Did Florida Just Get A Zombie Alert?


We’ve all considered the implications of a zombie apocalypse thanks to popular culture and the advent of TV series like The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, and Z Nation. But, what if you were to actually get a zombie alert? What would you do then?

According to the Palm Beach Post, the City of Lake Worth, Florida, sent out a “zombie alert” during a power outage around 1:45 a.m. on Sunday.

The alert was issued with a start date and completion date, which is entirely normal for a power outage alert. However, the next part of the alert is not a standard message.

“Power outage and zombie alert for residents of Lake Worth and Terminus. There are now far less than seven-thousand-three-hundred-eighty customers involved due to extreme zombie activity. Restoration time uncertain.”

That’s right, the City of Lake Worth issued a zombie alert for Florida. And, the alert also suggests that 7,380 were eaten by those aforementioned zombies.

For fans of The Walking Dead, the mention of Terminus is also of particular concern, as this was a community of cannibals in the TV series. So, people started to wonder if — besides the obvious assumption that the alert service had been hacked — cannibals were also at large in Florida. As a result of this zombie alert message, it could be also assumed that some of those 7,380 fatalities may have been a result of cannibalism.

It posts a pretty grim picture on a day when, in other zombie news, it was also reported that Darwin and Melbourne were the best places to be in Australia if a zombie apocalypse broke out there. Obviously, from news on the ground, Melbourne might also be the top pick in regard to Florida.

All jokes aside, it is quite possible, thanks to the mention of Terminus and its association with The Walking Dead, this zombie alert might just be a joke or the result of a hacked account. So far, though, it is unclear who caused the message to be sent out with that specific wording included.

The city public information officer, Ben Kerr, told Gizmodo that the zombie alert issue was an ongoing one.

“We first became aware of the zombie messages during Hurricane Irma.”

Since then, several “zombie-tainted” messages had slipped through their alert system. While they are aware of the issue, they are unsure who the culprit within their office actually is. Other than catching and changing the message before it goes out, there seems to be little they can do until the person responsible is discovered.

Regardless of how the message ended up being sent, people in the area can now rest assured that the zombie alert message went out in error and there were no actual zombies in Lake Worth.

The following statement was issued via the Lake Worth Life (Style) Facebook page after the incident was resolved.

“The city’s public information officer, Ben Kerr, followed up with this today: 7,880 customers were affected, power was restored within 27 minutes. We are looking into the reports that the system mentioned zombies, I want to reiterate that Lake Worth does not have any zombie activity currently and apologize for the system message. Protective Relays operated as designed to isolate a fault within the boundaries of a main system Transformer. The restoration process started within 16 minutes, with full restoration occurring at 27 minutes. Engineering will perform a full review of the transformer prior to return it to service.”

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