About Homeland Security's Zombie Apocalypse Training

I’m not sure which part of the Department of Homeland Security’s “zombie apocalypse” training is worst. There’s the waste of it all — it cost taxpayers $1000 per government trainee. There’s the location of it — they held it at a posh resort that most Americans can’t afford, and will be less able to afford once we go over the fiscal cliff. There’s the pandering unseriousness of it — there is no zombie menace outside movies, TV and video games.

Then there’s the disturbing fact that the training had uniformed US officers shooting dehumanized fellow Americans.

According to the report, Strategic Operations, a tactical training firm, was hired to produce a “zombie-driven show” that provided two Halloween shows that had 40 actors dressed as zombies as they were being gunned down by a military tactical unit. The purpose of the demonstration was to highlight how medical units would respond to such “extreme medical situations where people become crazed and violent, creating widespread fear and disorder.”