Hi, 2012 Blistered Hearts here! I carried my infection for almost 3 years til the day that the Skin Unlocking system came out, and ever since, my passion has been collecting skins. As a Veteran Infection Specialist, I have a lot of skins to help bite people with, and that's why I volunteer at NVLB - Our mission is to help everyone get the zombie skin they want during Survival, with No Victims Left Behind. We have a ping group for every skin ready to give you bites to secure your infection in a timely manner and put you on a fast track to skin unlocking! Without receiving bites, it can take days for your infection to start on its own, so keep an eye out for our Bite Me Directory in the Survival Forums! Being a part of this group has become my secondary passion, and the camaraderie of the community makes me look forward to Survival every year. If you join us, you won't regret it. For more information from our group's creator, visit

NVLB

! Success! You bit them! Thanks for your help, Infection Specialist!

Sign up at the VIP for the strain's codename (in parenthesis) and I will be able to personally help you with any of which I have pictured below! I, and dozens of others, will be alerted to help you whenever you use the group's #ping in the forum. If you want to ping a lot of groups at once and get a surprise infection, please use #call4nvlb instead and list what you want or don't want, or else people like myself will get dozens of pings from a single person! Please wait until you're infected before helping others, since we can't bite those who are wearing skins. When you get this notification, you'll know that you're good to go! Thank you for using the Volunteer Infection Program! You have been matched with an Infection Specialist, now you just need to sit back and enjoy the ride... The NVLB members will be checking your avatar afterward to confirm you got the correct infection, but if you want to check yourself, head to the Healer and cross-reference the stage one images on SubetaLodge. Please check back ASAP if you signed up for any bites but wanted something specific as you may end up with the wrong infection and will need to clear it and sign back up to have it corrected. Once you're ready to help bite others, select the mature skin in your Wardrobe from the Skins tab and click wear. It will take upwards of 10 bites to infect someone so keep biting! And remember, only bite people with what they asked for. Many people use the free option to save money and trust us to do right by them, so bite with kindness! We openly discourage "shadow biters" who silently give people the wrong infection.

In 2009,

• Zombie Skins first appeared with the introduction of The Great Pandemic (SubetaPedia Article here).
• symptoms began as a highly contagious flu, accompanied with rash, reported early in the month, it developed over several weeks. It escalated into mass hysteria due to itching and biting, with a rise of violence and the birth of the undead.
• the outbreak was covered over several newspaper and broadcasts by reporter Titania McGee, who appeared over the next few years to cover the anniversaries of the Pandemic.

2009's Outbreak Reports

• there were items to decrease the chances of catching illness and being bitten, the Doctor Mask and Shrunken Head Pendant respectively.

2009's Anti-Zombie Items

• Skitters first appeared, opening the Zombie Den to sell to Zombies only - which was one of the main perks of infection for years. Skitters became a key voice for his people.
• a quack doctor called Doctor Lockheart introduced the fake cure items, while Louis L'amour later appeared with the real cure.

Dr. Lockheart's Fake Cures

Cures for 2009, 2010, 2011 & 2012. 2012's cure later cured all skins.

• through 2012, Zombie Skins were either kept on the avatar year-round, or cured - but doing so would permanently lose that skin. If you wanted a new year's skin, you would have to lose your old skin. The "fake cures" are supposed to give your avatar temporary hex effects.
  WARNING: Due to quirks of the wardrobe, using any of the cure items - real or fake - while incubating a zombie skin may cause you to LOSE your progress! If you want to use any of them for any reason it's best to wait until your skin has unlocked in the wardrobe!
• Zombies who did not take the cure were granted asylum in Shadowglen, founding The Underground, thanks to Skitters. Due to tense emotions surrounding The Great Pandemic, the living and unliving were segregated going forward.
• emphasis on humans surviving the zombie plague, or zombies surviving the cure, is how the holiday became colloquially known as "Survival".

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In 2010,

• the Survivor Memorial Statue was unveiled. People can lay flowers at, or kiss the statue.
• floating Cardboard Zombie Masks were introduced as a "symbol of solidarity". However, this was taken to be offensive by the Zombies, and when worn while refreshing in The Underground, you would be attacked and given one of that year's viruses. The Cash Shop's Skitters Mask would speed up the rate of your attack. These masks were key to infection for the next two years as well.

Masks are offensive to Zombies

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In 2011,

• the SAI investigated morse-coded pastries and scraps of paper from The Underground, believed to be biological warfare and a revolutionary plot.

Items from the Pastry Incident

• the SAI created fake zombie strains that lasted an hour, for secret agents to investigate the Pastry Boxes.

SAI's Fake Diseases

• the SAI closed its investigation when the morse code was determined to read "Kiss The Baker", originating from Skitters' affection for Fantine.
• Skitters ran for Chancellor in the Underground with a lot of supporters.

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In 2012,

• Fantine chose to become infected, and if you were not already infected via the mask method, you would catch this strain from Fantine, which would later be named The Baker's Kiss. She then moved to the Underground to be with Skitters, opening Half Baked. Missing her old life, she later cured herself and turned over Half Baked to Elsie. Fantine and Skitters went on to split amicably.

Fantine's Mature Infection

• it was revealed that some Zombies find the word zombie to be a slur of sorts, preferring the term The Unliving. Other Zombies like Ecks have taken back the word with pride and started the Z-Coalition, a zombie rights group.
• Ecks threatened to poison the living masses, and you could either start siding with Ecks or continue helping Skitters. (Personally I was #TeamSkitters! How could I betray him?) Her true goal was revealed to be manipulating Skitters into uniting their opposing groups and obtaining power as a Chancellor.

Some Ecks vs Skitters items

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In 2013,

• Skitters and Ecks were both presented as Chancellors, overseeing the United Zombie Alliance. In their letter, it was made clear that the cardboard masks were offensive and were to no longer be used.
• the Subetan Center for Infectious Disease created a vaccine that would stop zombification for good, resulting in no new skins that year.
• Louis L'amour took this opportunity to dominate the holiday, opening L'amour Parlour.

Signatures of Chancellor Skitters & Chancellor Ecks

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In 2014,

• Organ Harvesting was introduced via a forum button similar to Kissing and Biting today. You could harvest a number of organs from a user until they were fully depleted with the harvesting of their brain. Avatars reset after a length of time and could be harvested again.

A few of the harvested organs

• You could then complete quests for Bubbles, exchanging harvested organs for the 2014 Vials. After drinking a vial, the infections were only temporary and you could not remain a Zombie like in past years.
• in November, the current Skin Unlocking system was introduced, allowing anyone who remained a zombie from previous years to unlock their skin.

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In 2015,

• Gunner Knight introduced the Volunteer Infection Program as we know it today, with the aim being to increase the Zombie population in a safe and controlled way. The VIP was created by the United Zombie Alliance in association with Genetech Labs LLC, creating new strains each year.

The VIP's infographics

• only the small population of zombies from 2009 - 2012 could start spreading their infections to anyone who wanted an older skin.
• the survival forums were greatly disorganized for the next few years, with dozens of people creating their own threads asking for bites and advertising the ability to bite others, and some user-maintained lists appearing.

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In 2018,

• Avel created a hub with a list of biters for people to indvidually ping to ask for bites, and this morphed into NVLB.
• Later that year, the streamlined ping group system was created in preparation for the next year, with a ping group for every strain. Now all people had to do was ping the #hashtags and every biter who signed up would get a ping. This process is completely user-created, entirely unofficial, and very community-driven, with the Bite Me Directory appearing every year since.

The rest was history