It’s been awhile since the day I was truly floored by our government. May 21, 2011 to be exact. Many of you will remember that this is the date that some believed would be the end of the world.
“Judgement Day” they would call it. Of course, whenever a date such as this hits the media, there is some mass-hysteria which occurs. People rushing to stores to buy supplies (I am not for sure why if it were the end of the world that supplies would be handy). More people end up in the pews at church and fill up their gas tanks. This is all expected in a country that survived the Great Depression and have watched recent tragedies such as Katrina and 9/11 on their televisions. They have to be prepared! What you wouldn’t expect would be any action by the government that would add fuel to this fire. Then it happened.
My sister visits many sites regularly including the Centers for Disease Control website located at CDC.gov. Yes, you read that right. CDC.gov. A government owned website. She sent me an email early on the morning of May 21, 2011. Up until that point, I was taking the whole end of the world thing pretty lightly. There is always that little voice in the back of your mind that gives it some attention but the logical older sibling smacks the little voice around a bit and tells it to straighten up. None the less, I took what she sent to me seriously. A government site which focuses on Disease and Prevention (pretty serious stuff) with an announcement on their homepage:
Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse
“There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this”
Unfortunately, the homepage changes regularly and I do not have a screenshot but as I recall, there was a big red “emergency” type banner above this article with a creepy zombie girl image (see image in this blog post).
Why would the GOVERNMENT decide to put what they later called a joke on their homepage as an emergency announcement the same day many were already on edge due to the “Judgement Day”? Of course speculation stirred around the web immediately questioning if the government believed in Judgement Day and believed in a complete takeover of Zombies. Most likely, it was just poor taste or bad timing but that is not logic to the average conspiracy theorist.
To read the CDC.gov blog entry from May 21, 2011, click here: http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05/preparedness-101-zombie-apocalypse/
Oh wait…that’s right… it’s not there anymore. Google still shows the URL if you search for “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse” but the page is broken.
Luckily, I know a few tricks…….. I was able to pull up the old May 21, 2011 page by using the Wayback Machine. I have saved the page to PDF so it doesn’t ‘disappear’ again. Read it here.
