SHOT Show: Zombies Out of Control

Marketer with poster for Leupold's zombie-hunting rifle scope.

Heard in the crush of humanity between the exhibitors' booths: "This whole zombie thing is way out of control."

Someone in the outdoor-products industry once told me that you could sell more of anything if you made it in a camouflage pattern.

Leupold VX-R scope for zombies.

Nowadays you put fluorescent lime-green accents on it and use the word "zombie."

Here are some 2012 SHOT Show zombie-defense products.

Scope flip-up lens cover.

Leupold optics has a scope for zombie-hunting, complete with covers showing the optimal head shot.

Maybe it could be mounted on a rifle along with the back-up anti-zombie chain saw.

Anti-zombie loads are available for 12-gauge shotgun or for rifles firing .223 Remington.

If you run out of ammo, defend yourself against the living dead with a Ka-Bar anti-zombie knife. It's not the famous Marine Corps knife — this one has a fluorescent-green handle.

Lightfield's anti-zombie buckshot.

Hornaday's anti-zombie load.

Zombie gun-cleaning kit from Otis.

For the zombie ammo.

When the shooting is over, clean your weapon with Otis Technology' s gun-cleaning system in the zombie-themed pouch. It's not just tactical, it's zombie-cal.

"You have to get aboard [the zombie craze]," one marketer told me.

Another predicted that zombie-themed marketing was far from dead (sorry) because "Brad Pitt just signed a movie deal" for a zombie film — maybe even a trilogy.

There has to be more than Brad PItt driving the zombie theme.  For some people, it's just Halloween all year (earlier post: Zombies in Vermont).

In the shooting world, is zombie-preparedness just a way to think about shooting other upright bipeds — ones that are no longer human?

During and after the Cold War, zombies were seen as analogues for Communists. They were "brainwashed," as the 1950s expression had it.

I had breakfast with an editor who suggested that the political symbolism was still there — like the Lilliputians and Yahoos in Gulliver's Travels.

"A lot of zombies voted in 2008," he said.