Unbound

What is Z-day?
NationStates Z-day is a special zombie-themed NationStates event, when every nation gets infected with zombies, who try to overwhelm and consume the population, turning them to yet more zombies and eventually, kill them for good. Z-day occurs every year somewhere around Halloween (usually starts at around 20:00 GMT on the 30th of October) and lasts for 36 hours. For the exact time, keep your eyes on the Nationstates News, it may or may not be displayed there. After the event ends, populations return to normal (there is no lasting effect), but zombie tally boards remain visible to all, so players can see how well (or badly) they did. The tally boards also show the statistics of regions, not just individual nations.

World Z-day page: page=zday_tally
Your Z-day page: page=zombie_control

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Unlike in the case of the nuclear war event, there is no way to opt-out. Your nation will be infected with zombies, whether you like it or not. Though your settings page has an option to hide the Z-day info, it does only that. The event happens regardless, and your nation's status will still have an effect on the rest of your region.

• It is very likely that some changes are made to the event every time. For example, zombies tend to become a bit more vicious every year.

• Noncompliance with your region's policy regarding this event might get you ejected, or even banned, so get to know it.

How to start?
During the event, your population will be divided into three parts:

• Survivors, who are healthy, productive citizens. You start the event with most of your population being survivors, and zombies can be cured to become survivors again.

• Zombies, who will try to infect survivors.

• Dead, who are permanently dead for the duration of the event. Dead people will accumulate when zombies start starving to death, or if the military is used against the zombies.

At the start of Z-day, most of your population are survivors, with a relatively small number of zombies. Over time, the infection will spread, slowly converting survivors into zombies. When there are very few survivors or none at all, zombies will start starving to death. The rate of infection depends on two things: the ratio of survivors and zombies in the given nation, and the region's infection rate, which in turn depends on the ratio of zombies and survivors in the region, and passive cure deployment. Cure deployment happens when a nation is highly advanced in its cure research. Passive cure deployment is not to be confused with actively using Cure Missiles.
To access your "Zombie Control" page, on your nation's home page, click the biohazard symbol ☣.
Then you will see something like this:

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The Issue
 
Recent reports suggest the existence of an infectious virus causing its victims to display aggressive, flesh-eating behavior. The virus appears to spread via the exchange of bodily fluids, such as biting. This may be NATION's darkest hour.
 
The Debate
 
1.“One is always tempted to err on the side of compassion, in these situations, hoping the infected might be able to be cured,” says General RANDOMNAME. “And that would be a terrible mistake. We must marshal the full force of NATION's military might against these undead abominations while we still have the ability to do so.”
 
 EXTERMINATE ZOMBIES
 
2.“No! No!” cries bespectacled science type RANDOMNAME. “I know this looks bad, but these people aren't monsters! They're husbands, wives, brothers, children! Our efforts must go into researching a cure—a cure that could not only save NATION but also our neighbors in REGION! Working together with our fellow nations is the only way out of this nightmare!”
 
RESEARCH CURE
 
3.“I'm going to just float something here,” says political advisor RANDOMNAME. “What if instead of gunning down our infected, or throwing money after a cure that may not even exist, we get on board with the zombie apocalypse? If we work with the zombies, not against them, maybe this needn't be so bad. Perhaps we can even figure out a way to sustain an undead population indefinitely.”
 
EMBRACE ZOMBIES
 

[] Cure research
[] Zombies
[] Anti-zombie squad

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The 3 options will each unlock an active ability, also known as a superweapon, which you can use once every 20 seconds.

Option	Active Effect
Cure the zombies	Allows you to send cure missiles to other nations, which converts zombies back into survivors
Fight the zombies	Allows you to send anti-zombie squads to other nations, which converts zombies into dead
Embrace the zombies	Allows you to send zombie hordes to other nations, which converts survivors into zombies

If an active ability/superweapon is used, it will appear in the national info feed of both the sender and the receiver:
[receiver] was struck by a Cure Missile from [sender], curing [number] million infected.
[receiver] was ravaged by a Zombie Horde from [sender], infecting [number] million survivors.
[receiver] was cleansed by a Tactical Zombie Elimination Squad from [sender], killing [number] million zombies.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Many regions have a policy that dictates that you attempt to cure. In such regions, breeding zombies will get you ejected and possibly banned.

• Active abilities will not be available until you complete your first research (typically 1-2 hours after you have started it).

• Even if you did not embrace zombies, you will still have "Hordes" in your superweapon research list, as this is based on the % of your infected population, rather than research.

• If your nation is struck by another nation's active ability, you will have to wait 2 minutes until you can use your own.

• Each game-hour lasts 1 real hour but doesn't necessarily begin/end on the real hour.

Curing Zombies and survival strategy
Although it is paramount that as many nations start researching the cure and as early as possible, the passive reduction it gives to the region's infection rate is not enough by itself. To prevent zombies from overrunning the region, active abilities -Cure Missiles- have to be used. However, without a strategy, simply firing missiles all over the place is very ineffective.

To fire a cure missile at a nation, go to its home page, there will be a big button for it, you can't miss it. On the nation's home page you will also see a small red icon that is either shaped like a lab vial, a practice target, or a brain, which indicates if the nation is engaged in curing, killing, or breeding zombies, respectively.

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CURING (AND SUPERWEAPONS IN GENERAL):

• You can only fire superweapons at nations within your own region.

• During the event you will not be able to create new regions, in case you'd want to flee. Most regions will also be password protected to prevent zombie raiders from coming in.

• Keep your eyes open for any abnormalities regarding the event! Barry likes to screw people over in new and inventive ways every year.

• If you have multiple nations within the same region, you can use them to cure each other.

• You can also keep firing superweapons with multiple puppet nations simultaneously, however, due to the way the game keeps track of cooldowns, you will need a different web browser for each of them.

• A nation that is struck with a superweapon will be unable to use its own for two minutes. So do not fire cure missiles at nations that are also engaged in curing, prioritize inactive nations instead. This can also be used to disable zombie breeding nations by continuously bombarding them.

• The effectiveness of your cure missiles depends on your research level and the ratio of your own survivor population to the zombie population of the target nation. Nations with larger survivor populations and higher research level will be able to cure more zombies with a single missile, but if there are few zombies in the target nation, diminishing returns will apply.

• For this reason, you should prioritize nations that are roughly the same size as yours, with a significant zombie population.

• The minimum number of zombies that will be cured by a single missile is 1 million. It is possible to reduce the zombie population to 0, in fact, this is our region's goal.

• A nation that is completely cured will only get re-infected if the region's infection rate is very high, or if it's embracing zombies either by its own choice, or due to undead saboteurs.

• For the above two reasons, it might be feasible to first completely cure nations with very few zombies (<10 million) to quickly reduce the number of our zombie infested members.

• Coordination is very important! Use the RMB, telegrams, or a third party program. You will be able to cleanse nations faster, and you won't accidentally block each other's efforts. Watching nation feeds is also an easy way to see if a nation is engaged in curing, is being cured itself, tries to sabotage the region by sending zombie hordes, or is being attacked by a zombie breeder itself.

• If you are in a region that forbids embracing the undead and you see a zombie breeder nation, immediately report them to those with border control authority. Don't forget to also write about it on the RMB to warn others, then continuously bombard them with your cure missiles to prevent them from sending hordes. Keep in mind however, that a nation might be breeding zombies against their will, in which case they are not to be removed from the region, and can be restored to their original policy by hitting them with anti-zombie superweapons. You can determine whether a nation is breeding zombies on their own accord or not by hovering your mouse over the red brain icon next to their nation's name.

• Don't forget that zombies start dying if they don't have enough survivors to feed on. Focusing on a few nations and letting others rot will get their populations killed.

• Possibly the best strategy: disinfecting very small nations completely first, then firing a couple of missiles at every inactive nation in every hour to keep their zombie populations in check, while using the remaining part of that hour to focus your curing efforts on a few nations that are roughly the same size as yours. If you are a very small nation you can also cure very large ones that have very few zombies left in them, the size difference won't matter due to the diminishing returns applying anyway, and you will always be able to cure a minimum of 1 million zombies / missile. Active, curing nations should also cleanse each other but do so in shifts, not to hinder each other.
  

Yearly tweaks
As stated earlier, this event tends to get tweaked every year, usually making it harder. For the first few Z-days, this meant higher and higher infection rates, but there were also more substantial changes, which are listed below.

During Z-DAY 6, the zombie horde superweapon gained the ability to change the target nation's research focus against their will: being ravaged by a zombie horde could make a nation involuntarily embrace zombies. In 2018, a countermeasure has been introduced against this: "your anti-zombie superweapons can be re-targeted to remove undead saboteurs from infiltrated command and control structures. This will restore the nation to its previous stance." In other words, hitting a sabotaged nation with a cure missile or a zombie elimination squad has a chance to restore that nation to its original policy.

More notable incidents happened during 2020. First of all, the usual countdown to the event's start on the news page was not present, and as a result, many regions and nations were caught unprepared. Secondly, there were two interventions in the event by Max Barry. First, the cure research of all nations were halted one time (ie: if the curing option was selected by a nation, it would be deselected). The other intervention was that the special Z-day border lockdown was lifted on all regions, making them potentially vulnerable to raids by zombie nations.

In 2024, the event started slightly earlier than usual, catching many players unprepared. Keep your eyes on your nation, in case this tweak occurs again!