“The first time I called the CDC, I said that I wanted to talk to someone about possibly designing a zombie virus. …So every time I came up with a new iteration of Kellis-Amberlee, I would call back and say, “If I did this, this, this, this, this and this, could I raise the dead?” And every single time they would say, “No.” And I’d say, “OK,” hang up, and go back to working. After about the 17th time, I called and said, “If I did this, this, this, this, this, this and this, could I raise the dead?” And got, “Don’t … don’t do that.” At that point, I knew I had a viable virus.”
—
Seanan McGuire / Mira Grant (via
)
(chuckle) Persistence in research pays off.
(via dduane)
#somewhere there is a CDC employee #who is both all out of fucks to give #and experiencing a mild level of perpetual background anxiety about maybe being complicit in the future zombie apocalypse #like I’m just imagining this one specific person fielding all of seanan’s phonecalls #maybe two a day over a period of weeks #and progressing from bemused politeness #to genuine amusement #to steadily escalating panic #’what if she’s not really a writer?’ #’what if I’m actually helping a supervillain??’ #’oh god I’m not paid enough for this’ #’I LIKE VIRUSES NOT THE GENERAL PUBLIC’ #’PLEASE TAKE ME OFF PHONE DUTY OH GOD’ #lowering their head gently into their cupped hands with the phone braced between ear and shoulder #’ma’am-’ #’ma’am we really don’t recommend-’ #’ma’am, no, that wouldn’t-’ #’ma’am please I really think-’ #’don’t… don’t do that-’ #and then she just STOPS CALLING #and after three days of radio silence this person starts discreetly checking the news for x-files-style stories about zombies #getting shit from their colleagues for their sudden fascination with trashy newspapers and trying to play it off #’HAHA YOU GUYS YOU’RE SO FUNNY’ #’YEAH ZOMBIE RACCOONS, IT’S TOTALLY HILARIOUS’ #’WHO WOULD EVEN DO THAT AM I RIGHT?’ #’IT’S NOT LIKE THEY’VE GOT US ON THEIR SIDE’ #’HAHA’ #’HAHAHAHAHA’ #*nervously wipes sweat from forehead*
(via fozmeadows)
Actually probably not.
So the CDC is one of the poster children for how to use social media as an outreach tool and do it right. I mean, sure they make some missteps, but on the whole they have been pretty successful.
Go back to 2011. They had a public health campaign planned on disaster preparedness. You know the things you’re supposed to do for emergencies. Have a disaster kit with batteries, blankets, canned food, can opener, battery operated radio, flashlights, potable water, etc.
Not a whole lot of money for this campaign. Their twitter had like maybe 10-12k followers. They decided to couch the campaign as preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
It went viral and they had so much traffic that it crashed the CDC servers.
By like the next day they had over 1.2 million followers and a ton of positive media attention.
My guess is that the CDC is really fond of zombies.
(via grammarsaveslives)
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