The reality-bending popularity and persistence of the zombie craze is interesting, and does lend itself to conspiracy theory pretty nicely. The part that bugs me is that 90% of what zombies do is walk around aimlessly and unarmed not doing very much except looking awful, so if an actual hysteria were to break out over a perceived zombie outbreak, it could lend itself to the massacre of anyone from refugees, to the sick, to the homeless, to rioters, to the slightly dirty or disheveled.

Although I think it is unlikely that the dead will rise from their graves, I could easily imagine the word zombie resulting in dozens or even hundreds of homicides if there were an illness or toxic exposure causing groups of people to become confused or disoriented, even if the victims were not aggressive or dangerous.

The power of a fantasy that takes on a twilight-zoney life of its own the way the zombie things does is great enough that perhaps a conspiracy that was concerned with eventually having to deal with a refugee crisis, disease outbreak, or breakdown in civil order would purposefully encourage the mythology (with things like this FEMA exercise perhaps) so that they could some day use it for their own ends if necessary- and it could be as uncomplicated as FEMA wanting a means whereby they could one day get the uninfected to kill the infected if a pandemic were ever so bad that it was necessary to completely quarantine and/or cull the infected areas of the country.

All that being said, sometimes large organizations try to be cool, and instead you can't tell if it's patronizing or just crazy. Think back to your education and you'll probably understand what I mean. Maybe zombies are just a new Freddy Fish from the government's point of view, and we're all missing the point and afraid that we're actually gonna get smacked in the face with a tuna.