As rare as this may seem, the State Dept. has issued four previous worldwide travel alerts [May - Aug 2011, Sep 2011 - Dec 2012, Aug 2013, Dec 2014 - Mar 2015].

As rare as this may seem, the State Dept. has issued four previous worldwide travel alerts [May - Aug 2011, Sep 2011 - Dec 2012, Aug 2013, Dec 2014 - Mar 2015]. This amounts to about 20% of the past five years.