The Zombie Apocalypse — Are We Ready?

Are novel ideas in Homeland Security important?

On October 31st 2012 Marines, Navy Special Operations, soldiers, police officers and firefighters saved a local resort island in San Diego California from a violent zombie attack. The exercise was actually simulated and coordinated through the Halo Corporation, a security firm that was hired to set up and manage the event. According to a representative from the security company, “No doubt when a zombie apocalypse occurs, it’s going to be a federal incident”. The intent of the exercise was to simulate asymmetric warfare with a zombie attack and to exercise interoperability between first responders. It was explained that the federal government needs to be prepared for unusual types of warfare strategies and zombies are as different and unusual as it gets.

As a result of this exercise, the federal government was criticized regarding the use of federal funds to sponsor the San Diego Zombie Apocalypse. In contrast to Senator Coburn’s position on this, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) took the angle that this type of novel idea is exactly what is needed to better prepare our homeland security responders. According to the CDC, it wasn’t necessarily the content of the exercise, but the concept that we should be prepared for anything unusual and that the “zombies” were merely a metaphor for an unusual and unexpected incident.

Can novelty prove to be valuable in preparing ourselves to handle asymmetric homeland security challenges? San Antonio Texans believe so. The Zombie Response Team (ZRT) has been organized to prepare for unusual disaster scenarios. In this sense, like the San Diego scenario, zombies are merely a tongue-in-cheek euphemism that represents something unusual. The intent being that preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse is really preparing for something that has not been considered. The ZRT motto is if you can survive a Zombie Apocalypse, you can survive anything.

So the question is; is there room for novel ideas in an effort to better prepare our homeland security response? According to Drezner in his “Theory of International Politics and Zombies”, he contends that when we think outside-the-box we get a cognitive grip on the “unknown unkowns”. In other words by thinking about an unusual events like a Zombie Apocalypse we open our minds to the things that we may have not even imagined that could happen. Drezner contends that the zombie metaphor is really a “stress test” of current international policy configurations applied to extreme and unusual circumstances. This stress test allows policy makers to consider unconventional strategies that may prove helpful in managing international relations relative to a homeland security crisis.

So really this has nothing to do with the Zombies and more to do with our collective cognitive ability to consider the unlikely and unimaginable things that might be in the terrorists heads right now; things like box cutters on commercial airlines.