The U.S. military has a war plan for combating zombies, and it's not a joke, but rather originated as a scenario to train junior officers in the Department of Defense's Joint Operation Planning and Execution System, Business Insider reported on Wednesday.
Instructors at JOPES, by which the military devises contingency plans, discovered that a zombie apocalypse scenario was a more effective teaching tool than using fictional scenarios about Tunisia or Nigeria, which risked being misunderstood by the public as real scenarios.
"We elected to use a completely impossible scenario that could never be mistaken as a real plan," explained the CONPLAN 8888-11 document, which was issued in 2011 by U.S. Strategic Command, whose regular responsibilities include overseeing America's strategic nuclear weapons, global strike capabilities, and missile defense. "Because the plan was so ridiculous, our students not only enjoyed the lessons; they actually were able to explore the basic concepts of plan and order development (fact, assumptions, specified, and implied tasks, references, etc.) very effectively."
The training scenario focuses on identifying the enemy, designating vital infrastructure, and coordinating forces.
With tongue in cheek, the plan details how Strategic Command will deal with a global uprising of the undead, according to Business Insider.
When the U.S. military goes on Zombie Condition (ZombieCon) alert, Strategic Command will start defensive operations to protect the human population, and offensive operations to neutralize zombies by "denial, deception, disruption, degradation, or destruction."
Taking full advantage of plentiful open-source intelligence on the undead, planners scoured classic movies and popular video games, such as "World War Z," "Night of the Living Dead," and "Plants vs. Zombies," to devise a typology of zombies.
For those wondering if Strategic Command's plan would work, that is difficult to ascertain, since the military obviously lacks experience in counter-zombie operations, Business Insider points out.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.