Important Austin Safety Alert Just A Hoax?

Commuters provided with a helpful illuminated roadside warning of "ZOMBIES AHEAD" may have stopped off to pick up axes, chainsaws, and other traditional gear for overcoming zombie hordes, but in vain: the sign turned out to be a hacker's hoax.

Just when you think those signs are finally going to tell you something useful, too. This boy-who-cried-wolf stuff is bad for public preparedness, incidentally. Ordinarily, I'd expect red-blooded Texans (even in liberal Austin) to prepare to retake the University of Texas campus in the event impending zombie attack was warned through public channels. Many more false alarms like this, and Texas will be ripe for Communist invasion.

Be Alert!

The last time I saw such a sign warning about problems with a Texas city, the sign was in Fort Worth and was warning drivers not to travel to Houston. Self-serving tripe like that -- the weather was great in Houston just following hurricane Ike -- is clearly intended to capture local economic benefit and should be scorned. By contrast, the zombie warning -- appearing on a sign owned by the City of Austin -- appeared to offer a valuable public service and honestly present some notice of an adverse condition to which prospective travelers seeking live music might want to be appraised.

Can a zombie band offer live music?

This is an important Austin-type question. If not, bars offering zombie bands will need to make appropriate disclaimers to avoid committing a deceptive trade practice.

UPDATE: Local Austin dwellers suspect the zombies are real, and the news that the announcement is a hoax is a public cover-up. Several report this is an ongoing local problem deserving of serious response:

True enough Adrian. At least on the weekends, when in a state of bleary eyed inebriation, I blend right in with the zombies.
The state wants to hide all of the zombie activity. It’s time to teach the controversy. The Texas Board of Education does not want you to know about the zombies wandering our state. We need some disclaimers in our biology textbooks that let us know that the “strengths and weaknesses of the scientific theories only apply to living organisms, and tell us little about the undead.”
by Aaron

This important angle on public education has found an echo in this assertion of a Constitutional right to maintain zombie-preparedness:

People of Texas, don’t take zombie threats lightly. Each one, no matter how small, must be thoroughly investigated! What if this “hacker” was really just trying to warn you of your impending doom? What if he had just been mauled by a large group of brain-hungry walking dead and this was his last act as one of the living? Texans especially should remember: “A well-regulated zombie defense force, being necessary to keep the security of a state, and the right of the people to blast the heads off of undead scum, shall not be infringed”.
By Dain

Perhaps the zombies are in league with the Nigerian goat sorcerer. The problem is definitely international in scope.