[Vision2020] Department of Defense's "Zombie Plan" (ComPlan 8888)

[Dan Carscallen]

Having taken part in an exercise along similar lines (that had conspiracy
theorists foaming at the mouth) I urge everyone to read the "Disclaimer"
section of the plan, which is right at the beginning:

 

             (U) CONPLAN 8888 DISCLAIMER: This plan was not actually
designed as a joke. During the summers of 2009 and 2010, while training
augmentees from a local training squadron about the JOPP, members of a
USSTRATCOM component found out (by accident) that the hyperbole involved in
writing a "zombie survival plan actually provided a very useful and
effective




training tool. Planners who attended JPME II at the Joint Combined
Warfighting School also realized that training examples for plans must
accommodate the political fallout that occurs if the general public
mistakenly believes that a fictional training scenario is actually a real
plan. Rather than risk such an outcome by teaching our augmentees using the
fictional "Tunisia" or "Nigeria" scenarios used at JCWS, we elected to use a
completely-impossible scenario that could never be mistaken as a real plan.

 

Because the plan was so ridiculous, our students not only enjoyed the
lessons; they actually were able to explore the basic concepts of plan and
order development (fact, assumptions, specified and implied tasks,
references etc) very effectively.

 

 

We tried to use the same disclaimer, but some folks still got a little
freaked out by the fact that we were having a "zombie UFO crash".

 

It went well, though, and we are better trained for it.

 

DC

 

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Tom Hansen
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 10:50 AM
To: Moscow Vision 2020
Subject: [Vision2020] Department of Defense's "Zombie Plan" (ComPlan 8888)

 

This document is for real, created and distributed by the U.S. Department of
Defense in April 2011.

 

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