The recent revelation that the Pentagon has a secret plan to battle zombies should they try to conquer the United States may be a bit overblown, but is nonetheless real, former Navy SEAL and FBI special agent Jonathan Gilliam says.
"We have to forward-think things, and we have to look at how can we do this better," Gilliam told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV. "This probably is some leak that got out, and it's been construed a little bit to where they're equating it to zombies.
"[But] I think this really does prepare the Department of Defense for an incident where let's say we have something like the plagues, where you start to have mass casualties.''
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Foreign Policy magazine recently obtained a document from the Pentagon's computer network called "CONOP 8888" dated April 30, 2011. The plan, titled "Counter-Zombie Dominance," specifically states it "was not actually designed as a joke" and "fulfills fictional contingency planning . . . to undertake military operations to preserve 'non-zombie' humans from the threats posed by a zombie horde."
One such emergency scenario would be a massive power failure created by an EMT attack in which an electromagnetic pulse targets the civilian power grid, leading to a nationwide power outage and chaos.
And that could potentially cause behavior among dazed men and women resembling the bug-eyed creatures in such movies as "Night of the Living Dead," "28 Days Later,'' and "I Walked With a Zombie."
"Human beings missing four meals start to go into panic mode," Gilliam said.
"Let's say three days with no electrical grid and mass casualties, you're going to have people that — maybe not be zombies — but they're going to be just as violent in how they get their food or water.
"So with this whole thing, the wording and stuff is a little bit mysterious, but I would think that this is basically the Department of Defense is forward-thinking things, and the press got a hold of it.''
Gilliam, president of United States Continued Service, LLC, told Malzberg he was "disgusted" by the Veterans Affairs healthcare scandal, in which chronically ill patients were kept on secret waiting lists, prompting treatment delays that may have caused up to 40 fatalities.
"What kills me about the VA is you have guys, you have women that are in the military, and when you're in the military you're told when to get your teeth cleaned, you're told when to go get a physical, if you have something wrong they stay on you until it gets fixed," he said.
"You take those same people, they leave the military, and the day the get out, they go check in with the VA. That system doesn't exist in the VA. These are individuals who are going to have insurance through the VA for the rest of their life. Why aren't they treated the same way? If they did manage this the same way, you would have none of these problems."
Gilliam recommends a house-cleaning at the VA, including Veterans Affairs Secretary Gen. Eric Shinseki.
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