There are advantages to using the zombie meme, or something else like it, in planning, training and exercises. First, the topic of a catastrophic epidemic and the possibility is very daunting and difficult to contemplate, especially for those who will be in the front lines and most responsible for containing it, stopping it and treating its victims. The facts, figures and projections are depressing enough by themselves, without rehearsing them. Second, it allows the maintenance of a focus sufficiently broad to encompass the full range of such disasters, otherwise, there would be too much of a natural tendency to over-focus on preparing for a specific type of incident, typically the last one, and unconsciously exclude consideration of elements found in other possibilities. Some of my CDC instructors were just returned from Africa, where they were working on the Ebola outbreak there. But they still avoided what would have been understandable tendency to utilize to their recent awesome experience as a primary teaching tool. Third, using something unrealistic allows for just a bit of psychological distancing that, in turn, promotes objective reasoning and open thinking about all rational possibilities.