Tweet Puts Carnival Cruise Ship on High Alert

A tweet sent out by a fake twitter account meant to parody a Tennessee diet expert sparked fears of a possible bio-attack aboard a Carnival cruise ship over the weekend.

The tweet was posted by a twitter account set up to mock Nashville’s diet neurosurgeon, Jack Kruse, and sent by the alias “@shitkrusesays”. The accounts true owner likely started the account to poke fun at the dietician but when the account sent out an alarming tweet that read:

“Security confiscated dynamite. talk won’t be as explosive as at PaleoFx. still have vial of Legionnaires for epic biohack”

Unfortunately for Kruse at the time, he was booked to depart on the Carnival Magic out of Galveston, Texas on Sunday and was scheduled to speak at Jimmy Moore’s 5th Annual Low-Carb Cruise event to be held on the vessel.

When Carnival learned of the tweet, they alerted the authorities who sent FBI and Coast Guard agents to the ship to investigate. According to media reports, the agents searched Kruse and his belongings and a long questioning session about the tweet caused Kruse to miss the vessels scheduled departure.

In the end, authorities found no reason to hold Kruse after determining that the tweet was not at all associated with him or his team.

“To make a joke about something like this is not a good thing to do. Not only is it unprofessional and unethical, it’s quite dangerous these days,” Kruse told the media of the incident and added that he understood the reasoning for the alarm.

In a statement, Carnival Cruise’s expressed the need to follow up with every threat and offered Dr. Kruse the option of flying to the ship’s next port of call and re-join the voyage at no charge.

As gCaptain reported last week, the cruise industry recently discovered that cruise ships are considered as possible targets for attacks by members of Al Quaeda after secret documents were discovered and decoded.

The twitter account that sent the tweet has since been disabled.