It can be easy to lose your head on the set of Z Nation.

Jodi Binstock normally leaves that to the actors who play zombies on her television series.

But this week it was Binstock, the show’s producer, who nearly lost her head when she stood above the gun emplacements at Fort Casey State Park and soaked up the surroundings.

“It’s incredible,” Binstock said of the panoramic view.

Since Saturday, a production team of roughly 80 cast and crew members has been camped out at Fort Casey and using the old fort as the backdrop for the final episode of the TV show’s third season.

Anyone familiar with Z Nation, the horror-comedy-drama that airs on the Syfy cable channel, knows that Z stands for Zombie.

It didn’t take long for the show’s location scouts and creative team to see how well the more-than-century-old Army post, with its dark, creepy chambers and aged exterior, would fit into their show’s zombie apocalypse theme.

“This suits us so well because it’s isolated and it’s distinct and it’s such good art direction,” Binstock said.

“It’s a real find. And how it looks over the Sound is really good for our story line.”

Jon Crimmins, the park ranger who runs Fort Casey and several other parks on Whidbey Island, only found out a few weeks ago that zombies were bound for Coupeville.

He was vaguely acquainted with the show, which is filmed mostly near Spokane and uses state parks as the backdrop in that area regularly.

“My son’s watched every episode,” Crimmins said. “He loves it.”

Crimmins got a call from Marc Dahlstrom, Z Nation’s production supervisor who had scouted North Puget Sound.

“I’ve been in Spokane for 30 years and have friends and family in Anacortes and have been over here a lot,” Dahlstrom said. “So I was very aware of Fort Casey, Fort Worden and Ebey.

“At the end of season two, we went out and we knew we needed to do some stuff on the west side, or at least an episode or two, to branch out and get the look a little different.”

Dahlstrom said he put together a little presentation with photographs of various sites and showed Z Nation’s creative team.

“They all went, ‘Whoa. Fort Casey looks cool. That’s just a really great location,'” Dahlstrom said.

The production is paying Fort Casey a site fee to use portions of the park until filming wraps up Thursday.

The show has reserved the entire picnic area for the crew to park and hang out between shoots.

“That’s a pretty decent-sized city going on over there,” Crimmins said.

The park remains open to the public who have a Discover Pass. Visitors flew kites in the grass field Tuesday while a fight scene took place at a gun emplacement above involving some of the show’s main cast members, including Kellita Smith.

Park visitors have been “tremendous” during the shoot, Dahlstrom said.

Crimmins said he’s remained mostly quiet about the filming by his own choice but knows that word has slowly leaked out around town.

“These guys probably picked the best time to have it shot here,” Crimmins said, noting that filming is taking place on weekdays and school started just two weeks ago.

Using a grant from the Snohomish County Tourism Promotion Area, the production also has been busy shooting in Everett and other nearby locations since early September.

Fort Casey is the only location being shot on Whidbey Island and is the site for the climactic final episode when the entire main cast catches up with each other for one big confrontation.

Keith Allan, who plays the show’s central character, “Murphy,” was on hand Tuesday, sporting a new albino sort of look, indicative of a transformation taking place inside him.

“It’s beautiful here,” Allan said between shoots.

At least half of the cast and crew have been using overnight accommodations throughout North and Central Whidbey, Dahlstrom said.

Z Nation is produced for The Asylum by Los Angeles-based Go2 Digital Media with local production services provided by North by Northwest Productions in Spokane. The Asylum, located in Burbank, Calif., is an independent production company that specializes in the horror genre.

Funding assistance provided by Washington Filmworks has helped make shooting the zombie series in Washington possible.

“Z Nation is a Washington success story,” said Amy Lillard, Washington Filmworks executive director.

Bringing the production to Whidbey was no simple consideration, Binstock said.

Dahlstrom said that Karl Schaefer, the show’s writer and co-creator, often speaks of the importance of finding “visually interesting” locations. So that’s what Dahlstrom found and pitched to Binstock and others.

“He said, ‘I found this place. It’s not really easy to get to but I think it might be worth it,'” Binstock said.

“A couple different groups came out and scouted and everybody decided, ‘Yeah, it’s worth the ferry ride.’ As production considerations, those are big deals. How to get this big of a team into a location like this, it has to be pretty special to make it worth it and this absolutely was.”

Although the final episode shot in Coupeville won’t come out until this winter, the season premiere is Friday night on Syfy.