The CDC (Center for Disease Control) recently released an online graphic novel following the success of their blog post in May which featured zombies. Their new zombie graphic novel, appropriately called Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic, is being used to teach people how to survive in the real-world during such real-life terrors as floods and hurricanes with some help from the undead.
On Friday, the CDC's online graphic novel went live. The comic took a few weeks to write and a month and a half to draw, but was worth it as it became a hit at New York's ComicCon.
The inspiration for the comic came from preparedness office worker David Daigle and health communication specialists Catharine Jamal and Margaret Silver. The group realized the CDC's advice was not being listened to with their blog posts on safety, which received only a couple of thousand views. So, the team decided to mix the "boring" topic of preparedness with the hot topic being exploited in virtually every medium today: zombies. This decision led to the birth of their blog post which gave advice for a zombie apocalypse that mirrored the same advice you would give to people when making an emergency kit and preparing families in the event of a real emergency – and the post quickly got over three million views.
The team are happy to use zombies in a creative way to get people thinking about preparing for future catastrophes. But why talk about it when you can read it for free? Another treat this Halloween, enjoy reading Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemichere and pick up a few survival skills along the way.
