NationStates Z
NationStates Z or Z-Day is a zombie apocalypse that hits the NationStates world every year on Halloween. Sadly, Brad Pitt does not make an appearance. There have been four iterations of NSZ since its debut as an April Fools' prank in 2013; it got such rave reviews that Max Barry and the admins agreed to make it a regular Halloween prank.
In the Z-Day version of NationStates, nations are given options on how to respond to the oncoming pandemic, whether to kill off infected citizens, endeavor to cure them, or embrace them as the lovable little undead cannibals that they are. Once national leaders have rendered their decisions, they are given additional tools to deal with the crisis, equipping them to attack their regionmates with either kill squads, cure bombs, or zombie hordes - depending on how the attacking nation has chosen to address the pandemic. (The April Fools' version of NSZ was slightly different, in that nations could not "attack" others, and that instead of "embracing" the hordes, nations had to option of exporting them to their neighbors.) A tally is kept for how many citizens of each nation remain alive, have been infected, or have died. Similar tallies are kept for regional and World numbers.
Regions, though lacking central Z-Day controls, often rally their citizens before the apocalypse comes, usually encouraging members to research a cure to keep regionwide stats on live citizens up. Closing the borders prior to the apocalypse is common; sometimes region leaders will even eject members who attack their regionmates with hordes or kill squads. Various recommendations about how to respond the looming catastrophe have been made by Z-Day "experts," though the advice is often conflicting. Some urge regions to instruct all their members to research for a cure, yet it has also been suggested that only nations who already spend a lot on health care to research a cure, and that those spending more on defense should focus on killing the zombies. There is no one universal gospel truth on this.
At the end of each apocalypse, population numbers are restored, and a leader board records the top 100 regions in the following categories: Most Survivors, Most Survivors with No Infected, Most Infected, and Most Dead.
In 2016, there were over 104 trillion survivors worldwide, with more than 25 trillion still infected, and a staggering 327 trillion people killed.
