In the spring semester, we have a week without classes.  In the fall semester, we have a week without football.  In the era of the young man’s name that rhymes with “elbow,” it’s tough to know which break is more significant.  However, when you are punching a clock for the man, both time periods have a different flavor to them when compared to a time when making it to a 2nd period 8:30am class seemed a dubious bet at best.

One thing this time of year does bring that almost every Gainesville resident enjoys (student or not), however, is a break in the weather. Power bills and temperatures dip in unison and “Oh my gosh I am driving around town with the windows open!” is a pleasant experience not a nightmare from which you can’t escape.

Speaking of nightmares with the uh-oh-I’m-trapped-feeling … today in Gainesville, at least in my corner of Gainesville, one of the most talked about stories didn’t seem to be football, the forthcoming next chapter in a new UF sport, or the mid 50-degree temperatures provided by Mother Nature.  Nope… today, the most interesting talk was all about Zombies!

Though the buzzworthy portion of the site was taken down earlier today, for several weeks, along with disaster plans for a variety of other Irwin Allen inspired scenarios, you could have read all about “ZOMBIE ATTACK Disaster Preparedness Simulation Exercise #5 (DR5)” an exercise that had the stated purpose “to discern appropriate strategies for responding to a zombie attack and/or infection that might affect the University of Florida campus.”

It just rolls right of the tongue doesn’t it?

When the story broke locally with the Gainesville Sun, I knew it would be a matter of time before the documents got pulled from the site within the UF webnetwork.  I did have late hopes after catching the evening local newscast that the appropriate UF individuals would have kept a nuanced sense of humor and left the documents up … the story seemed like things were heading in that direction … but no such luck.

So that’s why I very early today I downloaded the documents and screen-shotted that website for posterity.

Let’s go to another excerpt shall we?

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Tentative Action Items

 Equip all staff offices with “blackout curtains” to prevent identifying worker locations to zombies;

 Equip all offices with easily barricaded doors able to withstand prolonged zombie incursion attempts;

 Equip staff with laptops and ensure IPCC software is installed, tested, and working for staff who may find commuting to work to be difficult;

 Equip all staff with long range (e.g. rifles) and short range (e.g. hand guns) firearms or other weaponry (e.g. chain saws, baseball bats, LPs) for defense against the infected and to dispatch possibly infected co-workers.

——

Whoa.

Okay… so with that last bullet point you can see why someone might have felt it was a good idea to take down the document.  Interestingly… ALL of the listed disaster plans were ALSO removed.  Not just the undead-inspired one.

If the evil hurricanes are smart, they may use this time to regroup and renew their tropical reign of terror.  ”The plan… where’s the plan?”

While I am sure the hurricane and other plans will eventually be put back up, it is doubtful the Zombies will return.  Everyone has their own opinion of the document and at the office where I work on campus, a diverse crowd to begin with, there was a wide variety of reactions.  However, I found the Zombie document equal parts fun, disturbing, scholarly, and creative.

If you’d like to draw your own conclusions about the Zombie document shoot me an e-mail and I will send you the PDF.  (bobbyuggles at mac.com)

Filed under: Ramblings | Tagged: Zombie