A story for which the world is not yet prepared.
University resilience is not as good as we thought: Florida has removed from its web-site a disaster response exercise to meet a zombie invasion.
According to the Florida News 13 website, the University of Florida website contains a a detailed report on a “Disaster Preparedness Simulation Exercise” for how to respond to a zombie outbreak. The site says the report: "includes details on an in-depth study and discussion on how emergency responders would, hypothetically, handle an outbreak of zombies....The author or authors of the report discussed the science of “zombie behavior spectrum disorder,” or ZBSD, and even encouraged university administrators to create a “UF Zombie Response Team.... a team does not yet exist at the University of Florida; but we are confident UF administration will soon see the importance of such a group, probably situated within the University Police Department,”.
It's pretty much the sort of witty but overdone undergraduate humour you'd expect. Another press report says the guide contains: "an "Infected Co-Worker Dispatch Form" for Florida employees to let superiors know when a colleague exhibits signs of zombie behavior, with a checklist of such behaviors, including "references to wanting to eat brains," "recently dead but moving again," "lack of rational thought (this can cause problems confusing zombies with managers)" and "killed and ate another employee." A footnote in the plan suggests the importance of maintaining sensitivity in a time of zombie attack: "While many people refer to 'undead,' practitioners in the field of Zombie Studies and zombie advocates such as PETZ: People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies, and supporters of Florida Zombie Preserve, Inc. insist that the term 'undead' clearly connotes deficiency; specifically the absence of both life and death. Hence, we suggest here the term 'life impaired' to recognize the difficulties imposed on a former person by zombie behavior spectrum disorder (ZBSD) but without suggesting the former person is somehow 'deficient' as a result of the infection."
There's also a Flordia Zombie society and a Facebook page. I'll spare you the references.
Alas, the actual university site now says, simply, "The disaster recovery exercises have been removed at the instruction of UF Administration. We apologize for any inconvenience. "
Sad that they did that. It didn't inconvenience me at all. And it is not much sillier than some quite genuine emergency response exercises, eg this one.. I could suggest one or two other exercises where the scenarios are just as implausible.
In fact I'm slightly more worried that the university site normally includes "documented exercises to recover from a hurricane, pandemic and other disasters". How generic can you go and still be meaningful?
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