Earlier this week, many an eyebrow was raised when documents outlining a fictional US military plan to fend off a zombie apocalypse were released by Foreign Policy. Obviously, that contingency plan isn’t real, but in the annals of military planning, there are a number of fully-real plans for scenarios none of us would expect to happen.

The zombie plan, otherwise known as CONPLAN 8888-11 or “Counter-Zombie Dominance,” is actually just an in-house training tool to help teach students how to understand “basic concepts of military plans, and order development,” a Navy spokeswoman told Foreign Policy. The reason the US military selected an outrageous scenario was that true-to-life plans—even for training purposes—can cause political fallout if the general public mistakes them for reality.

That’s happened before. Take, for example, the now infamous plan to invade Canada, codenamed WAR PLAN RED, which was declassified in 1974. The plan for war against the UK, it aims to conquer Canada first, beginning with a gas attack on Halifax (sorry guys) which was a key resupply port for the British. Invading Britain was later on in the timetable.

The inevitably chilly invasion of Canada outlined in WAR PLAN RED was a part of a series of color coded war scenarios gamed out by the US military after World War I. All told, there are 150 known to exist, which include strategies for China, Iceland, and Mexico, among other places.



A 1904 US military chart outlining the symbols used if it happened to go to war with just about every big power at the time. Image: Strategy Theory

While potentially eyebrow raising, the colored war plans and their ilk deal with situations that are entirely plausible, and much more recent iterations of such plans have come to light. For example, China has a plan should the North Korean government implode.

In a particularly startling case of government alarm, British military intelligence once created a contingency plan to deal with rising anger over the economic crisis, which affected all but the very richest of Brits. Concerns about the so-called "summer of discontent" and attacks from “political extremists” prompted military leadership to draw up worst case scenario plans, although details of what exactly they would entail were sketchy.

But, leave it to the US government—developers of a non-lethal bomb that would chemically make enemy troops want to have sex with one another rather than fight—to develop contingency plans for space-alien invasion.

The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) had a division known as the Post-Detection Task Group, which ended up making a series of recommendations on what to do if aliens are discovered. According to one plan, whoever finds alien signals would be required to tell the UN and International Astronomical Union, and share their data. Next, after an announcement, the various collaborating agencies and governments would collectively figure out if and how to respond, and what message to send. Essentially, the plan for meeting aliens is to figure it out as we go along.

Should the extraterrestrials try to communicate with or land on Earth, the protocol, adopted in 1989 by SETI, suggests that scientists and engineers take the lead on communications—not the military, as Hollywood might have you expect. But if you’re interested in the latter scenario there’s literature on planet defense available, though sadly, if official plans exist, they are classified.

Lastly, let’s not forget everyone’s favorite radio blowhard, Rush Limbaugh, who once asked a couple military officers on the air whether or not there was a plan to remove an American president who, well, was un-American. “Are there contingency plans to deal with a president who may not believe that the US is the solution to the world's problems?” he asked. Apparently there are not, according to his guests. I guess you can't have a plan for every unthinkable scenario out there.

Godzilla. Kings of the monsters. The original Kaiju. Born of humanity’s hubris, it comes from the depths of the Pacific ocean. It comes to wreak havoc. It comes to kill. Some of the more soft-hearted elements of the American military wish to weaponize the beast. Fools! The creature must be destroyed.

But how?

The U.S. Air Force’s 18th Wing in Japan—America’s largest combat wing—thinks it would have no problem felling the beast. Senior Airman Mark Hermann told Air & Space magazine he could destroy the monster with “.50-caliber [machine guns], four helicopters.” He thinks Godzilla is a joke.

He’s wrong. Godzilla is a force of nature. The mighty King of Monsters would shrug off a mere four helicopters armed with machine guns.

There are people in the military taking seriously the threat of giant atomic-powered lizards emerging from the Pacific Ocean. War is Boring spoke with one noted military scientist and weapon designer via email this week to gain some insight into the Pentagon’s options for defeating the kaiju threat.

“It has and needs eyes,” the scientist told us on condition of anonymity. “First thing we need to do is blind it.”

The military has munitions that can do just that, he pointed out. “Unguided rockets filled with white phosphorous would do the trick. Nothing fancy required. Unload from a couple of rotary-wing gunships, a huge barrage, repeat as needed.”

“If the eyes are organic, they will be toast,” our expert added. “If they are machine sensors, the heat of [white phosphorus] will damage or destroy them for sure.”

You read that right. This attack plan would also work against Mechagodzilla. But how would the copter crews dodge Godzilla’s atomic breath? It is, after all, basically walking anti-aircraft artillery.

But Godzilla can lash out in only one direction at a time. Dozens of gunships—America possesses close to a thousand—could fire white phosphorus into the creature’s eyes from multiple directions.

Once the beast is blind and defenseless, the military must deliver a killing blow. The scientist recommended sending two B-2 stealth bombers from Missouri, each loaded with one Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

He was talking about America’s 30,000-pound, precision-guided bunker-buster—one of the biggest munitions ever—filled with a deadly RDX explosive mix and designed to slice through solid rock.

“Cleared in by an Air Force ... air terminal guidance team, the aircraft come in separate sorties a few minutes apart,” our source explained. “Dash 1 drops from over 10,000 feet. That gives the fin-stabilized bomb a chance to gravity-accelerate before impact. Also some stand-off for a slightly non-vertical glide angle.”

The angle is important for maximum damage. “Equipped with laser designators, the team illuminates a point on the massive body that will present a nice near-perpendicular aspect to the glide angle of the descending bomb.”

Imagine Godzilla blindly flailing. A tiny laser dot marks a bullseye on its chest for one of the human race’s most powerful non-nuclear weapons.

“The bomb will penetrate the beast, burying itself in its depths, whether they be organic of machine. Godzilla will be like a giant tub of play-dough,” the scientist said, painting a grisly picture. “With a delay fuse, the blast will have a devastating effect—tons of RDX turning its guts, lungs and mechanisms to plasma, steam and mist.”

But could anything go wrong?

“A bad angle of attack could cause a deflection of the bomb—unlikely for a [Massive Ordinance Penetrator] with such incredible momentum, but still possible,” our source conceded. “That’s why you have Dash 2 follow on in, just in case. If Dash 1 hit the target successfully, Dash 2 drops as well, just to make sure. In fact because this mission is so critical there should be two more MOP-equipped sorties somewhere near.”

What would the clean-up be like?

“There may be a hazmat mess afterwards,” the scientist explained. “But there will be no nuclear explosion. Local radiological clean-up. at worst.”

Godzilla roars into theaters on May 16.

This Is How the Military Could Kill Godzilla Weapon-designer plots anti-monster attack

Godzilla. Kings of the monsters. The original Kaiju. Born of humanity’s hubris, it comes from the depths of the Pacific ocean. It comes to wreak havoc. It comes to kill. Some of the more soft-hearted elements of the American military wish to weaponize the beast. Fools! The creature must be destroyed.

But how?

The U.S. Air Force’s 18th Wing in Japan—America’s largest combat wing—thinks it would have no problem felling the beast. Senior Airman Mark Hermann told Air & Space magazine he could destroy the monster with “.50-caliber [machine guns], four helicopters.” He thinks Godzilla is a joke.

He’s wrong. Godzilla is a force of nature. The mighty King of Monsters would shrug off a mere four helicopters armed with machine guns.

There are people in the military taking seriously the threat of giant atomic-powered lizards emerging from the Pacific Ocean. War is Boring spoke with one noted military scientist and weapon designer via email this week to gain some insight into the Pentagon’s options for defeating the kaiju threat.

“It has and needs eyes,” the scientist told us on condition of anonymity. “First thing we need to do is blind it.”

The military has munitions that can do just that, he pointed out. “Unguided rockets filled with white phosphorous would do the trick. Nothing fancy required. Unload from a couple of rotary-wing gunships, a huge barrage, repeat as needed.”

“If the eyes are organic, they will be toast,” our expert added. “If they are machine sensors, the heat of [white phosphorus] will damage or destroy them for sure.”

You read that right. This attack plan would also work against Mechagodzilla. But how would the copter crews dodge Godzilla’s atomic breath? It is, after all, basically walking anti-aircraft artillery.

But Godzilla can lash out in only one direction at a time. Dozens of gunships—America possesses close to a thousand—could fire white phosphorus into the creature’s eyes from multiple directions.

Once the beast is blind and defenseless, the military must deliver a killing blow. The scientist recommended sending two B-2 stealth bombers from Missouri, each loaded with one Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

He was talking about America’s 30,000-pound, precision-guided bunker-buster—one of the biggest munitions ever—filled with a deadly RDX explosive mix and designed to slice through solid rock.

“Cleared in by an Air Force ... air terminal guidance team, the aircraft come in separate sorties a few minutes apart,” our source explained. “Dash 1 drops from over 10,000 feet. That gives the fin-stabilized bomb a chance to gravity-accelerate before impact. Also some stand-off for a slightly non-vertical glide angle.”

The angle is important for maximum damage. “Equipped with laser designators, the team illuminates a point on the massive body that will present a nice near-perpendicular aspect to the glide angle of the descending bomb.”

Imagine Godzilla blindly flailing. A tiny laser dot marks a bullseye on its chest for one of the human race’s most powerful non-nuclear weapons.

“The bomb will penetrate the beast, burying itself in its depths, whether they be organic of machine. Godzilla will be like a giant tub of play-dough,” the scientist said, painting a grisly picture. “With a delay fuse, the blast will have a devastating effect—tons of RDX turning its guts, lungs and mechanisms to plasma, steam and mist.”

But could anything go wrong?

“A bad angle of attack could cause a deflection of the bomb—unlikely for a [Massive Ordinance Penetrator] with such incredible momentum, but still possible,” our source conceded. “That’s why you have Dash 2 follow on in, just in case. If Dash 1 hit the target successfully, Dash 2 drops as well, just to make sure. In fact because this mission is so critical there should be two more MOP-equipped sorties somewhere near.”

What would the clean-up be like?

“There may be a hazmat mess afterwards,” the scientist explained. “But there will be no nuclear explosion. Local radiological clean-up. at worst.”

Godzilla roars into theaters on May 16.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Oddly enough, a virus with zombie-like symptoms is possible.

If certain areas of the brain are suppressed, it will trigger zombie like behavior. Extremely aggressive behavior, ravenous hunger, and a lack of sensitivity to pain.

Such a virus would never occur naturally though.

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan — Some of the best military minds are in Afghanistan. And they’re in danger of being eaten.

Well, maybe not, but it’s something that officers from 4th Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment think about night and day. The squadron command post at Spin Boldak, near the border with Pakistan, is full of zombie posters, books and movies. The officers prepare to defeat those who just won’t stay dead.

It takes little to no prompting to spark soldiers here into long digressions on the zombie threat. It’s spooky how this obsession with zombies has spread among the troops.

Almost no one is immune.

The squadron’s acting public affairs officer, Capt. Matt Frost, 26, of Georgetown, Ill., may be “patient zero” — the guy who got everyone else in the unit thinking zombies.

During a long nighttime drive back in the States, Frost listened to an audio book, Max Brooks’ “World War Z,” which tells of the U.S. military battling to save the world from a zombie apocalypse.

“It was unnerving,” he said. “The amount of detail and research (Brooks) did made a zombie apocalypse sound plausible.”

Since he deployed to Afghanistan four months ago, the young officer has devoured the genre, including J.L. Bourne’s “Day By Day Armageddon.” At the base’s weekly outdoor showing of movies, he arranged for the soldiers to watch a series of zombie “documentaries,” including “Zombieland,” “Dawn of the Dead” and “Diary of the Dead.”

Frost has even found clips from a Pakistani zombie film online and recently persuaded the squadron chaplain to speak on camera about the zombies for a clip he plans to post on YouTube.

Zombies so eat at him that, in his free time, he’s started looking at the threat of a zombie invasion of Afghanistan as a military problem. He’s written reports on how to defend the U.S. base at Spin Boldak from zombies, and briefed other officers on his plans.

The elaborate plans for dealing with zombies initially bemused British Royal Air Force personnel at Spin Boldak.

“We thought we’d been sent to work alongside a bunch of nutters, and to make things worse, we were stuck here with them,” Senior Aircraftman (Technician) Sean Lloyd said of his initial thoughts on the zombie defense plan.

But when the Brits saw the time and effort Frost had put into his plan they found it, “strangely reassuring that if a zombie apocalypse were to happen, that these guys would know exactly what to do,” Lloyd said.

Now even the RAF personnel are preparing themselves for war against the undead.

“As part of our own plan, we have been watching ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Zombieland’ to hone our zombie killing defense moves and been in training to allow us to outrun them if the worst was to happen,” Lloyd said.

British army Sgt. Emily Patterson said people have different ways of relaxing while deployed.

“They could enjoy reading, watching movies or just a night spent shooting zombies on a video game,” she said. This zombie defense plan “provided a good subject for people to have a chat and a laugh about and seemed very good at raising morale and bringing people together.”

Frost has the backing of the Squadron’s executive officer — Maj. Ken Reed, 36, of Salinas, Calif. Reed said the zombies were “an opportunity to blow off some steam and have a little fun with the education we have,” before giving a short lecture on Afghanistan’s history of zombie invasions.

“It’s clear that the Pashtun of southern Afghanistan have a cultural memory of frequent invasion from the south,” he said. “The avenues of approach are very clear from Baluchistan all the way to Kabul.”

“There has been RUMINT (rumor intelligence) that Osama may be developing some kind of zombie-based offensive plan,” he added.

Frost believes he’s seen zombies on the streets of Spin Boldak.

“Mainly, I have seen the shambling kind out in sector,” he said. “Usually they are followed by dogs that sort of herd them. Most of the time I’ve seen people go back into their compounds when there’s a zombie.”

Once the zombie virus reaches Kandahar Air Field, soldiers on leave and third country nationals will spread it throughout the world leading to the zombie apocalypse, he said.

To counter the threat, Frost has rewritten the base defense plan at Spin Boldak, which was focused primarily on defending against attacks by vehicles and armed humans, to deal with zombies.

“You have to sever the head or burn them to kill them,” he said. “Most soldiers aren’t trained for head shots. They are trained for center mass so we have been training soldiers and our Afghan partners for head shots.”

The zombies won’t behave like a conventional army, Frost predicted.

“Zombies don’t have to be fed because they feed on their new recruits,” he said. “They breed themselves constantly and they don’t need leadership since each is a self-contained cell. They will work together, but they don’t need to to be deadly.”

Since Frost wrote his zombie base defense plan, other officers have started applying their own military expertise to the problem.

Second Lt. Jordan Bass, 23, of Jacksonville, Ala., who works in governance reconstruction and development cell at Spin Boldak, has devised a counter-zombie operations strategy to work with Afghan security forces and local government leaders to defeat the swarms.

“We are planning checkpoints along the highway and the border,” he said. “Our main goal is to prevent any sort of zombie incursion or smuggling operations or infiltration of Spin Boldak.”

 Medium of Death wrote:
The idea of the American military blinding Godzilla makes me feel a bit sad inside...

 Frazzled wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Oddly enough, a virus with zombie-like symptoms is possible.

If certain areas of the brain are suppressed, it will trigger zombie like behavior. Extremely aggressive behavior, ravenous hunger, and a lack of sensitivity to pain.

Such a virus would never occur naturally though.

You mean like rabies?

 Jihadin wrote:


Update like four years old. What it doesn't say how Spin Boldak Force Protection against Zombies came to be. Wrong plan was open in the share drive and the Zombie plan was shown to Patraeus instead of the real plan.

 easysauce wrote:
So when is the US government going to show up on doomsday preppers?

 whembly wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
So when is the US government going to show up on doomsday preppers?

Uh... they have... years ago dude.

It's called Mount Weathers.

That's what we know of publically. Who knows what else they've got too!

 whembly wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
So when is the US government going to show up on doomsday preppers?

Uh... they have... years ago dude.

It's called Mount Weathers.

That's what we know of publically. Who knows what else they've got too!