The U.S. military has a war plan for combating zombies, and it’s not a joke, but rather originated as a scenario to train junior officers in the Department of Defense’s Joint Operation Planning and Execution System, Business Insider reported on Wednesday.

Instructors at JOPES, by which the military devises contingency plans, discovered that a zombie apocalypse scenario was a more effective teaching tool than using fictional scenarios about Tunisia or Nigeria, which risked being misunderstood by the public as real scenarios.

“We elected to use a completely impossible scenario that could never be mistaken as a real plan,” explained the CONPLAN 8888-11 document, which was issued in 2011 by U.S. Strategic Command, whose regular responsibilities include overseeing America’s strategic nuclear weapons, global strike capabilities, and missile defense. “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.”

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