The U.S. government has an official zombie preparedness plan, called CONOP 8888.

The document was written in April 2011 by junior military officers at the U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), as a training exercise to formulate a nonspecific invasion contingency plan. Despite the use of a “fictitious scenario,” CONOP 8888 explicitly states that it “was not actually designed as a joke.”

It’s fascinating to see a military document absorb the many comic permutations of the genre, from George Romero’s subversive satires to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. No matter how funny zombies are, however, the genre seems to require horrific violence, gore, and siege-like survivalism as key thematic elements.

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