© Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse via Getty ImagesKnow how to stop the undead? An October exercise in California will pit military trainees against a horde of role-players exhibiting zombie like behavior. Here, participants in a “zombie walk” in Sweden show their stuff.
San Diego - Forget the H1N1 pandemic. Could a future crisis arise from an outbreak of viruses that destroy brain cells and render people violently catatonic, like zombies?
The far-fetched scenario of a government grappling a zombielike threat - think movies like
Night of the Living Dead or, more comically,
Zombieland - has captured the attention and imagination of Brad Barker, president of the security firm HALO Corp.
Next month, his outfitwill incorporate - no kidding - zombies into a disaster-crisis scenario at the company's annual Counter-Terrorism Summit in San Diego, a five-day event providing hands-on training, realistic demonstrations, lectures and classes geared to more than 1,000 military personnel, law enforcement officials, medical experts, and state and federal government workers.
HALO will take over the 44-acre Paradise Point resort in the city's popular Mission Bay and create a series of terrorist scenarios, with immersive Hollywood sets including a Middle Eastern village and a pirates' haven. Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, aformer CIA and National Security Agency director, and Mexico Interior Secretary Alejandro Poiré Romero will speak during the summit, which runs Oct. 30 to Nov. 2.
Barker calls the scenario "Zombie Apocalypse." That phrase took off last year after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unveiled a campaign aimed at underscoring the importance of being prepared for major emergencies, natural disasters and pandemics.
In
the CDC's Preparedness 101 program, fictional zombies are used to drive home the message that Americans must be ready for any emergency - even the kind that, hypothetically, could stem from a brain-eating virus pandemic. Zombies also star in a 40-page comic book the CDC published, a tongue-in-cheek take on the serious scenario of a mutated virus that quickly spreads as the government dispatches its military to maintain order while infectious disease specialists scour for a vaccine.