Sunday evening, residents in Lake Worth, Florida were faced with a power outage in the late hours of the evening. There was no cause for alarm until residents were told that there was more than just inconvenience waiting for them in the darkness. Like a scene straight out of The Walking Dead, apparently there were zombies loose in Florida.
As reported by The Palm Beach Post, residents in the affected area were sent a push notification onto their cellphones. Instead of giving a much-needed update on the status of the power outage, the message had a decidedly more sinister slant.
At first glance, this zombie-filled message was surely a shock to many people. It didn’t set off a zombie style “war of the worlds”, but how did this even happen? The official word from the Lake Worth public information officer, Ben Kerr, doesn’t shed much light on the matter:
“We are looking into reports that the system mentioned zombies,”
This goes WAY past a simple typo. Someone didn’t just accidentally put the word zombie where power outage should have been. Kerr goes on to say:
“I want to reiterate that Lake Worth does not have any zombie activity currently and apologize for the system message.”
Currently? Could officials be trying to put a fun slant on an employee gone rogue, or is this their way of preparing the public for a follow-up push alert with REAL zombie activity?
I would love to rock a tin foil hat here, but there is another part of this post that (unfortunately) leans things in the direction of prank. The notification states that the zombie alert is for the real area of Lake Worth, and the very fictional area of Terminus.
Fans of the popular zombie-centric show, The Walking Dead, will recognize Terminus right away. It being a key location for two seasons of the show, makes it pretty clear that this slightly unnerving notification was most likely just a fans’ homage.