Their mission is to protect and sever. That’s right. A mission to sever the zombies that threaten the lives of San Antonio residents. The Zombie Response Team (ZRT) is a survivalist group dedicated to educating people about different tactics to survive a potential zombie apocalypse.
“Our motto is ‘if you can survive the zombie apocalypse, you can survive anything,'” Morgan Barnhart, co-founder of ZRT, says.
In December 2010, Barnhart and a group of zombie enthusiasts started ZRT in San Antonio, and the team’s membership has consistently grown since. ZRT’s lessons and techniques are based on research from the U.S. military and other survival classes from organizations such as the Red Cross. Barnhart and her fellow zombie fighters truly want to educate on these tangible skills.
“We aren’t just taking the zombie theme because we know it’s popular. It really wasn’t our intention to reach out to people through zombies; we just like zombies,” Barnhart says. “This just happens to be a really great way to reach out to people.”
ZRT is very active in distributing its survivalist message through most social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and podcasts, all available on its website. Recently, the team made an appearance at the 2012 Texas Comic Convention in San Antonio. Barnhart and ZRT are also currently working on a series of ZRT training DVDs for their members.
Some of ZRT’s lessons include building a “bug out” bag and training with several weapons. ZRT also teaches alternative ways to build a fire and water filtration and sanitation techniques. ZRT’s model of the “bug out” bag (a portable survival kit) is based off military standards and contains enough food, water and other survival items to last over 72 hours. ZRT also produces its own products that include standard ZRT clothing, badges and survival essentials like a ZRT machete.
In just two years, ZRT has already received several appearance requests from across the country, including interviews in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, ZRT hasn’t been able to fulfill all the requests, but the team members are ready to expand ZRT’s message.
“The zombie genre is interesting right now because a couple years ago, it was big, and now it’s gotten bigger and bigger,” Barnhart says. “So we have been getting a lot of press and more people interested.”
Barnhart and the rest of ZRT members currently have full-time jobs on the side. They do hope, however, that this response team will one day be their main source of income. ZRT is fully funded by its current members.
“We really don’t care about profit, but we want to do this on a full-time basis,” Barnhart says. “I honestly love having discussions with people about survival at our meet-up groups. The best part about it is finding those people and having a real conversation about survival and learning from each other.”
The team is currently fund raising to build a ZRT training facility through
For more info on ZRT, visit zombieresponseteam.net
