The Department of Defense is now teaching nurses how to handle a zombie apolcalypse. Seriously.
Students at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences are taught how to handle a variety of global catastrophes, some much rarer than others. In fact, one course on population health takes quite a unique turn, forcing nurses-in-training to apply their problem-solving skills in a hypothetical zombie pandemic.
The Department of Defense laid out the structure and purpose of the ridiculous scenario in a statement released last Friday:
The students watch video clips of scenarios, including one of the nation’s 'president' delivering a brief 'State of the Zombie Pandemic' address. They see the impact that a fictitious zombie virus has made on a population and the fear it has created – along with 'anti-zombie' posters strewn all over cities.
[...] As part of a fictitious Defense Department division called HHIT, the students draw on what they’ve learned throughout the course to enact a quarantine, administer widespread vaccines and obtain international resources [...] Meanwhile [...] they must remember to follow actual DoD guidelines when responding to the 'growing zombie pandemic.'
“We use the narrative device of a zombie pandemic in animations and assignment to help engage students in content,” said Dr. Catherine Ling, an assistant professor at USU who helped design the program. Ling went on to assert that the skill set involved in dealing with a zombie apocalypse could be applied to real-world pandemics such as Ebola and Zika.
The Pentagon has previously used a zombie outbreak as course material before. According to a report by RT, "A training document imagining the military’s response to a zombie apocalypse was actually released by the Pentagon in May 2014. Titled CONOP 8888, the scenario was used by U.S. Strategic Command as a teaching tool, with STRATCOM explaining that it 'elected to use a completely impossible scenario that could never be mistaken as a real plan.'"
So far, the course has garnered positive reviews, at least from one resident fan of the hit television series "The Walking Dead:
"The videos are very tastefully done," Air Force Captain Marcie Hart said in the DoD release. "The 'infected' can be cured later in the scenario, so the characters are not using deadly force, and it is not overtly violent. [...] I thought it was a wonderful, fun twist to this course."
While zombies taking over the country remains just a fantasy in the minds of Hollywood directors, it's comforting to know we have people ready to deal with undead hordes should the situation arise.