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Running dead: zombies heading to Austria

Find it hard to motivate yourself to go for a run? How about if a gang of zombies is chasing after you? Austria’s first ‘zombie run’ is coming to St Pölten on September 20th.

Published: 5 September 2014 09:11 CEST
Running dead: zombies heading to Austria
Photo: Zombie Run

Originating in the USA, the sport involves avoiding zombies along a 5km (three mile) run with 15 obstacles. And if you’re someone who enjoys the chase you can always volunteer to don a 'flesh eater' outfit and be transformed into a zombie by a professional make-up artist.

Up to 7,000 runners must reach safe zones and keep tags on their belt, which represent lives, to complete the challenge. The zombies will try to snatch the runners’ tags and ‘infect’ them.

The backdrop to the run will be an abandoned city – taking inspiration from hit US series The Walking Dead – with wrecked cars, helicopters and sound effects, organizer Florian Eckelmann said.

Tickets are not cheap, at €45, but the fee includes a wristband, sweatband, medal, water and snack – as well as a makeover for any zombies.

And if you just want to watch, you don’t have to pay. Participants must be aged 16 and over. The event starts at Mariazellerstrasse 180, 3100 St. Pölten at 10am.

Tickets can be purchased via Zombie Run St Pölten, or on the day. 

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CLIMATE CRISIS

Austria ‘likely to be ice-free within 45 years’

Austria is set to become largely "ice-free" within 45 years, the country's Alpine Club warned Friday, as two of its glaciers last year melted by more than 100 metres.

Published: 6 April 2024 12:17 CEST
Austria 'likely to be ice-free within 45 years'

Amid growing concerns over the effects of extreme warming on glaciers around the world, the latest report by the Austrian Alpine Club (OeAV) showed that rapid glacial retreat over the past seven years had accelerated.

The study found that 93 Austrian glaciers observed by the organisation retreated by 23.9 metres (78.4 feet) on average last year, marking the third-biggest glacier melt since measurements began in 1891.

Two of the glaciers showed especially drastic declines, with the Pasterze shrinking by 203.5 metres and the Rettenbachferner by 127 metres.

The 2023 readings came after the worst year on record for glacier melt in Austria, with glaciers shrinking by 28.7 metres (94.2 feet) on average in 2022.

Faced with extreme warming in the Alps, glacial ice in Austria could largely disappear within 45 years, the Alpine Club warned, adding that restrictive climate protection measures were introduced too late.

“In 40 to 45 years, all of Austria will be pretty much ice-free,” Andreas Kellerer-Pirklbauer, head of the Alpine Club’s glacier measurement service, told reporters on Friday.

The OeAV urged increased protection of glaciers as part of overall efforts to sustain biodiversity, noting that expansions of ski resorts had put Alpine regions “under constant pressure”.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), major glaciers worldwide suffered the largest loss of ice since records began in 1950, “driven by extreme melt in both western North America and Europe”.

In Switzerland, where the WMO is based, Alpine glaciers have lost 10 percent of their volume in the past two years alone.

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