It's one of the burning questions of our decade: How would major news organizations like Newsweek cover a massive Zombie invasion of the United States?
Well, now we know. For a limited time (in IE and Chrome browsers only) you can go to www.newsweek.com, type in the old Konami video game cheat code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, enter) and you see a mock Newsweek homepage breaking down a (hopefully) fictitious undead invasion.
In the event of the tragedy, Newsweek will offer you a Zombie Invasion Timeline, letting us know that a former British citizen living in New York was IDed as patient zero three months ago, and that he ate the brains of his attending neurosurgeon.
There's an informative piece on options for fleeing the Zombie Horde, a kind of best practices for avoiding the undead. The good people at Newsweek also remind you to go for the head if ever engaging in combat with the undead.
There's even a call for user participation, saying, "Not everybody reacts the same to the undead. If you, or a loved one, has encountered a zombie please share your experiences in the comments."
None of the links on the page work, except for one: the Zombies tag page redirects to a Newsweek search page for "Tea Party." The bylines of news articles about zombie attacks credit real-life members of the Newsweek staff, Mike Robinson, Dan Alcalde, Roberto Gonzalez, Nicole Barth and Monica Parra.
Another screen shot:
It'll be interesting to see how long the zombie version of Newsweek remains active, and who came up with the idea. A few bored designers? Was this meant to go public? Will heads roll (and presumably be consumed by hoardes of undead)?
I guess we'll see.