FEMA Prepares for Ebola Zombie Apocalypse?

The Ebola pandemic in West Africa has quickly grown into a global crisis, but an Ebola zombie apocalypse is not imminent. Internet users in China coined the term “zombie disease”

in August 2014, and rumors spread about the virus’ ability to reanimate its victims as flesh-eating zombies. But China’s state-run Zinhua News Agency quickly dispelled rumors of the so-called “zombie disease” sweeping West Africa. “The term — which Baike, a Chinese online encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia, even lists as a synonym for Ebola — appears to arise from the virus’ high fatality rate and the particularly gruesome death it can cause, sometimes with bleeding from the eyes, ears and gums,” according to a version of the story translated by Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy went on to explain that some people in China believed that once people die from Ebola, they can “unexpectedly reawaken, entering into an extremely violent condition in which they bite any moving object, including humans and animals.” The Zinhua News Agency cited an unnamed “expert” who claimed Ebola victims actually grow weaker because they lose so much blood and that zombie reanimation “can only happen in the movies.” But that wasn’t the end of the Ebola zombie eRumor. It came back to life on September 24, 2014, after the New Dawn, an independent newspaper that covers Africa, reported that two women had been “resurrected” after apparently succumbing to the virus in Nimba County. But the article makes no mention of “Ebola zombies,” and it’s apparent that the women likely recovered after they had been presumed dead by villagers. News of the resurrections had “created panic in residents of Hope Village Community and Ganta” who described one of the women as a “ghost who shouldn’t live among them,” the New Dawn reported. But the villagers’ panic can easily be attributed to cultural differences and the extremely contagious nature of Ebola. Nevertheless, reports of the so-called zombie apocalypse were spread by American websites and bloggers. Some of those reports included claims that FEMA was preparing for a zombie apocalypse and/or was setting up Ebola quarantine camps. But accompanying photos that allegedly show FEMA workers “quietly establishing Ebola quarantine centers” across the U.S. are a hoax. The photos were taken in Africa in 2012 and were published by Business Insider.