Detroit, Michigan is a notorious city with a not-so-stellar reputation despite perfectly livable suburbs. Now, an artist on Indiegogo is asking for your help to consider turning his project into reality by transforming parts of an abandoned neighborhood in Detroit into a zombie theme park — just in time for you to make use of the $24,000 zombie survival kit we saw yesterday.

Currently called the Z World Detroit, campaign leader Mark Siwak wants to do something about the city’s plan to formally abandon these neighborhoods by turning them into something more fun and constructive. The neglected parts of Detroit makes for a perfect setting since they contain many run down homes and abandoned buildings amidst an urban landscape. This puts visitors in a realistic surrounding — just add some zombie actors to reenact some viral outbreak. 

The plan aims for visitors to be able to run and hide from zombies, search for food and supplies (still vague on what this means, but Siwak states there will be no weapons), and scour for other survivors. Each player get patches that get tear away for each misstep they take, and if they lose all the patches, they must join the zombie horde. Proceeds from the theme park will go to a city funding to demolish abandoned buildings scattered throughout Detroit. Wonder if zombie makeup is included if you succumb to the apocalypse?

“The Z World Detroit initiative is a radical rethinking of urban redevelopment and Detroit’s well-documented blight and de-population,” the Indiegogo page reads. “It turns perceived liabilities into assets that will bring a renewed vitality to a struggling neighborhood.”

Siwak warns, however, that although the idea might sound interesting, this is still just a concept. Funding the project does not promise that Z World Detroit will actually come to fruition, but can get some developers interested in proposing the actual creation of the park. 

“While zombies are great, the real neat thing about this project is the potential to inject some life into a forgotten neighborhood – with the opportunity to work with neighborhood groups and organization,” Siwak writes. “In short, Z World Detroit would become part of the neighborhood, the center of the neighborhood, rather than something sitting outside the neighborhood.”

Sounds like a creative way to make use of an abandoned space, if you ask us! As long as the abandoned buildings are converted to be safe for tourists, visitors, and are kept gated for non-operational hours, we don’t see why this concept couldn’t be further developed into real life. Who knows, perhaps Z World Detroit would be the first park in the midwest everyone will want to go to on their next vacation. Let’s just hope it looks a bit better than these amateur illustrations for the time being.

The project is currently funded at about $7,600 of the $145,000 goal with Friday, August 10 as the last day to contribute. Any amount will help, but if you want an admission to the park (if it ever comes to life), you’ll need to shell out at least $100 in support of the project.