The siren song was not of impending tornadoes or flash floods as St. Louis braced itself this morning – it wasn’t any earthly disaster that sent Missourians ducking for cover. The emergency notification system, so often responsible for mundane alerts about local road closures and storm shelters opening, blared with a dramatic cry urging citizens of “Gotham City” to evacuate immediately. Confusion, bordering on bemused curiosity, rippled through the Midwestern metro in direct response to messages beamed not just their local radio frequency bands – now reserved increasingly as private platforms for commercial streaming – but all mainstream TV channels flickering for split seconds between football scores and soap opera highlights with preempted messages: a stern visage of Batman against the backdrop of crumbled Gotham buildings flashing across screens throughout the day. St. Louisans accustomed to sirens heralding downpours or winter storms paused, some clutching at radios, others checking their mobile notifications on social mediums like Twitch for answers as quickly as Elon allows memes to proliferize – surely this is an unusually serious drill, perhaps centered around Super Bowl security?
Was a live-action Spiderman film filming location-scouts in St. Louis now under an emergency situation? One theory ran wild online; a viral internet trend exploiting the system using open source hacking tech, all playing right to “Go-etham”. Another camp claimed, with more seriousness this time, that a real “Gotham City” exists – a highly secured film set being constructed elsewhere in Missouri – while yet another suggested perhaps extraterrestrials landing had necessitated a city-wide evacuation for safety’s sake as this fictional event played out. A local weatherman, desperately trying to keep his morning routine on track amidst a whirlwind of calls and messages demanding truth amidst the fantastical, muttered into his microphone,” Folks… sometimes things seem just a step above… well- let’s say… surreal.” he trailed off
By noon, social channels lit upon another meme wave – “If you’re in St. Louis and just saw an emergency alert saying ‘Evacuate Gotham’. Where else was your brain?”, referencing memes around fictional realities bleeding too readily into everyday life. No official statement clarified what truly caused the chaotic broadcast – authorities offered vague assurances everything was “routine” by nightfall, further fuelling internet theories as more images leaked from a seemingly derelict movie set construction site outside St. Louis, casting shadows on “official narratives”.
The Gotham City alert serves as a reminder that even in our meticulously mundane routines of life – work commutes, morning coffees, checking football playoff scores; fiction can slip in. A digital anomaly reminds us that boundaries between reality and escapism are fragile.
But perhaps, after all – isn’t it healthy for the fantastical sometimes break through the veil of everyday reality? That’s what Hollywood would have done with such a plot thread – or will they start claiming its true after an online petition goes “viral”?
It will take time to get the true origins of this story – time , perhaps, well measured as a new podcast titled: “St- Louis Gotham Gate”, explores.