theatlantic: The Tweet That Begins the Zombie Apocalypse

This is not the kind of Tweet you want to see from a feed that describes itself as “an automated Twitter feed provided by the Illini-Alert System” that is “not actively monitored by a human being.” In essence, we have a robot reporting to us that some kind of hazardous material — what, we don’t know and can’t discover — has been released within a biotechnology research center.The Institute for Genomic Biology has a wide variety of research programs including stuff like “host-microbe systems.”

For 52 minutes, that was all the information that was available. Then, two tweets came in fairly quick succession. The first said that the “spill” was “contained within the building.” The second said that the building had been safely evacuated and “The fire department is on scene.”[…]