Pentagon has plan for ‘Counter-Zombie Dominance’ during zombie apocalypse

The Pentagon has a contingency plan for just about everything — and that includes the zombie apocalypse.

“CONOP 8888” is an unclassified document from April 30, 2011, by the Defense Department. It serves as a blueprint for how the U.S. would handle such an ordeal to “preserve the sanctity of human life” among “non-zombie humans,” Foreign Policy reported Tuesday.

The military’s “Counter-Zombie Dominance” plan was hatched in 2009 and 2010 when U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, needed a creative way to conduct training that the civilian population wouldn’t misinterpret in terms of civil liberties or real-world foreign policy objectives. Planners needed an intriguing situation (e.g., a deadly pathogen essentially turning people or animals into zombies) that would not cause political blow back for policymakers.

“This plan 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 threats posed by a zombie horde,” CONOP 8888’s plan summary reads, Foreign Policy reported. “Because zombies pose a threat to all non-zombie human life, [Strategic Command] will be prepared to preserve the sanctity of human life and conduct operations in support of any human population — including traditional adversaries.”

Navy Capt. Pamela Kunze, a spokeswoman for Strategic Command, stressed to Foreign Policy via email that the document was only for training purposes, saying: “The document is identified as a training tool used in an in-house training exercise where students learn about the basic concepts of military plans and order development through a fictional training scenario. […] This document is not a U.S. Strategic Command plan.”