Survive the Z

A friend of mine runs Survive the Z, a live-action zombie survival event in the Netherlands. Think 350 people, a quarantine zone, actors in full zombie makeup chasing you through a city at night. It’s wild.

She asked me to make a small change on her WordPress site. Update an event name, add some ticket links. Should’ve taken 20 minutes.

I spent an hour fighting WordPress templates before giving up. And then the thought crept in: what would this look like if I just started from scratch?

The rabbit hole

What started as curiosity became a full redesign proposal. The existing site was a standard WordPress theme. Fine, functional, forgettable. But the event itself is so atmospheric. People running through dark streets, fog machines, the whole thing feels like a horror film. The website didn’t capture any of that.

I wanted the site to feel like you’d already entered the quarantine zone.

What I built

Everything from scratch. No framework, no WordPress. Just HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a lot of GSAP.

The hero has a typewriter effect that spells out “THE CITY HAS FALLEN.” with glitch distortions. A fog layer drifts across the viewport using canvas. There’s a countdown timer styled like a military HUD.

The centrepiece is a custom SVG infection map of the Netherlands, inspired by Plague Inc. I used SVG feTurbulence and feDisplacementMap filters to create an organic, pulsing infection spread. City markers pulse with different colors based on infection status. The whole thing animates on scroll using GSAP ScrollTrigger.

Other details: a sticky emergency bar with a spot counter, parallax event photos, a survival quiz, and a ticket section with role selection (survivor, zombie, or VIP).

Where it stands

This is a proposal. The live site at survivethez.com still runs the old WordPress version. I’ve shared the redesign with the founder. If she likes it, it might go live for the next event.

Honestly, the whole project happened because WordPress annoyed me. Sometimes the best side projects come from a 20-minute task you refuse to do the boring way.