PATIENT # 220 - DWAYNE

Goal: Travel from cache to cache in search of BRAAAAINS.  Visit Geocaching events.  Spread the plague.  Please take photos!

Meet Dwayne, patient #220 in our ongoing study of the spread of the zombie plague via geocaching.  Dwayne was a choreographer and acrobat from Melbourne, Australia.  He specialized in a ballet and break-dancing fusion style of dance, and his passion project was to help prisoners reform by choreographing large group flash-mob dances for them to perform to major pop songs.   He liked to collect rare coins from across the world, particularly United States Indian Head pennies and early 20^th century Australian halfpennies.  He often went to coin shows and frequented obscure hobby shops in search of additions for his collections.  Dwayne’s acrobatic ability, as well as him being born with an extra toe on each foot, allowed him to get the highest terrain caches without the assistance of equipment or shoes.  He gained notoriety amongst his fellow geocachers when he climbed barefoot down a 60 foot stone well, without ropes, to get a cache hidden in a dishwasher at the bottom.

We believe that Dwayne contracted the zombie plague from patient #111, Wendy.  We know that Dwayne was one of 23 people from Australia who went on a geocaching vacation ending in Washington, D.C.  Going as a group allowed them to get a rare group discount on lodging in D.C., and according to logs we know that Dwayne was able to help them get the highest terrain caches in the area.  The group planned their trip around attending the First Annual Geocaching Symposium held at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which was held the day before the group returned home to Australia.   Emails sent in preparation for the event reveal that Wendy volunteered to help greet people at the beginning of the event and have them sign the event log.  Additionally, we know from interviews that Wendy had a bad habit of always chewing on pens, and a candid picture attached to one of the logs from the coordinators of the event shows Wendy at the log table with the pen for the log in her mouth.  We know from Dwayne’s attendance log that Wendy was the first person that he met at the event and he picked up a travel bug that Wendy dropped off at the event. We also know that a number of other cachers came down with symptoms of the malady after the event.      

This travel bug is part of a larger study to take a closer look at how the zombie plague might propagate if the primary vector for spreading the disease was geocaching.  Please visit the following website for further details, and a visualization of how the disease has propagated thus far based on the movement and discovery of this and other infected Zombie travel bugs:

http://www.finditlogitspreadit.info/wordpress/