Said local news outlets took one look at the report, saw the word "drill," and tossed it aside in favor of more exciting stories about bear orgies, or whatever makes the news in Russia. The national media was a bit more on the ball: They noticed right away when the Emergency Situations Ministry posted details of the "incident" on their website ... with precisely zero mentions that it was only a drill. The online report gave every indication that this was a legitimate event, including the revelation that 55 people had already been killed, and that an enormous murder cloud was now making its way toward Tyumen to usher in a citywide apocalypse.

Igor Pivovarov

"Where are your bear orgies now, citizens of Tyumen?!"

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Now, none of us here at Cracked are licensed medical experts (or even licensed drivers, for that matter), so we looked up what inhaling chlorine gas does to you, and it's not "makes your breath poolside fresh." Somewhere around the point where your own organs dissolve in your xenomorph-like acidic blood, we clicked away to watch puppies snuggle.

Social media exploded with panicked citizens. Here are a few Tweets that we ran through Google Translate:

Retweet PLEASE! As a result of the release of chlorine in Tyumen killed 55 people. People need help!

Tyumen spewed chlorine. According to estimates by [emergency ministry] killed about 55 people !!!

Brains, there is no?! Tyumen rescuers fun: killed 50 people and let the chlorine in the regional center

Yuri Rusin

Translation is hard. The hashtag is a Russian vowel.

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The Emergency Situations Ministry eventually updated their press release to include the little fact that nobody's lungs had exploded like blood pinatas. But we're laying odds that it was too late for at least one Siberian family when, not wanting to die a liar, some poor panicked Russian confessed to his wife that he had always felt like a khaki man trapped in a tracksuit body.