Crash, then waking up in a horde

I was trying out a new survivor build, sorting out initial equipment. Whilst going into the crafting menu, the game crashed. Upon restarting the game, and loading the most recent autosave, a appeared right on top of me, with zombies spawned very close to me. Obviously, this was fairly immediately fatal to my survivor. The main issue however is that there was no horde near me before I reloaded the save.

Not sure what other info I can give, but if there is any further way I can help, I will.