Zombies Invade Montana, Warns Official Emergency Broadcast

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Though the synthetic drug “bath salts” is still a problem among people who never had a stoner uncle tell them, “If it don’t grow, just say no,” their 15 minutes of national fame appear to have ended, taking with them an instant correlation with hungry hordes of zombies roaming suburban America. Either the citizens of Great Falls, Montana got over that hype quicker than everyone else, or they must be scholars of Aesop’s “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” because apparently nothing rattles them.

On Monday, Great Falls’ CBS affiliate KRTV had their on-air telecast interrupted by a message from the Emergency Broadcast System, but instead of tornadoes or floods, the message warned of ongoing zombie attacks! It was definitely not a test, but it wasn’t exactly true either. The usual list of affected counties and areas scrolled across the top of the screen, but then a digitally altered voice popped up, warning, “Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living,” in between other warnings against approaching the undead, due to their being dangerous. Even if a zombie had a Greenpeace uniform on and was holding a giant lollipop, I wouldn’t confront it. Watch the video below, and remember that none of it is real.

Amazingly, no one called the authorities about it, and many people discovered it happened only because KRTV soon updated their website, alerting citizens that the message was, of course, bogus. Not that there weren’t signs of fraudulence. The message advised viewers to follow on-screen instructions, and unless they were talking about ordering a Perfect Pancake from the number on the screen, there was no advice to follow. As well, Also, it advises people to tune into an AM radio station in case they get separated from their TV, and then almost immediately says that the station is going off the air, and then doesn’t do that at all.

No one knows who hacked into KRTV’s systems in order to get that message out there, so I don’t know who to give this “A for effort” to. But it’s just as well, seeing as how the “D for execution” might have hurt their feelings.