The Walking Dead zombie invasion "infects" Boston tomorrow

^{The Walking Dead trailer}

Okay, everybody, gather up your battle shovels and cans of baked beans. You know that impending zombie apocalypse the past 75 years or so of pop culture have been preparing us for? Well it's coming. Tomorrow. Here.

Let it be known that we at the Phoenix foresaw this uprising of the previously dead. When the offspring of those precious few who survive ask how it was that their mothers and fathers escaped the flesh eating hordes, let them say it was the Boston Phoenix that alerted the residents of this fair city to the ever-near threat of The Walking Dead-oh. Well, there we go. Cover blown.

There won't be a real  zombie invasion tomorrow. However, Boston will be subjected to the next best thing: a fake zombie invasion for the sake of advertising a totally awesome TV show based on a really cool comic book!

That's right, in honor of their soon-to-debut series The Walking Dead, the fine folks of AMC will be unleashing hordes of their zombie minions (read: unpaid extras and interns) on Boston's Public Garden tomorrow morning to wreak havoc, mutter about brains, and engage in some rather clever guerrilla marketing.

According to the press release, 26 cities around the world will be "infected," starting at daybreak in Taipei and Hong Kong. Localized swarms of costume-makeup sporting zombie billboards will then start popping up around major metropolitan landmarks at peak morning commute hours.

Big Ben: Zombies.
The Acropolis: Zombies.
The Brooklyn Bridge: Zombies.
The Public Garden's George Washington statue: ZOMBIES.

And it's probably a really good thing the AMC people sent out a press release about this. Otherwise, we'd likely have a War of the Worlds-esque situation on our hands: mass hysteria, panic, all the people who've been reading zombie preparedness guides bursting forth from their front doors, guns a'blazing.

Eh, but why should I be worried? It's not as if our city has set any sort of crazy precedent for dealing with subversively marketed TV shows. No, Boston's got a good sense of humor when it comes to those sorts of things.

So swing by the Public Garden tomorrow if you want a taste of what humanity's eventual demise will look like. Should be uplifting. If anything, it'll at least show you a level of cool you'll never be able to reach with your Halloween zombie get-up.


The Walking Dead premieres October 31st on AMC at 10 p.m.