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Relax, the U.S. Military is Ready to Prevent the Zombie Apocalypse

May 15, 2014 /

960zombies_01

Apparently not a hoax, Foreign Policy reports:

Buried on the military’s secret computer network is an unclassified document, obtained by Foreign Policy, called “CONOP 8888.” It’s a zombie survival plan, a how-to guide for military planners trying to isolate the threat from a menu of the undead — from chicken zombies to vegetarian zombies and even “evil magic zombies” — and destroy them.

“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. “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, acknowledged the document exists on a “secure Internet site” but took pains to explain that the zombie survival guide is only a creative endeavor for training purposes. “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,” she wrote in an email. “This document is not a U.S. Strategic Command plan.”

Full Story: Foreign Policy: The Pentagon Has a Plan to Stop the Zombie Apocalypse. Seriously.

You can read the full document on Scribd.

Central Asia is already “Post-Apocalyptic”

May 3, 2013 /

post apocalyptic

Asher Kohn writes:

You don’t need burnt pastures, bleached bones, and a trickle of muddy water in order to understand the apocalypse, as much as it may help. The apocalypse, after all, is more than the destruction of an environment. The apocalypse is the destruction of not only the world, but of the worldview. The apocalypse is the disassembly of the subconscious and the dramatic unwinding of all of those subconscious preconceptions we use to even get out of bed in the morning. Living in a post-apocalyptic world is living in time beyond God.[…]

Central Asia is, both defiantly and tragically, a land without a narrative. The region, defined by Slavs + Tatars as “an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia,” has been home to a series of axis-tilting events, and has the history to prove it. The history of Central Asia is in many ways a history of eschatologies; not a graveyard of empires but perhaps a graveyard of belief systems. The Volga Huns of course produced Attila, who annihilated Europe west of the Danube. Less than a millenium later, Hulagu Khan laid waste to Baghdad, and Tatar rulers towered over Kiev and Moscow. If Tamerlane is included in this lineup, one could say that for most of the Earth’s time since Christ, Central Asia has produced armies that have taken on an eschatological meaning in others’ narratives. Michael Hancock Parmer notes the use of a common nickname of these empire builders, remarking that a “‘Scourge of God’ is a tool of divine punishment, an atoning skin-flaying from the Lord. Apocryphally, Temujin (Genghis Khan) claimed the title for himself at the sack of Bukhara, the legend of which lives on in Uzbekistan.”

Full Story: The State: A Pleasant Post-Apocalypse

See also: Why Humans Will Survive the Next World-Ending Catastrophe

There Is No Way to Stop Space Rocks From Hurtling to Earth and Killing You

February 15, 2013 /

I just finished a new Psychetect track last night. Hopefully I’ll be able to share it with you before Space Kills Us All:

Space is out to kill you. There is no way to stem its aggression. But it’s usually an incompetent killer, so don’t freak out. […]

All the advanced air defenses that humanity has invested in? The interceptor missile that are (sometimes) able to stop an adversary missile from impacting? The early-warning monitoring systems that are supposed to give humanity enough time to plan a response? They are useless, useless against a meteorite onslaught. Do not believe the stories about the Russians shooting the cosmic rock down. […]

But there’s good news. Space rocks are lousy shots. The Earth is mostly ocean and uninhabited areas. The frequency of meteorite impacts is correlated with size, Weeden explains, and the smaller the meteorites, the more often they land. “But the places where people are is actually pretty small,” he says. Even the injuries that occurred at Chelyabinsk were mostly concussions and accidents from shattered glass, not from the meteorite itself. Close but no cigar, space: “Your odds of dying by a meteor are pretty damn small. You’re thousands of times more likely to die by car on way to work.”

Full Story: Wired Danger Room: There Is No Way to Stop Space Rocks From Hurtling to Earth and Killing You

Man, Space must really hate Siberia.

Open Thread: In a Low-Tech, Post-Apocalyptic World What Would You Want Your Job to Be?

May 25, 2012 /

I asked this on Twitter last night, but thought it would make a good cross-platform discussion:

What would you want your job to be in a low-tech post-apocalypse?

I think I’d go with “messenger.” I don’t have a lot of practical skills, but I can run long distances and convey information. I haven’t read David Brin’s The Postman, but I think starting a postal service would be up my ally.

Wyoming Considering So-Called “Doomsday Bill”

February 26, 2012 /

State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States.

House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.

The task force would look at the feasibility of Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.

Casper Tribune: Wyoming House advances doomsday bill

This may sound like wingnut survivalist paranoia, but this is pretty interesting. Much of the state quite vulnerable to system shocks. Services ranging from food shipping to postal mail processing depend on out of state resources. The state is extremely petroleum dependent, so gas shortages would hit people hard. I’ve been told that although Wyoming produces huge amounts of coal, but is highly dependent on out of state resources for electricity (but I’m not sure that’s true).

Have any other states proposed official bills for state resilience?

See also: Resilient communities with Jeremy O’Leary – the Technoccult Interview

Update: This has already been shot down.

Zombie Preparedness Advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

May 25, 2011 /

CDC zombie plan

The federal government agency the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a zombie apocalypse preparedness guide.

For example, here’s what the CDC recommends you have on hand in case of a zombie-related emergency:

  • Water (1 gallon per person per day)
    Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
    Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription meds)
    Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
    Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
    Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member and blankets)
    Important documents (copies of your driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate to name a few)
    First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado or hurricane)

CDC: Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

What’s great is that this is the sort of stuff you should keep on hand for any emergency. Great way to make disaster planning fun, CDC!

Update: Here’s a PSA from Oregon Public Health, which as Trevor Blake notes in the comments below “features members of the Portland Occulture secret society.”

JG Ballard: Warrior for Gaia?

June 11, 2010 /

Rushing to Paradise

A press release from the BL touting the news contained something that caught my eye. Listing Ballard’s achievements, the Library tells us he “predicted the rise of terrorism against tourists, the alienation of a society obsessed by new technology and ecological disasters such as the melting of the ice caps”.

It was echoed in a tweet, from the Library’s Head of Media Relations, Strategic Marketing and Communications Miki Lentin.

“Ecological crisis, technological fetishism…JG Ballard archive acquired by British Library”

Sort of like Mystic Meg, then.

But is this really true? While disasters recur in Ballard’s fiction, the reason they are so vivid, Shaun again reminds us, is “because it’s what we really wanted all along”. They weren’t ecological predictions, or warnings. They explored our desire for apocalypse. If they predicted anything, it was the media’s desire for eco-porn, and our thirst for the End Times.

The Register: JG Ballard: Warrior for Gaia?

Howard Bloom: Buckle Up For Catastrophe

December 10, 2009 /

When geologists like James Hutton and Charles Lyall first began to read the past of our planet in fossils and in the strata of rock 200 years ago, they noticed something ominous. There were fossilized seashells on mountaintops. Mountaintops had once been at the bottom of seas. What’s more, solid land had once been swamp. And coastal real estate had been the most unstable of all, ending up underwater or high and dry. We humans are coast-hugging creatures. As Plato put it, we are like frogs dotted around a pond. Over 60% of us live near coasts. And coasts are fragile places to be.

The bottom line? Weather change will come. Massive weather change. It will come with or without the mitigation of greenhouse gases. And—like the indigenous people of Indonesia’s Aceh who build their houses on stilts–we have to be prepared to triumph over disaster. We cannot waste trillions on just one form of climate change. We have to be prepared for both fire and ice. Or, to put it differently, we have to realize that Mother Nature is not nice.

Howard Bloom: Buckle Up For Catastrophe

(via Justin Boland)

2012 claims debunked

November 12, 2009 /

2012

Information is Beautiful examines several claims made by 2012 believers and finds their claims lacking.

Information is Beautiful: 2012: The End Of The World?

2012 – a crock of shit

November 12, 2009 /

Mark Dery writes:

Pinchbeck, like New Age thinkers all the way back to Madame Blavatsky, preaches a refried gospel of ancient wisdom and mystical, supra-rational knowledge. In 2007, he told The New York Times that “the rational, empirical worldview…has reached its expiration date…we’re on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that’s more intuitive, mystical, and shamanic.”

Well, somebody say “Amen”! There’s entirely too much rationalism and empiricism clouding the American mind these days, in a nation where, according to the Harris and other polls, 42% of Republicans are convinced President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, 10% of the nation’s voters are certain he’s a Muslim, and 61% of the population believe in the Virgin birth but only 47% believe in Darwinian evolution. […]

When I asked her what she thought of Pinchbeck’s invocation of Mayan beliefs, and of the 2012-ers’ use of the Maya in general, she was blunt. “What makes me angriest about Pinchbeck’s bogus, profiteering bullshit isn’t so much him, but the fact that that many people are racist enough to believe any asshole white guy who declares himself an expert in Mayan culture. Did it ever occur to anyone to ask practicing Maya priests out in the villages? […] It absolutely enrages me that while people I know in Guatemala, traditional priests, are struggling to figure out how to provide clean drinking water to their families, how to feed their communities, how to avoid being shot by the gangs and thieves that plague the roads more than ever—while they’re struggling to survive and keep their communities intact, assholes like Pinchbeck are making a buck off of white man’s parodies of their culture.”

h+: 2012: Carnival of Bunkum

(via Chris Arkenberg)

See also: Tracing the origins of the 2012 phenomenon

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