A post from the blog website of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drove too much traffic that it actually caused the site to crash on Thursday. The post is about hurricane preparation but used “zombie apocalypse” to trigger the curiosity of Americans and get them to read the blog.

The Zombie Apocalypse campaign is the effort of the Public Health and Preparedness department of the CDC to spread information and awareness regarding the hurricane season which will begin on June 1st.

The blog post started by saying that there are a lot of emergencies that we should prepare for and sited “zombie apocalypse” as one of those emergencies.  Also, it was released days before the forecasted “Judgment Day” on May 21 which added a flavor on the campaign. A couple of weeks ago an evangelical broadcaster based in California predicted that May 21 is the “judgment day” or end of the world.

Dave Daigle, CDC spokesperson, told Reuters on Thursday that if you are prepared for a zombie apocalypse, you are prepared for all other emergencies.

Zombies became mainstream after George Romero successfully released a horror film entitled “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968. The movie was about flesh-eating zombies that roamed the eastern seaboard after a radioactive contamination. Zombie is a term that comes from a voodoo practice wherein victims are stripped of their consciousness.

Daigle said that they aim to reach a young demographic to raise awareness about disaster preparedness. The campaign did just that as it went viral on several social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.