Run people. Run for the hills. The zombie apocalypse is nigh.
Unlike the Hollywood idea of this, which turns men into hideous white mindless drones, intent on eating your brains, the real zombies are remarkably healthy looking, albeit dead-eyed mindless drones, intent on eating your data allowance in the pursuit of tiny digital monsters.
Image from PC Mag
I've never liked Pokemon. The stories are cliché, the names are ridiculous and the song is a monumental earworm that chases your brain around for days. Boring, mindless and Pikachu isn't even cute.
So you'll have to forgive me for not quite getting the madness for Pokemon Go. I have two boys. I can ALMOST tolerate it in them, but my 38-year-old finance manager husband? Errr, no.
Now in it's second, mind-numbingly pointless month, the craze for otherwise seemingly rational adults, without any kind of diagnosis of insanity at all, to wander around the streets trying to catch fake monsters has reached epic proportions.
In July the site was quoted as having around 9.5 million daily users. Since then this has reportedly doubled. The deep-rooted desire to catch all the little buggers seems to be more contagious then a particularly nasty bout of gastroenteritis. Once installed the desire to play constantly seems to take hold rapidly, wiping all interest in other pursuits from the player's mind.
Other, more interesting activities will soon lose sway. Those pleasant days of sitting and watching a film, arguing over angry birds or ignoring each other as you peruse Facebook become a thing of the past.
Instead, you find yourself forced to walk everywhere. All of the time. Not for a nice walk though, where you look at the leaves and birds and enjoy the world around you.
A walk where you try to make sure none of the Poke-zombies you are trying to appease walks in front of a car or falls on top of some poor woman's newborn as they attempt to pursue Magmar.
You'll be forced to stop every minute and a half for a bastarding 'egg' or because something called a 'pidgy' flew past. No, not a real pigeon. A fake one. Because that's interesting.
Museums, monuments and areas of great natural beauty are reduced to a tiny screen and a ball that may or may not 'catch them all'.
Sometimes you might be driving quietly down the road and someone will scream 'stop the car'. You'll slam on the emergency brakes convinced you are about to kill someone's dog. It will actually be because there's a Jinx in the bush at the side of the road.
You would be forgiven for saying 'I'll Jinx you'. Or perhaps driving off and leaving the zombies there.
Those infected and their enablers regularly say things like 'well at least they're getting outdoors'. This is nonsense. There is nothing healthy about 8-hours a day chasing pixels about whether it's in a park or a crack den.
You might be wondering if your partner or significant other is showing signs of Poke-zombie disorder.
Common signs include:
•Getting up remarkably early to get you coffee. Taking four hours to return
•Developing a dead-eyed stare whilst anywhere near a 'Pokestop' (the arseholes even put one in Tesco - because clearly dragging your husband and male children around the supermarket isn't enough of a soul-draining torture, now you have to do it with Weedles).
•A sudden interest in the local parks, coupled with late night disappearances. You may think he is dogging. He isn't. Unless that dog has 400 CP (kill me) in which case they'll definitely be dogging
•When he isn't able to get a fix, still being fixated on his phone. This is because he and his fellow poke-nerds will have a Whatsapp group specially created to share such hilarities as 'poke-puns' and where to get the best Lapras. All. The. Time.
•Regular dog walks, to the extent that the dog will hide his own lead and fake a broken leg in order to get some fucking peace
•He might start to sweat in his sleep and say the names of Pokemon over and over again: 'No, Pikachu, no, don't leave me, I promise to give you more razzberrries'
Sadly, as yet there appears to be no cure. Various methods to recover the once interesting, engaged soul of the Pokezombie, including technology removal, the insertion of technology into an anal cavity and being locked in a room with nothing but episodes of 'Breaking Beedrill' for company have all failed.
Current thinking is that the only solution may be a pillow held extremely tightly over the face for a period no less than three minutes. Failing that the threatened removal of particularly prized pieces of the anatomy may show limited success, but only until you aren't looking, or they think they've bought you an expensive enough dinner to keep you quiet for a while.
The end is apparently nigh people and it's yellow. And not led by Donald Trump (yet).
Who'd have thought.