This seems to be the season for zombies. After writing my article in August, I've noticed them cropping up just about everywhere. Woody Harrelson's Zombieland is in theaters and doing well. Scott Phelps will be offering a session on zombie attacks at the upcoming International Association of Emergency Managers conference in November. Zombies may well become the new trend in exercises. However, a little caution is always in order when you try something a bit different.
A colleague at the University of Florida, Doug Johnson, developed a pretty good disaster preparedness exercise based on a zombie attack. The exercise was designed to spark discussion among planners while being a bit light-hearted. Unfortunately, the local and national news media got wind of it (months after it was posted in June) and initially thought that the UF was really preparing for a zombie attack. The story even merited a blurb in US News and World Report. You can imagine the concern that generated with UF officials!The good news is that media reports eventually got it right and Doug even got a good interview out of it. Still, the UF administration has pulled the disaster scenarios from its e-Learning Support Services website.
The caveat here is that when you do something a bit on the wild side, think about how it will look to outsiders. Make sure you do a little preparation ahead of time, such as briefing your superiors and having some media announcements ready to go. This is not the time to maintain the "zombie silence" advocated in Scott Kenemore's The Zen of Zombie!
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