will also remain anonymous) asked me to choose the element. I had a moment of uncertainty and came up with a really odd explanation that convinced me water was the right element. We were trying to choose an element to represent humans, so somehow I related humans and diamonds (like on a card deck), and diamonds to water. I’m not sure how I associated diamonds with humans. My best guess is that it has to do with the card games I play at lunch in the real world.
Then I talked to another person I know in the real world, who I will call Ben for anonymity purposes. The talk referenced my previous dream, and Ben explained that the first wave of zombies is always what takes us by surprise, because we can only react once we know where the zombies are (I also think he made an analogy to computer programming somewhere that was probably based off the video game Plants vs. Zombies, but I don’t really remember). In the dream, I remembered that there had been a chant the zombies used to convert other people into zombies. Ben called it the Ortiga chant. Ortiga means stinging nettle in Spanish, but considering I didn’t know that until I googled it just now, my dream naming the chant that wasn’t based on stinging nettle. To be unaffected by the Ortiga chant, you can hold your hand above your head in a fist. This idea was probably based on LARP’s method of indicating you are no longer in game.
The dream cut to me in a van (I didn’t actually see the outside of the van, just the indoor seating that looked like cushiony gray seats). There was a yellowish-purplish lighting. These vans were sort of military units that got dropped in the areas we knew zombies were. They didn’t drive on a road like normal vans, they just somehow traveled through space. I think there was a voice from a speaker indicating we were approaching a location with zombies, and then we stopped and the doors opened.
I saw two people standing in slightly zombie-like positions, and I took out a sword (I don’t think I saw the actual motion of taking it out, it just sort of existed in my hand with the assumption that at some point of time I had taken it out). It was also not a wobbly thin sword, it was pretty similar to the point of a spear, but in sword form, if that makes sense. I moved the sword to stab someone, but before I actually attacked someone shouted, “We are not zombies.” I looked around and realized the people were robotics students. I looked at each person’s expressions, expecting each of them to be a zombie, but they weren’t. I went back inside the van and realized that we had answered a false call.
That’s around where the dream ends, though I vaguely remember a scene from my previous dream where half the people in the van turned into zombies, and I found myself completely confused about which side I was on.
Overall, characters and advice in this dream were oddly close to the real world, though I guess that happens in most dreams. The world was surprisingly fantasy like and it’d be fun to try and write a fantasy novel set in it. Bye!
