I've been waiting to become a zombie for years now, so fingers crossed.

I'm pretty excited for it~ I've been inactive on here for a while and survival was my favorite holiday way back when. The whole morbidly-adorable mixture it has going is just fun; that and I dragged friends to subeta just in time for it. So, here's to hoping there's zombies and cute stuff, and that it'll make for a good time this year!

I am excited for Survival-- It's on top of my favorite events on this site! I hope there's strains like the previous years- I didn't exactly like last year's to be completely honest. I'm also hoping there'll be some sort of a plot, to keep me interested with the site tbh. I look forward to new clothing- mainly more masculine clothing at that.

I always like Survival c: I'm hoping for some form of skin(s) to be released now that we have the option in the Beta Wardrobe. And I finished the flower laying achievement during the year so I can focus on getting candy hearts instead~

What exactly do you do during the event? (hasn't been around for it )

I see lot of achieves for kissing? and organs? how do you get the candy currency? are they floaters?

Please let me be infected by one of the virus' please :( I was so sad when I read that I missed it

The Great Pandemic (Originally called the "Love Epidemic") first occurred around Valentine's day, in 2009. People started noticing strange things happening to their avatars, weird markings and blotches slowly progressing over their avatar without any idea on how the marks had gotten there. Then Keith posted something about how they were sick/infected and his HA had a gas mask/doctors mask or something. Turns out the infected users were slowly becoming actual ZOMBIES! This was a complete surprise to everyone, it wasn't expected, and then everyone pretty much went around trying to figure out what was going on. The appearance of Skitters and his shop sort of explained how some zombies, or the undead, were becoming an actual species of sentient(self-aware) beings, otherwise known as a 'new race' of people. And these users who had unfortunately contracted several different diseases from the air had their HAs slowly turned into different zombies based on what disease they had gotten.

The even worse thing was, as they progressed through each stage of 'zombification', they soon had the option to bite other users and infect them!

Everyone was pretty much running around in a panic try to 'survive' and not become a zombie, and all the Main Shops were closed because the NPC's were too afraid of getting infected.

But in the end, Louis L'amour, a montre 'love doctor' NPC figured out a way to turn candy hearts--which could be obtained through user profiles--into a cure( Lamouracillin ), and those could either be used on those who wanted their infected avatars not to look like zombies anymore, or they could be donated to shops to keep them open. Either way, users had an option to keep their strain or cure themselves.

Dr. Lockheart, a human doctor NPC had also arrived on the scene in 2009. He had what appeared to be several different cures depending on what virus you had. These were sold in the Millionaire Center, but the cures were totally fakes that just created some messed up effects on your avatar.

At the end of the Pandemic, Keith basically said this would not be happening again and that zombies would be gone forever, but instead this outbreak became turned into a seasonal holiday, referred to as "Survival" in memory of those who had 'died' becoming zombies, and those users who managed to stay infection-free the whole time!

As a holiday, Survival is kind of a toned-down version of the Great Pandemic that happens after every Valentines Day (Feburary 14th), and continues for a couple weeks. Users used to be able to wear several different masks depicting some of the strains that could be gotten in previous years on their HAs, and by refreshing at Shadowglen with the mask on your avatar, in a random event you can be attacked and bitten by a zombie. Then you'd end up developing a strain from a small number of brand-new ones each year. You could also 'kiss' people for achievements, and collect candy hearts that can be used to create that year's batch of cures. Dr. Lockheart is still around, creating fake cures too, so you are able to buy them if you want achievements and such (Sooo expensive though!). And as for Skitters and his shop, it is still only open to highly progressed and final stage zombies. He gets new zombie 'themed' items each year, and the old ones are 'retired'. Unless you decided to keep a strain from a previous year, then you will have access to Skitters shop but it will only show the items in stock the year the strain came out (not sure if this has actually changed or not). The items are super cool, but they can get pretty expensive. The strains themselves are only available to get the year they are released, and then are no longer an option to have next year. Due to the new skin feature in the beta wardrobe, skins of all types can be kept, taken off, and re-applied if you unlock them. In previous years you had to stick with your zombie skin or lose it forever if you felt like curing to become human-looking again.

During Survival in the past few years, there have been plots based around zombie-human interactions and the opening of the Underground, a place of mainly zombie 'shops' that is still rather small at the moment.

Continued in next post in regarding last year.

I'm sort of scared they'll make the old zombie skins available for purchasing like the AC Hairstyles for sp sinking.. I sorta feel like it'll take away the chance of newer skins to progress with and kinda make the event... meh.. like last year...

Survival got boring after the whole Ecks/Skitters thing. I always did enjoy the zombie strains, but those are never coming back so I don't really look forward to Survival much anymore :(

Zombies are icky, so no.

Joking, joking. It's not my favorite event but I enjoy all of the holidays and I'm looking forward for it to start. New items, plots, it's fun to see what the staff come up with.

I remember chatting in the shoutbox during the very first pandemic (that's how long ago it was...I was actually in the shoutbox lolol) and noticing there was this weird crack on my HAs chest. I was like GUYS, GUYS, WHAT'S GOING ON WITH MY HA? And everyone thought I was stupid and tried to convince me that's how the HAs always look and there's nothing unusual about it. TURNS OUT, I was one of the first people to be infected with the Boobitis strain xD

I love thinking back to that, because it was so out of the blue and cool. It instantly became my favourite Subetan holiday. The last couple years I've been a bit disappointed with Survival and Morostide became my new favourite holiday...so I really hope there are some great new things planned for this year. Even though I was disappointed the last few years I still get really high hopes for it!

personally since this will be my first survival on site ( joined during or right before masq last year ) id like to kinda see what all this is, but since apparently that whole getting bit by zombies thing was tossed, im just hoping with the new skin collectible thing there'll be a zombie comeback and we can get bit during this survival. i really like the idea of it and would really like to experience it especially since this will be my first survival o:

Thank you for the super detailed response. :D

I assume they will announce important things in the news, so I don't miss out or is there another place I should check to keep up on things?

The news is your best bet for anything announced. Based on the past 3 years, Survival/Pandemic begins approximately between February 13th-15th.

It'll most likely begin on Feb 13th this year, due to it being a Friday, and most holidays and events tend to start on the weekend around here.

Thanks for the super fast answer :) I'll keep an eye on the news.

I believe I missed last year's and hope that this one is good.

I don't remember ever being super excited about Survival.

I can't wait for Survival, I have really enjoyed all the past Survivals, so yeah. :)

Couldn't fit the second part all in one post. DX

In 2013, however, everything changed. As vaguely revealed in the news, it slowly became apparent that we weren't able to get bitten by Shadowglen zombies (or wear masks to the area, because it was 'offensive' to the zombie race), and there weren't any new strains coming out at all. Louis L'amour opened a shop just for candy heart currency with some nice items for sale, and the creation of sweetheart pets commenced. Still with the holiday mainly based on lovey-dovey pink and the warmer sides of Valentine's Day, many users were disappointed. Keith said that Survival would no longer be a yearly thing involving the zombie strains, and plots would be scarce. The previous plots had left a lot of cliffhangers though, but since Survival was no longer as unexpected and dynamic, the staff said they were taking a break.

Last year we had the option to harvest other people's organs and trade them in to Bubbles (Underground Lost Skeleton Shop NPC) in return for temporary zombie strain vials, or we could also kiss other users to receive candy hearts for Louis' shop of cute Valentine's Day themed goodies! These vials however would eventually revert backwards until the strain vanished entirely from a HA, so we were unable to choose whether or not to keep our strains like in previous years.

As for floaters, there are survival memorial flowers you can find randomly on site to lay at the Centropolis Survival Memorial for an achievement as well.

There is also a 'zombie demographic of zombie HA's on the site: http://subeta.net/viruses.php

The temporary vial strains are not included as they are not permanent.

Some of this may not entirely be accurate anymore due to changes and the fact that I was not actually present for every year of Survival, so feel free to correct me.

Updates will be announced in the News regarding the holiday, yes. ^^

Survival has always grossed me out. MEH.. Not really into the plots either, I just go along and get it done to get the prizes. However I do like several other events and wish there would be another reading drive.

Thank you again :) Either way I can wait to see what happens. I just joined in January so this is all super new to me lol

thank you so so much for all that info

I'm feeling super sad though about not being able to be a perma zombie :P I' really love the skins but they will probably release them as someone said for a huge mount of SP or something as an SP sink... as if I had any SP left to throw away :(