This paper reports on an introductory world regional geography course with a role-playing exercise. The goal was to situate students in a form of popular geopolitics that engaged them viscerally with positionality and othering. Students were assigned different positionalities in a liminal active learning environment within a context of fear of zombies; some actually engaged in othering or were othered; many vocally critiqued their own or others' positionalities and arguments. Later in the semester, students were more engaged and likely to apply the concepts of positionality and othering in critically thinking about the real-world case of Turkey's European Union application.