While the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has yet to receive any patent applications describing inventions for dealing with a widespread rise of zombies (other than hi-tech "zombie" servers, virtual machines, processes, etc.), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) have taken steps to prepare for a zombie apocalypse.
The CDC website, for example, provides information on zombie preparedness. Products listed on the page include links to a Zombie Preparedness Blog and Zombie Preparedness for Educators. The CDC's Zombie Preparedness Blog advises that "[t]here are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for," including "a zombie apocalypse," and notes that "[y]ou may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you'll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency." The blog provides a brief history of zombies and includes a list of items for an emergency kit. The CDC notes that "what first began as a tongue-in-cheek campaign to engage new audiences with preparedness messages has proven to be a very effective platform," and therefore, the CDC continues "to reach and engage a wide variety of audiences on all hazards preparedness via 'zombie preparedness'." The CDC even provides a graphic novel, entitled "Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic," which demonstrates the importance of being prepared before disaster (actual rather than fictional) strikes.
The CDC is not alone in preparing for a zombie apocalypse, as reported in a History Channel article (see "Are You Prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse? The U.S. Government Is"). In 2011 (coincidentally, the same year that the CDC began its zombie preparedness campaign), the DOD released a strategy to combat a potential zombie apocalypse – CONPLAN 8888-11. The plan states that it "was not actually designed as a joke." Of course, the rest of the plan's disclaimer explains that:
During the summers of 2009 and 2010, while training augmentees from a local training squadron about the JOPP [Joint Operation Planning Process], members of a USSTRATCOM [U.S. Strategic Command] 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.
Although the zombie apocalypse is confined to the small and big screens, both the CDC and DOD have found ways to use the extremely popular zombie genre to prepare people for real-life disasters and explore the basic concepts of plan and order development.
