Detect, Deter and Annihilate:
How the Police State Will Deal
with a Coronavirus Outbreak
By John W. Whitehead | March 16, 2020 (less than fiddy)

“Fear is a primitive impulse, brainless as hunger, and because the aim of horror fiction
is the production of the deepest kinds of fears, the genre tends to reinforce
some remarkably uncivilized ideas about self-protection.
In the current crop of zombie stories, the prevailing value for the beleaguered survivors
is a sort of siege mentality, a vigilance so constant and unremitting
that it’s indistinguishable from the purest paranoia.”
~ Terrence Rafferty, New York Times

What do zombies have to do with the U.S. government’s plans for dealing with a coronavirus outbreak?

Read on, and I’ll tell you.
...
As the DOD training manual states: “zombies [stand-ins for “we the people”] are horribly dangerous
to all human life and zombie infections have the potential to
seriously undermine national security and economic activities that sustain our way of life.
Therefore having a population that is not composed of zombies or at risk
from their malign influence is vital to U.S. and Allied national interests.”

So how does the military plan to put down a zombie (a.k.a. citizen) uprising?

The strategy manual outlines five phases necessary for a counter-offensive:
shape, deter, seize initiative, dominate, stabilize and restore civil authority.

Here are a few details:
Phase 0 (Shape): Conduct general zombie awareness training.
Monitor increased threats (i.e., surveillance). Carry out military drills.
Synchronize contingency plans between federal and state agencies.
Anticipate and prepare for a breakdown in law and order.

Phase 1 (Deter): Recognize that zombies cannot be deterred or reasoned with.
Carry out training drills to discourage other countries from developing or deploying
attack zombies and publicly reinforce the government’s ability to combat a zombie threat.
Initiate intelligence sharing between federal and state agencies.
Assist the Dept. of Homeland Security in identifying or discouraging immigrants
from areas where zombie-related diseases originate.

Phase 2 (Seize initiative): Recall all military personal to their duty stations.
Fortify all military outposts. Deploy air and ground forces for at least 35 days.
Carry out confidence-building measures with nuclear-armed peers such as Russia and China
to ensure they do not misinterpret the government’s zombie countermeasures as preparations for war.
Establish quarantine zones.
Distribute explosion-resistant protective equipment.
Place the military on red alert.
Begin limited scale military operations to combat zombie threats.
Carry out combat operations against zombie populations within
the United States that were “previously” U.S. citizens.

Phase 3 (Dominate): Lock down all military bases for 30 days.
Shelter all essential government personnel for at least 40 days.
Equip all government agents with military protective gear.
Issue orders for military to kill all non-human life on sight.
Initiate bomber and missile strikes against targeted sources
of zombie infection, including the infrastructure.
Burn all zombie corpses. Deploy military to lock down the beaches and waterways.

Phase 4 (Stabilize): Send out recon teams to check for remaining threats
and survey the status of basic services (water, power, sewage infrastructure,
air, and lines of communication).
Execute a counter-zombie ISR plan to ID holdout pockets of zombie resistance.
Use all military resources to target any remaining regions
of zombie holdouts and influence.
Continue all actions from the Dominate phase.

Phase 5 (Restore civil authority): Deploy military personnel to assist any
surviving civil authorities in disaster zones.
Reconstitute combat capabilities at various military bases.
Prepare to redeploy military forces to attack surviving zombie holdouts.
Restore basic services in disaster areas.

Notice the similarities?

Surveillance. Military drills. Awareness training.
Militarized police forces. Martial law.

As I point out in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People,
if there is any lesson to be learned, it is simply this: whether the threat
to national security comes in the form of imaginary zombies, actual terrorists,
American citizens infected with the coronavirus, or disgruntled American
citizens infected with dangerous ideas about freedom,
the government’s response to such threats remains the same: detect, deter and annihilate.