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A leaked document purporting to be from the desk of the Director of Strategic Theory, a seemingly innocuous (and fundamentally cool) position in the US National Security Agency, turns fiction into speculative fact by answering the question - what would the US government do if a Cloverfield-like monster actually did run amok in the Big Apple?

The answer, apparently, would be crawl into the fetal position and cry like little girls as the document declares that the United States is “woefully under-prepared to pacify, or even contain, an internal threat from a hostile megamorph without considerable collateral damage”. The director does stress that the chances of a ‘hostile megamorph’ (or fucking huge monster to the lay person) striking at the heart of the land of the brave are slim, so I guess the department of Strategic Theory must have been having a slow week - or really, really loved that movie.

Here are some of my favourite extracts from the dossier:

“In the event of an unpredicted assault on a key American city by a supernormal creature of limited intellect, we must anticipate all attempts of evacuation to be hindered by widespread confusion, hysteria, and disbelief. Psychological estimation suggests that citizens will find such an attack incomprehensible and subsequently place themselves under threat by seeking validation and first-hand experience of the assailant.”

“The US armed forces will not be capable of co-ordinating the mass-evacuation of millions while containing or exterminating the megamorph and resucing stray citizens. A strict evacuation procedure would be necessary to ensure the efficient use of military resource.”

“The first action of the armed forces would be to enforce a complete media blackout on the affected region. This should be followed by a misinformation campaign to effectively communicate the level of threat without engendering mass interest - e.g. a nuclear bomb planted by a terrorist organisation.”

“Containment of the hostile megamorph will be the priority and offensive military engagement must be limited to small-scale strikes until adequate intelligence has been collated and analysed.”

“The use of nuclear weaponary on US territory is inadvisable and it is highly recommended that US military strategy concentrates on containment or, failing that, directing the hostile away from highly populous areas.”

“If tactical assault weaponary is incapable of pacifying the hostile megamorph, possible solutions are as follows [these reserve strategies are explained in more detail in the appendix] - i) Orchestrating a subterranean collapse beneath the hostile. ii) Spraying the hostile with cryogenic chemicals. iii) Attaching cables hooked to rockets that will blast the creature into space. iv) Employing the use of giant mirrors to confuse the creature into submission. v) Breeding and unleashing a similar-sized megamorph, although our one should have wings and breathe magical flames or something.”