{"id":4818,"date":"2023-10-03T18:19:01","date_gmt":"2023-10-03T23:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4818"},"modified":"2023-10-03T19:35:45","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T00:35:45","slug":"anti-vaxxers-think-an-emergency-phone-alert-will-cause-a-zombie-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/10\/03\/anti-vaxxers-think-an-emergency-phone-alert-will-cause-a-zombie-apocalypse\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Vaxxers Think an Emergency Phone Alert Will Cause a Zombie Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/culture\/culture-news\/oct-4-fema-alert-test-5g-anti-vaxx-conspiracy-theory-1234838377\/\">Rolling Stone<\/a> The latest paranoia to grip online fringe communities is about FEMA supposedly sending harmful 5G signals to your phone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIS THERE A&nbsp;Zombie Apocalypse activated by 5G towers on the way?!?!\u201d wrote the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/qanon\/\">QAnon<\/a>&nbsp;influencer behind a Telegram channel called The Patriot Voice, which is followed by more than 50,000 people, in a post shared at the end of September. The message cites a supposed military expert\u2019s claim that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/vaccines\/\">Covid-19 vaccines<\/a>&nbsp;contain \u201csealed pathogens\u201d including E. coli bacteria and the viruses Marburg and Ebola, all of which can be released by an \u201c18 Gigahertz 5G frequency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFEMA plans on doing a \u2018test\u2019 of the EBS on Oct 4 or 11 at 2:22PM. I would turn OFF ALL 5G devices,\u201d the writer concluded. Similar claims about a test alert that will \u201cactivate\u201d deadly diseases within vaccinated people \u2014 and warnings to turn off phones \u2014 have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on X, the platform formerly known as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/twitter\/\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Virtually nothing in these comments is accurate, save for the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Federal Communications Commission are conducting tests of the Emergency Alert System\u00a0(EAS) and\u00a0Wireless Emergency Alerts\u00a0(WEA) on Oct. 4. (The Emergency Broadcast System, or EBS, was replaced by the EAS in 1997.) The wireless portion, to occur at approximately 2:20pm ET, \u201cwill be directed to all consumer cell phones,\u201d and consist of a simple message: \u201cTHIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.\u201d At most, it will be a mild surprise or annoyance. And it certainly won\u2019t turn you into a zombie (which the\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2023\/03\/29\/health\/marburg-ebola-virus-africa-health-wellness\/index.html#:~:text=Wen%3A%20Marburg%20virus%20disease%20is,fatality%20rate%20of%20around%2050%25.\" target=\"_blank\">often fatal Marbug virus<\/a>\u00a0doesn\u2019t do in any case).<\/p>\n<div style=\"display: none;\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" title=\"onW lrAJTDA Be\">onW lrAJTDA Be<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rolling Stone The latest paranoia to grip online fringe communities is about FEMA supposedly sending harmful 5G signals to your phone. \u201cIS THERE A&nbsp;Zombie Apocalypse activated by 5G towers on the way?!?!\u201d wrote the&nbsp;QAnon&nbsp;influencer behind a Telegram channel called The Patriot Voice, which is followed by more than 50,000 people, in a post shared at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Screenshot-2023-10-03-at-19.16.19.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4819,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4818\/revisions\/4819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}