Update: Two more cases of Emergency Alert System zombie reports have popped up, and, again, there were, in reality, no zombie uprisings, as far as we can confirm.

The above video is of an EAS activation on ABC affiliate WBUP-TV in Marquette, Michigan. It’s the same as the one that hit Great Falls, Montana yesterday. This one also aired on PBS affiliate WNMU-TV in Marquette, and the Detroit News reports that it broke into Barney and Friends on that station. I’m not sure what would have been more horrifying, Barney or the zombies. It also aired, says the Detroit Free Press, on CW affiliate WBKP-TV, right in the middle of The Carrie Diaries, but if nobody actually SEES something happen, did it really occur?

And Tuesday, it happened again in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, but this time, it was an accident. Seems that the morning show at Z-93 radio played a tape of the Montana incident, and on that tape, there was the standard EAS tone, which then triggered an alert at CBS affiliate WKBT-TV. The way the alerts work, a “primary” radio station sends a tone over the air, and other stations in the area have receivers that hear that tone, trigger their own alerts, and immediately pick up the audio from the primary station. And that, reports the
LaCrosse Tribune, put the Montana audio on the LaCrosse TV station, via the LaCrosse radio station, which was merely playing the tape of the… oh, you get the picture.

And here’s where we can get all Mom and Dad-like and remind people that the EAS is there to report actual emergency information, like the tornado that hit Hattiesburg, Mississippi the other day, and that the ease by which someone hacked the system is actually disturbing and dangerous. We’re lucky that, this time, it’s just a zombie joke. It IS a joke, isn’t it?