Self defense teachers often use markers to teach people why knife fighting is a bad idea.

Hand out markers, tell em to attack each other.

A minute later, everyone is covered with black stripes.

"And that is why we say the winner of a knife fight is the one who dies in the hospital instead of the one who dies in the ambulance. Any questions?"

Check this out:

Obviously, here is where zombies appear.

If you wanted to simulate a zombie outbreak, hand someone a marker and have some EMT's try to evaluate them while the person flails.

Odds are, at least one first responder will get some black lines on their skin.

And now you have an R0.

Try it in a simulated car accident, an ER, a traffic stop, etc.

Now you can say "on average, 3 first responders will get infected within the first 30 seconds of car"

Your simulated patient flails. A minute later everyone stops, checks for black stripes.

Those who have stripes are given markers, and they sprint after anyone nearby.

One minute later, everyone checks. Etc

Now you have an R1, R2, etc.

You could do this training exercise in any hospital or any EMT team, even with genre-savvy people, and there'd be black stripes galore.

This would give you a very accurate idea of how fast such an infection would spread.

Do it on a college campus in the manner of a zombie LARP and damn near everyone involved would be covered in black stripes by the end. Even if they were genre savvy and got really into it.

Basically, it'd be pretty easy to test exactly how a 28DL kind of infection would affect first responders.

If you really wanted to, try this:

Hand your kid a marker and splash some fake blood on em. Tell em to limp into the next room with some family in it.

Now you know the R0 outside hospitals and EMT's and such.

Even if your family is genre-savvy horror movie lovers, there's gonna be black stripes on everyone in that room.

When cons exist once again:

Find those guys who are really, really into zombies. Who've spent a lot of time actually thinking about zombies.

Have em face a teenager full of energy drink armed with a black marker, count the stripes after 30 seconds.

Now, the interesting thing is: why don't zombie fans do this?

Why haven't any EMT's recorded a funny video where the guy they're training on starts swiping em with markers?

Why aren't there videos of professed zombie fans like Zombie Go Boom, just ferociously attacking one another with black markers?

Tons of videos of them attacking watermelons and such, though.

You'd think that zombie fans would have thought "gee, I wonder how actual self defense teachers train people to respond to brutal, animalistic ferocity"

But, it's been nearly 2 decades since 28DL and the Dawn of the Dead remake, and you can't find any zombie fans who handed their kid sister a black marker and told her to go wild

Why haven't zombie fans done this, instead spending countless hours fantasizing about weapons and prepper stuff?

None thought "hey, wonder what'd happen if my kid brother were to attack me as a zombie"

And that's how you know serious zombie fans are not actually thinking that hard about their hobby.

Call it the Sharpie Test: is a single sharpie enough to prove that all of your elaborate plans failed to take into account a very basic thing?