On 13 February 2013, the Canadian House of Commons gained global attention when it became the first government body to address within official proceedings an issue of global concern when the then-MP for Winnipeg Centre, Pat Martin, raised concerns over the possibility of a zombie pandemic, and asked whether the Minister for Foreign Affairs was ‘working with his American counterparts to develop an international zombie strategy so that a zombie invasion does not turn into a zombie apocalypse’. Martin's remarks were met with laughter and applause by fellow MPs and followed by the then-Minister for Foreign Affairs, John Baird's response as he assured all Canadians that ‘Canada will never become a safe haven for zombies, ever”!’ This comedic interlude within Canadian politics followed a public announcement that the Quebec civil security department was planning to stage a zombie apocalypse as part of training on how to respond to a catastrophic event. This event was modelled on similar training that has repeatedly been run across Canada and the US, even by the American HALO Counter-terrorism unit (31 October 2012). The potential benefits of making use of the zombie apocalypse as a means of preparing people for how to respond to disaster was identified in 2011 by the Center for Disease Control who launched their ‘Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse’ website, with the following declaration:

The campaign was so successful that they began blogging about The Walking Dead, drawing upon events within the series in order to highlight the dos and don'ts of disaster response (Silver 2012) and have subsequently produced an online graphic novel Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic (Silver 2015).