The US government is preparing for a zombie apocalypse. The American military has taken this type of threat quite seriously.
Although zombies are currently nothing but the fruits of an overactive imagination, the US is seriously considering this type of threat. The country has, undoubtedly, one of the largest armies in the world but the Pentagon isn't leaving anything to chance. The Americans have prepared for everything - including zombie attacks.
The strategy for dealing with a zombie apocalypse was announced back in 2011, when the US Department of Defense published its plan, titled "Counter-Zombie Dominance" or "CONPLAN 8888-11". It explicitly states in it that it is not a joke.
The strategic document owes its origins back to 2009. It was then that a group of young officers, part of the Joint Operation Planning and Execution System, outlined the potential scenarios in the case of a hypothetical zombie attack. The fantastical idea helps officers think outside the box, in more creative ways pertaining to their strategies and tactics.
Pop culture has long been fascinated with the idea of zombies. The first stories about them appeared back in the 17th century in Haiti. Zombies were presented as African slaves who had committed suicide and were not allowed to go on to the afterlife, doomed to work the plantations for all eternity.
The CONPLAN 8888-11 strategy consists of 31 pages, divided into 3 parts. The first compromises the creation and continuity of a defensive plan to protect humanity from predators with a darkened consciousness. The 2nd outlines the procedures for eliminating all dangers posed by the zombies. The 3rd details how to reestablish law and order.
The Pentagon classifies zombies into 8 categories. These vary from ordinary undead, to zombies created by airborne bacteria and pathogens, black magic zombies created by an unknown source, all the way through to zombie-vegetarians. The latter devour and devastate crop fields to survive.
Only 1 of these categories has any realistic basis, that being the potential threat of zombie chickens which occurred after the 2006 incident Petaluma, California. It was then that a failed attempt at euthanizing free-range hens with carbon dioxide led to thousands of chickens crawling over the bodies of their dead kin and kept moving until their bodies finally stopped due to organ failure.
The US's plan really does leave nothing to chance. Laws worldwide prohibit violence against people and animals. But there are no lawful restrictions against using everything in the human arsenal to combat invading hordes of pathogenic creatures.
