The Origins of Meatshield

The original Meatshields

The original twenty Meatshield zergs were created on 9th October 2021. The first seven were given profile descriptions, the rest were non-descript. All had "the Meatshields" as their group except the first which had "the Meatshielders". None of them got to high levels. One story is that there had been an attack on Caiger Mall by zerg zombies that had numbers for names, e.g. 79151, so a member of the Dead decided to create the Meatshield zergs to stand in the mall and soak up their attacks. At the time of writing, none had been raised past level 10 with most between lv3-6.

• Meatshield 1 The leader of The Meatshielders and commander of squadron O. This zombie was once a valiant soldier stationed at Fort Perryn. His skills as a leader carried over to death, and he leads the Meatshielders with pride.
• Meatshield 2 Second officer of The Meatshields and commander of Squadron E. Once a great political leader in Malton. This zombie is harsh and brutal to the lower officers of the meatshields. Still, he is a good leader, and a powerful warrior.
• Meatshield 3 The scout of Squadron O. This brave zombie is tall and thin. He never shrinks from danger, and often rushes into unnecessary battles.
• Meatshield 4 The scout of Squadron E. Formerly a janitor working for Necrotech. This small zombie obeys orders without argument, and speaks little.
• Meatshield 5 Besides the lack of eyes, this zombie seems almost human. This zombie makes up for his blindness with his excellent hearing and his hound-like sense of smell.
• Meatshield 6 He has no arms. He just hops around kicking and biting. Don't underestimate him because of his lack of arms. He is one of the most dangerous of The Meatshields.
• Meatshield 7 Standing a foot above all other zombies. This giant has been known to kill survivors with one swipe.
• Meatshields 8-20 had no bios

Second wave of Meatshields

On 16th October 2021 a bunch of new Meatshielders were made, though most had names praising Donald Trump or attacking the Dead, they all had "the Meatshielders" as their group. These were likely one-time-use trolling accounts in an ongoing fight between a zerger and the Dead. All of them had zero XP when I checked them.

Meatshield 21 - TrumpIsGOD - TrumpRulesYourWorld - LordTrump - TrumpisYourMaster - TheDeadsucksTrumpsD - TheDeadareLosers - TrumpizLord - The Dead will DIE - TheDeadAreGay - TheDead ARE LAME

A group page was set up on the UD Wiki for The Meatshielders on the same day. It simply read "The Meatshielders is a small group of zombies. They stay for the most part in Whittenside. The Meatshielders is not currently open for recruitment. If you with to join, check this page in a few months."

The account that made the page, Wild wild crazy, had been set up just for this, and their only other contribution to the wiki was to go onto the Dead's talk page and say "The Dead is so stupid! I wish they would go die in a hole!. Oh wait... they are already dead. Well, maybe they should just go sit in a hole."

Third wave of Meatshields

On 7th November, a new wiki account called Lactose edited The Meatshielders UD wiki page to "You were warned, but you stayed anyway. You thought they were just a rumor. You thought you were strong enough to fight them. You thought you could withstand them. Now you are one of them. You should have listened to Quigley.". This was reverted by the UD Wiki sysop team. Lactose's only other contribution was to ask how to join the Dead on their talk page.

On 1st December, another new account called Meathshield 1 tried to edit it again. On 3rd December, a third new account called Hat of Pain got in touch with A Helpful Little Gnome ‎claiming to be the original Meatshielder as you can see in their contribs here. This conversation led to the text revision on The Meatshielders page being accepted at 17.38pm.

Within minutes, this triggered the next notable batch of Meatshield accounts to be created in-game. Creation times are included in this list so you can see what looks to me like two different people at work here. The original Meatshield, then the impersonator (Lactose/Meathshield/Hat of Pain).

• 2021-12-04 17:45:14 A Meatshielder lv1
• 2021-12-04 17:46:57 Another Meatshielder lv1
• 2021-12-04 17:48:29 One More Meatshield lv1
• 2021-12-04 17:50:51 So Many Meatshielder lv1
• 2021-12-04 17:54:10 MEATSHIELDYEAH lv1
• Little break
• 2021-12-05 04:11:45 Meatshield 22 lv1 has "the Meatshielders" tag
• Next they both make some at the same time
• 2021-12-05 17:10:51 | Meatshield 23 lv38 9k XP with password 123456q. Original bio: "I am an obvious zerg, used for well... zerging, my real life person has a small wang, that is why I do this in a free game" (source is EE)
• 2021-12-05 17:23:16 Antizerg zerger 18 lv1 is not on MS pword
• 2021-12-05 17:47:42 Meatshield 24 lv1 has "the Meatshielders" tag
• Another break
• 2021-12-06 01:14:57 | meatshield 25 lv45 10k XP with password 123456q
• Having a careful think
• 2021-12-06 04:08:06 | Meatshield 26 lv45 12k XP with password 123456q
• 2021-12-06 04:09:47 | Meatshield 27 lv43 9k XP with password 123456q
• 2021-12-06 04:10:43 | Meatshield 28 lv37 9k XP with password 123456q
• 2021-12-06 04:11:49 | Meatshield 29 lv42 9k XP with password 123456q
• Maybe that's the end, oh wait
• 2021-12-06 18:50:53 Meatshield 32 lv1 has "the Meatshielders" tag
• Got to come back and have the final word
• 2021-12-06 19:23:01 | Meatshield 33 lv43 11k XP with password 123456q. Original bio: "The Meatshields/Meatshielders are run but one small wang zerg loser, him literally making them to wreck a free online game proves he a loser." (source is EE)

The two groups you should be able to see in this batch are:

1. First there's A Meatshielder, Another, One More, So Many and MEATSHIELDYEAH and the three "The Meatshielders" (22,24,32) - these accounts were never really used. None have any XP.

2. In brown, Meatshields 23,25,26,27,28,29 and 33 which have been used extensively in the years since and all of them are on the Meatshield zerg password.

Following this naming war, the original Meatshield doesn't take long to stop using their Meatshield accounts. You can see them in the game stats group records for October and November 2021 then no appearances in 2022.

A reasonably small number of further Meatshields are made sporadically between 2022-2024 but it's unclear who owns them and they don't usually get past level one. Of all the Meatshield zergs created up to this point, the seven Meatshields in bullet 2 above are the only ones that get significant use in these years. It is the use of these 7 Meatshields that lead the UD community to call this second zerger "Meatshield".

The 7 Meatshields head to Fort Perryn

In early 2022, the new Meatshield's zerg army took over Fort Perryn. The zergs were mostly run as survivors and dedicated to keeping Fort Perryn in survivor hands. Despite the use of zerging, the fort changed hands frequently. Meatshield was not happy about this and hostile graffiti accusing opponents of zerging became a permanent fixture, especially in the fort but often slapped all over Whittenside. He made more new zergs: 9 in 2022, 9 in 2023 and 8 in 2024.

The oldest accounts used in this army are these two from 2006:

• poppytart has a bio which reads "Clubbed to death, proud zergs of the game, had 16+ alts to hold an area, got caught and doubled down trump style with 20 new anti zerg zergers, worst cheaters ever"
• ChuckyNorris

By 2023, Meatshield was naming new zerg accounts after Whittenside-based zombie players who opposed him. Here's a few examples:

• Liche has Herpes is a tribute to Liche
• Rotting Zerg McNally is a tribute to Rotting Ted McNally
• The Tombs other zerg is a tribute to The Tomb
• Zaron the Zerging is a tribute to Zaron the Everliving.

A belief that one high XP zombie called The Tomb ran most zombies as his zergs became a key aspect of Meatshield’s graffiti to the point of obsession. Fort Perryn Defense Force was also a graffiti target for not helping Meatshield and for PKing his zergs.

In September 2023 the two Fort Perryn player groups, the Fort Perryn Defense Force and the Fort Feral Zombies, set up a zerg hunting alliance to share zerg lists and oust Meatshield from Whittenside. This forced Meatshield to keep his accounts in dark buildings and reduced his control of the fort for a few months but ultimately could not deter Meatshield’s zerging or toxic behaviour. Into 2024, both FFZ and FPDF struggled to play around the zerg army, which by this point included over 80 accounts.

Meatshield Bandwagon

As Meatshield's zerging in Whittenside became infamous, other people made their own Meatshield accounts. Click here for a list of most recent accounts called Meatshield, click next to see more in instalments of 50.

As far as we know, the Fort Perryn zerger only made the 7 accounts in December 2021. If he has made more, they will have been made after 31st October 2024, following his defeat on Halloween 2024, which you can read about in The Fall of Meatshield.