Fans of “The Walking Dead” know: The undead could appear at any time.
It seems like the Pentagon is taking that seriously too. The Defense Department has a plan to deal with the zombie apocalypse, according to an exclusive report in Foreign Policy.
The zombie survival plan, called CONOP 8888, “fulfills fictional contingency planning guidance tasking for U.S. Strategic Command to develop a comprehensive [plan] to undertake military operations to preserve ‘non-zombie’ humans from the thread posed by a zombie horde,” the plan reads. “Because zombies pose a threat to all-zombie human life, [Strategic Command] will be prepared to preserve the sanctity of human life and conduct operations in support of any human populations—including traditional adversaries.”
A spokesman for Strategic Command acknowledged the existence of the plan and that it exists on a “secure Internet site,” but insisted it is only a creative endeavor for training purposes and “is not a U.S. Strategic Command.” Maybe not anymore, since it’s been published.
But let’s look into CONOP 8888 anyway. Also known as “Counter-Zombie Dominance,” CONOP 8888 has a disclaimer that reads “this plan was not actually designed as a joke.” And it takes comprehensiveness very seriously: There are sections on dealing with “chicken zombies” (“old hens who have been euthanized and buried and then claw their way back to the surface”), “vegetarian zombies” (who wouldn’t be a threat to humans but still probably aren’t great), zombies from outer space, human zombies created by a pathogen, and “evil magic zombies” (“zombie life forms created via some form of occult experimentation in what might otherwise be referred to as ‘evil magic’”).
In the plan are phases of strategic command—and what the plan would entail to reach the president and the defense secretary. CONOP 8888 plan is dated April 30, 2011. Putting that in place historically, that’s one day after the Royal Wedding and one day before Osama bin Laden was killed.
