ENTER NEW CHALLENGER: ZOMBIE

I’d like to make it clear that when I say ‘zombie’, I mean ‘zombie’. The shambling Undead, somewhat mouldy, wants to eat your brain and can chase you down at the speed of shuffle. The new mutation of zombies that has propagated in Hollywood in recent years should find their own damn name. Humans infected by whatever biological agent to make them all angry angry angry rarrr run run run club you to death tear out your meaty bits rarrr angry angry angry are not zombies. They’re, I don’t know, rageroids or something. Hehe. Rageroid.General aloofness towards pain is a significant tactical advantage of your traditional zombie, no matter what their opponent. We all know that shooting a zombie is a perfect exercise of futility (shotguns excepted). Dismembering a zombie can certainly hamper their progress, but your average zombie is not above dragging itself along the ground in order to feast on your delicious juicy brains. They’re tenacious, to say the least.This renders a large spectrum of the ninja’s skills useless; the swift and silent kill won’t do much on something already dead, and the swift and silent incapacitation won’t do much on something already brain dead. Disabling the zombie, however, piece of cake. For all their tenacity, zombies don’t move fast. What do ninjas do? Move fast! A ninja could effectively hamstring a zombie before hitting the snooze alarm in the morning.Pirates, lacking the speed and accuracy of a ninja, stand no better chance of surviving the zombie apocalypse than anyone else. In fact, their chances are probably in worse shape than normal, given your average pirate possesses some degree of confidence in their combat skills, and thus is more likely to engage a zombie than do the sensible thing and run away. Enough hacking and a single pirate could disable a single zombie, but not without being wounded at some point, and thus zombified, ‘cause seriously, pirates can’t fight for shit. Look at all those eye patches, hook hands and peg legs. I rest my case.However, zombies do not travel alone. They’re pack hunters, and given their disregard for pain and injury, are not above wading in and piling on. Pirates are pack hunters too, but all that really means is the whole ship will get infected, turn into zombies, and then Disney will make a ride out of them.Ninjas, while working together in vast, nation-spanning networks, do not tend to move together in large groups. Darts could potentially disabled a zombie’s locomotion, but to make sure the job is done properly a ninja must get within arm’s reach, and thus within mobbing reach. Numbers are not the ninja’s natural strength.Thankfully, mobility is. Not only is the ninja faster than the zombie, the ninja can also do things like, you know, climb. Jump up 10 feet backwards into very hard to reach places. It’s a ninja’s trade to be where ninja is not expected. Zombies aren’t renowned for their tree-climbing abilities. Thus all a ninja need do is pack a lunch, climb a tree, and wait for the zombies to get distracted in order to pick them off one by one. The lazy ninja could even just wait for them to go away. To feast on cowboys, or something.Pirates are also apt climbers, but any tree they attempt to climb will already be full of ninjas, who will kick the pirates out of the tree and then sing King of the Castle at them. Neena neena neena.