The Evolution of a 5G Zombie Apocalypse Conspiracy Theory
On Oct. 4 at 2:20 p.m. EST, the zombie apocalypse was supposed to begin, not with a bang, but with an unpleasant screeching sound coming from every phone in the United States. At that precise moment, the multiyear plans of shadowy elites would finally become reality, and by using 5G mobile networks and the emergency alert system, they would turn vaccinated people into zombies—or so claimed a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) that has been viewed over 10 million times.
Even though many of the people who saw the post probably laughed it off as a random assortment of nonsense, there was nothing random about it. To people embedded in right-wing conspiracy culture, every part of that post made perfect sense, speaking to long-held fears and providing an opportunity for multiple conspiracies to all come true on a single afternoon. The Oct. 4 conspiracy, as outlandish as it was, is a microcosm of how conspiracy theories circulate, evolve, and become entangled in the contemporary social media environment.
The idea that the zombie apocalypse would begin on Oct. 4 originated not on X but in a post on an alt-right Telegram channel called “The Patriot Front.” In late September, a QAnon influencer asked, “IS THERE A Zombie Apocalypse activated by 5G towers on the way?!?!” The answer was apparently yes, because the post then claimed that COVID-19 vaccines secretly had “sealed pathogens” that contained the Marburg and Ebola viruses and could be activated only by a specific signal from nearby 5G towers. That signal was supposed to be the national test of the Emergency Alert System, which the Telegram and X posts mislabeled as the “EBS.” The only way for a vaccinated person to avoid their deadly fate was to “turn OFF ALL 5G devices” before the test.
On the surface, this seems like a straightforward story about a conspiracy theory that began with a post in late September and ended a week later, after the test alert failed to turn people into zombies or infect them with the Marburg virus. That telling of the story, however, doesn’t explain why these types of conspiracy theories gain traction in the first place, or why a QAnon influencer decided that a routine test of the EAS was going to start the apocalypse. To understand that, we have to go back much further. The deeper story of this zombie apocalypse didn’t begin in late September—it began years ago.
To trace the moving parts of our uneventful zombie outbreak, I’ll start with the EAS. The EAS is exactly what it sounds like: a system that government agencies can use to alert people to emergencies. In recent years, however, the EAS has been the target of various conspiracies. In 2018 QAnon followers spread the rumor that Trump’s Presidential Alert test was a secret message to his supporters, and John McAfee, creator of McAfee antivirus software and a notorious conspiracy theorist, claimed that EAS alerts “are capable of accessing the E911 chip in your phones—giving them full access to your location, microphone, camera and every function of your phone.” A few years later, QAnon followers warned that a routine 2021 test of the system could be used to locate vaccine deniers and put them in internment camps.
5G networks have also been a frequent target of conspiracy theorists. Even before the networks were operational, people had already begun to spread rumors that they caused everything from cancer to infertility. Then, as the coronavirus started to spread in early 2020, conspiracy theories began to claim that 5G towers were actually causing the virus—and that conspiracy gained broader attention after it was spread by celebrities such as Wiz Khalifa and Woody Harrelson. In a few cases, people destroyed 5G infrastructure because of COVID fears and threatened engineers who were working on 5G networks.
Countless conspiracies about COVID vaccines began circulating before the vaccines were even available. Maybe the most evocative vaccine conspiracy is also the most relevant to the events leading up to Oct. 4: the false rumor that the vaccines included secret microchips or “sealed pathogens.” Somehow, Bill Gates became a key villain in the microchip conspiracy because of unrelated comments he’d made years before the pandemic; conspiracy theories pointed to his comments as “evidence” that he had planned for the pandemic as a way to microchip the public. What had begun mostly as a joke about Bill Gates and microchips on a small subreddit went mainstream after Trump ally Roger Stone claimed, on a radio show, “Whether Bill Gates played some role in the creation and spread of this virus is open for vigorous debate. … He and other globalists are definitely using it in a drive for mandatory vaccinations and microchipping people.”
Many conspiracy theorists are like members of doomsday cults: They say the world is going to end on a specific date, and when the date passes and the world doesn’t end, they just pick a new date. QAnon, for example, is filled with predictions of events on specific dates. Those dates pass uneventfully, but QAnon believers shrug them off and the conspiracies continue to transform and survive.
Almost every time there is a routine test of the EAS, people warn that something awful is going to happen. The fact that nothing happens doesn’t stop new conspiracies from arising when the next test is scheduled. After COVID spread to areas that didn’t have 5G networks, conspiracy theorists didn’t suddenly admit they were wrong and 5G was safe—they just started to claim that 5G was built to activate microchips in vaccines. After hundreds of millions of people got the COVID vaccine and didn’t turn into magnets because of microchips, the conspiracies survived and evolved yet again—which is how we ended up the Emergency Alert System 5G vaccine zombie apocalypse.
Conspiracy theories frequently rely on an (often dangerous) ability to creatively connect disparate threads into what seems like a coherent whole to believers; the Oct. 4 conspiracy combined at least three initially distinct conspiracies into a single narrative. In his book Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories, Rob Brotherton details how “belief in one conspiracy theory correlates with belief in others—even when there’s no obvious logical connection between the theories.” Or, as Jonathan Kay puts it in his book about 9/11 conspiracies, Among the Truthers, “Scratch the surface of a middle-aged 9/11 Truther, and you are almost guaranteed to find a JFK conspiracist.”
The type of person who believes that EAS tests are part of a secret plot is far more likely to believe that 5G networks and COVID vaccines were created by shadowy elites as a form of population control. And the correlation often goes further than just believing multiple conspiracies. QAnon, for example, includes conspiracies about everything from satanism to John F. Kennedy Jr. faking his own death. Understanding the various threads of conspiracies often requires a strange kind of literacy and a complex understanding of histories that never happened.
Unfortunately, the fact that we didn’t turn into zombies on Oct. 4 probably won’t have much impact on future conspiracies about the EAS, 5G, or COVID vaccines. The enduring power of these conspiracies is that they can survive repeatedly being wrong; after all, they can only be wrong until the next time they have a chance to be proved right.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
