Free College Level Course on Zombies
There is a college level course on the Zombie Apocalypse. It is online and free, courtesy of the Canvas network. And it’s going to be just as cool you hope it will be.
Society, Science, Survival: Lessons From the Walking Dead is a free MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that anyone in the world can sign up for. The course is eight weeks long, starting October 14 and ending December 20th. The things you can learn from this course range from models of the spread of disease to ‘nutrition in a post-apocalyptic world.’
The expert lecturers come from a wide variety of fields, representing the perspectives of anthropology, infectious disease and public health, even a physicist and a mathematician. They’re all well credentialed, respected in their fields, and I want to have a beer with all of them.
Dr. Michael Dennin, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, has taught classes on the Science of Superheroes, and has appeared on a number of television shows on the History Channel and National Geographic. Social Sciences expert Dr. Joanne Christopherson is going to discuss the most terrifying part of The Walking Dead; the surviving humans. Mathematician Dr. Sarah Eichhorn, who did her dissertation partially on the tides of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is going to discuss the math of a mass outbreak, and what the math indicates would be an intelligent response, “vaccinations, treatments, cures, better weapons, etc.” She also won the 2011 Mathematical Association of America Alder Award for distinguished Teaching. Infectious diseases expert Dr. Zuzana Bic is going to talk about the lessons of real, historical, horrifying epidemics that humanity managed to pull through. Dr. Bic has been recognized more than once as an outstanding lecturer and professor.
You won’t get college credit for this course, but you will come out of it knowing several methods for managing stress and staying sane in disaster situations (applicable to earthquakes and hurricanes, not just for zombies). You’ll know how an infectious disease outbreak modeled like the disease in The Walking Dead will spread and can be managed. You’ll pick up the physics of targeting weapons, and have an introduction to the dynamics of human beings stuck surviving together.
I would like to emphasize that this course is entirely free. You just sign up with Canvas.net and get ready to commit at least a few hours each week to doing the readings, watching the videos, taking the quizzes, for eight weeks. Do you have the guts to make it through that?
Follow the link below to sign up for the course:
Society, Science and Survival: Lessons From AMC's The Walking Dead