By Karin Klein
Los Angeles Times / Opinion
June 4, 2012
You can relax now. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has officially announced that a zombie apocalypse is not upon us. The CDC included this assurance in an email to the Huffington Post, adding that there isn't even a virus making the rounds that turns people into zombies.
Sure there isn't.
After all, anyone who follows the world's worst weird news as reported on the Internet has these cases among the horrifying reports of late: A naked man in Florida attacked an elderly homeless man and ate much of his face off. A Maryland college student admitted to killing his housemate and eating parts of the bod. For some people, that brought up memories of a 3-year-old case in which a Texas mother allegedly killed her own baby and ate part of his brain.
Terrible stuff, indeed. And the timing comes as pop culture turns from vampire stories to zombies and begins to see the flesh-eaters as a source of comedy as well as horror. In the 2009 movie "Zombieland," Jesse Eisenberg offers helpful zombie survival rules, such as building cardiovascular fitness and avoiding bathrooms. The 2006 novel "World War Z," soon to be a film starring Brad Pitt, mocks military strategic error with its "oral history" of the fateful and fatal Battle of Yonkers.
Internet chatter and speculation about the real-life recent events were inevitable, but why did the CDC find that chatter worthy of addressing? Because, inexplicably, the Huffington Post found it worthy of asking the CDC. Maybe that in turn was prompted by the agency's online comic book on preparing for a zombie pandemic. After all, the things you might want in case of a fire, earthquake, hurricane or the like -- food, water, a plan for safely exiting the house -- would also be necessities in the case of a zombie virus, don't you think?
But then, if there were a zombie pandemic, would we really expect the CDC to tell us right away, or send out an announcement that everyone should remain calm?
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