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October 1st, 2009 12:49pm
UF site has emergency plan for zombie attack
by Nathan Crabbe
The Gainesville Sun

Forget swine flu: The University of Florida is ready in case its employees become flesh-eating zombies.

A UF e-Learning Support Services Web site has a a zombie attack plan posted among similar disaster preparation exercises for a hurricane and disease pandemic. The apparent joke is played straight, including medical information on “zombieism” and a form allowing UF employees to explain why they killed infected co-workers.

“Some employees may prefer weapons such as chain saws, baseball bats, and explosives that have been shown to be effective against zombies,” the plan says. “Given the stress on staff to be anticipated during a zombie outbreak, employees should be given the flexibility to choose their own weaponry thereby diminishing anxiety.”

The story was first reported by Central Florida News 13. UF spokesman Steve Orlando said he’s looking into it.

The zombie attack plan includes footnotes referring to zombie movies such as “Night of the Living Dead” and “28 Days Later” as documentaries. It also has some helpful tips:

* Signs of a possible zombie include “Identification of difficult to kill, flesh-eating perpetrators” and “Documentation of lots of strange moaning.”

* Contrary to myth, “garlic will not stop true zombies, only vampires; and zombies do come out during the day, though they are most active a night because they typically do not like sunlight.”

The “infected co-worker dispatch form” is the best part, including a place to list the co-worker’s symptoms such as “references to wanting to eat brains” and “lack of rational thought (this can cause problems confusing zombies with managers).”

At the end, employees must note whether housekeeping was notified to clean up the dead zombie and human resources has been told to stop salary payments to the zombie and its victims.

UPDATE: The full story on the plan’s author and why he wrote it can be found here.