Militainment and virtual zombie warfare

This essay is Part Five in a series analyzing the zombie racial Other in media.  

In 2018, the U.S. Army fell short of its recruitment goals for the first time in 13 years, and the first military esports team was created as a result. The military esports teams have racked up since then, incorporating the Navy and Air Force teams in 2020 and the Coast Guard team in 2021. The teams compete in mainstream titles such as Fortnite (2017), Valorant (2020), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012), and League of Legends. Military esports gamers also stream on the Amazon-owned Twitch for long hours, chatting with teenagers and encouraging them to enlist. 

The gaming industry is a core component of military entertainment, or militainment. The military-entertainment complex is a (c)overt tactic to manufacture consent for fascist and imperialist violence via collusion with various entertainment industries. Military bodies have a long history of using video games for recruitment, training, and public relations. Critic and film programmer Ed Halter's From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games traces the history of this relationship, demonstrating how "the development of video games has at many points in its history intersected with the American military needs, including a chunk of history that is being written right now." Halter encourages readers to consider the book "a history of warfare told through video games, or a history of video games told through war."

After the September 11 attacks, militainment gaming grew in popularity, especially those featuring aggressive patriotism, nationalism, and counterterrorism operations against often "Middle Eastern" enemies. Much like the Trump administration's zombie border siege Tetris-style 8-bit game, zombies appear as proxies for immigrants and other foreign threats in these tactical militainment shooters. As Halter writes, "shooting Somalis with a machine gun bears inconsequential difference from zapping zombies with a laser blaster; both settings are mere excuses for triggerhappy game play." 

The battleground

The Bradley Trainer was developed in 1980, commissioned by the U.S. Army Training Command and adapted from the first-person tank combat game, Battlezone (1980), to test the usefulness of arcade technology as a cheap training method for gunners on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. In 1996, the Marine Corps adapted the incredibly popular first-person shooter, Doom (1994), into the Marine training game Marine Doom. While these games were intended for military training, they were also made available to the public as early examples of immersive, interactive militainment. 

The inaugural installment of the first-person shooter series America's Army (2002–2013) was released less than a year after the 9/11 attacks. Created by Lieutenant Colonel Casey Wardynski of the U.S. Army, it has been used by the military both as a recruitment tool and a training implement. Unlike other video games, this one was not created for profit or appreciation for the art form. It was purely intended as military propaganda to encourage young people to enlist in the Army. Halter explains:

"Never before had the U.S. fought a modern conflict of this scale without a draft. But somebody had to fight the global war on terror…If recruitment seemed important during the economic boom time of the Clinton years, when the Army had to compete with a healthy job market, it became an even more pressing issue after the 9/11 attacks."  

This was not subliminal at all. In fact, the opening screen of America's Army read: 

"With the passage of time, elimination of the draft and reductions in the size of the Army have resulted in a marked decrease in the number of Americans who have served in the Army and from whom young adults can gain vicarious insights into the challenges and rewards of Soldiering and national service. Therefore, the game is designed to substitute virtual experiences for vicarious insights."

Other military shooters from this era include Full Spectrum Warrior (2004), Kuma\War (2004), Close Combat: First to Fight (2005), and Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers (2006), which unsurprisingly often incorporate combat against "Middle Eastern" terrorists. Medal of Honor (2010) was one of the first games to be explicit in its post-9/11 themes, allowing players to take on the role of a soldier during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Its sequel, Medal of Honor: Warfighter (2012), continues the post-9/11 "global Muslim threat" storyline. The Battlefield series (2002–2021) doesn't explicitly reference the "War on Terror" the way Medal of Honor does, but it shifted its focus to "Middle Eastern" enemies in 2005 with Battlefield 2, whereas the previous games focused on World War II and Vietnam. 

"The concurrent virtualization of both society and war makes real-world violence (such as bombings) appear 'clinical and surgical' when presented on the screen, as the viewer is used to seeing something quite similar in a more benign context via militarized entertainment."

—Oliver A. Donnelly, "Beyond America's Army: the military, eSports, and a 'recruitment-gaming assemblage'" 

A cornerstone of the military-entertainment complex is the Call of Duty franchise (2003–present), so much so that former Call of Duty (CoD) writer and producer Dave Anthony went on to become an "unknown conflict" advisor for the Department of Defense. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) added to the chorus of propaganda with its anti-Arab and anti-Muslim storylines. Its release marked a shift in militainment from World War II and Nazi enemies to the "War on Terror" and terrorist extremists. 

Shengchao Yuan writes, in "Military Entertainment After 9/11: A Case Study on Call of Duty Modern Warfare Franchise," that Modern Warfare "espouses American exceptionalism in its storytelling and symbolically presents the complex conflicts of the War on Terror through an imperialist lens." Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) was inspired by President Trump's unlawful 2020 drone strike assassination of Iranian military general Qassem Soleimani, which Trump justified by describing Soleimani as "the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world" and claiming he ordered the strike "to stop a war" with Iran. Of course, Trump went on to illegally wage a war on Iran in 2026. 

In "War Games: How America's Military-Entertainment Complex Spreads Propaganda Through Entertainment," Alexander Tomkow uses CoD as a case study in his interrogation of the relationship between the U.S. military-industrial complex and the entertainment industry. The Department of War Community Engagement Office, which operates within the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, is at the very core of this intersection, supporting "studios and production companies in the production of scripted and unscripted films, television shows, and video games." CoD's developers work closely with military consultants, even routinely visiting bases for presentations and demos of the latest military technology.

Tomkow argues that the partnership between these two entities works to "shape the collective consciousness, influencing views on patriotism, war, and the role of the U.S. on a global scale." Gaming is a convenient tool to indoctrinate the youth and "elicit consent for the U.S. military, militarism and the wars waged by the U.S. and its allies abroad," especially in the post-9/11 era. 

The flood

Call of Duty and other military shooters eventually began to incorporate zombie threats in addition to terrorists and other foreign enemies. In The Post-9/11 Video Game: A Critical Examination, Marc A. Ouellette and Jason C. Thompson study pre- and post-9/11 game titles, putting Call of Duty and its utilization of zombie enemies in direct conversation with other games like Medal of Honor and Grand Theft Auto. Across these series, zombies show up in special modes, levels, and campaigns as symbols of "foreign invasion." CoD currently has at least 13 entries with zombie-killing folded into the gameplay, beginning with Call of Duty: World at War (2008) and Call of Duty: World at War – Zombies (2009). Zombies mode is now the franchise's biggest draw. Avid CoD fans expressed to IGN that "the killer combination of the series' signature shooting mechanics combined with the sheer visceral fun of killing zombies means it will always be popular even when zombies have decayed from mainstream tastes." Some also emphasized that "the targets being zombies lets players indulge in 'guilt-free violence.'"

In State of Decay: Lifeline (2014), gameplay involves directly controlling a military unit tasked with defending a base from zombie hordes. World War Z (2013) got its own video game in 2019, a co-op third-person shooter of the same name set in the same universe as the film. Players operate military-grade defense kits and heavy weapons against swarms of zombies—avatars for Palestinians. Its sequel, World War Z: Aftermath, was released in 2021. Zombie Army Trilogy (2015) and Zombie Army 4: Dead War (2020), spin-offs of the Sniper Elite series (2005–present), are third-person tactical shooters set during wartime with zombies as the foreign threat. 

Another prominent militainment franchise is the popular first-person shooter series, Halo (2001–present). In fact, the Marine Corps became the exclusive military partner of the Halo Championship Series in 2021. The Halo series, largely set in the 26th century, follows various factions of humans and other species in conflict. In this futuristic hellscape, humanity is under constant threat and lives under the thumb of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC), a military, exploratory, training, and scientific agency that includes the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps among its service branches. During gameplay, players encounter enlistment officers who work to recruit soldiers for the UNSC. 

Halo 2 (2004) is the first post-9/11 Halo entry. In this chapter, humans are under attack by a group of alien races known as the Covenant Empire—"a theocratic hegemony made up of multiple alien species" that have declared humanity an affront to their gods. It embodies U.S. anxieties around the violent, irrational, and savage religious fundamentalist terrorism that Western narratives assign to the entire Arab and Muslim world. 

"Halo 2 reflects the American values of exceptionalism, heroism, and Christianity that were intensified during the post-9/11 period and even though it is highly militaristic, pits religious values against religious values. Like the War on Terror, Halo 2 is about protecting home and holding on to Christian ideals in the face of alien invaders."

—Amanda Barwick, Halo 2: A War of Religious Ideologies 

Zombie hordes in the Haloverse began as a feature in an unofficial player-made custom game mode in Halo 2, "a game that released in the periphery of 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, and Resident Evil, and so it was little wonder that Halo fans had zombies on their collective minds." In the post-9/11 aftermath, with zombie media exploding as a distinct response to Western fears of a dehumanized alien threat, zombies were simply the next culturally-logical step in Halo's evolution. An official zombie mode was incorporated in Halo 3 (2007), and the U.S. Air Force immediately exploited the lure of these zombie combatants to recruit more teenagers for the "War on Terror" in strip-mall parking lots. 

Among the antagonists of the Halo series are other, more unconventional zombies. The Flood, also known as the Shaping Sickness, is a collective of "an extremely adaptable, dangerous, and highly infectious parasitic life form" of alien origin that subsists by consuming sentient life. These parasites have absorbed most of the sentient life in the galaxy, spreading across the universe through endless consumption and spore dispersal, similar to the cordyceps in The Last of Us. The Flood's Latin name, Inferi redivivus, translates to "the dead reincarnated." 

In 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a flyer, encouraging enlistment in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The graphic appropriated Halo imagery, superimposed with simple text: "DESTROY THE FLOOD. JOIN.ICE.GOV," Like the Trump administration's zombie siege border game, this DHS flyer draws a direct and abhorrent parallel, unambiguously zombifying immigrants and gamifying the fascist violence dealt by ICE. In a post-Trump, post-COVID context, these games are an even more effective tool to recruit soldiers and ICE goons in the fight against a wave of greedy, disease-ridden immigrants and (bio)terrorist zombies—a real-life Shaping Sickness. 

The meaning of The Flood in the ICE ad, I suspect, is two-fold. What the Western world refers to as "October 7"—and often wrongly believes to be the beginning of the Gaza genocide—was termed the Al-Aqsa Flood by the Palestinian resistance and "shattered the myth and image of Israel as an impenetrably strong state." Israel responded to the Flood with "extensive, indiscriminate destruction," and its "genocidal actions have triggered global outrage and have elicited growing international solidarity with Palestinians." It has also garnered ardent support for the Zionist entity, thanks to aggressive Zionist hasbara disseminated by Israel and U.S. legacy media. 

ICE and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) share an insidious relationship through law enforcement training and exchange programs created in direct response to Palestinian resistance and expanded post-9/11. For more than 20 years, this training exchange has included "technology transfers that have put sophisticated surveillance capabilities in the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement." As retired Army officer and activist Anthony Aguilar observed, "ICE has grown with the global war on terror."

ICE and the IDF deploy "similar modalities—operating through the use of militarized checkpoints, constant surveillance, and sometimes arbitrary detentions and arrests." U.S. and Israeli officials have also made "comparisons between their respective walls," highlighting the violence of borders. Both of these death squads are made possible through and bolstered by the same white ethnosupremacist, fascist, and settler-colonial logics and logistics. 

"Throughout Israeli counterterrorism trainings for American police and security forces, direct parallels are made between the Palestinians and those who are presumed to threaten American safety, bolstering the idea of a US-Israeli alliance against Muslims and Arabs. Israeli trainings in counterterrorism reinforce a highly militarized discourse that calls for institutionalized racial profiling and state violence targeting Black and Brown communities and social movements that seek racial justice."

—Deadly Exchange: The Dangerous Consequences of American Law Enforcement Trainings in Israel 

The ICE recruitment ad's call to "DESTROY THE FLOOD" is too conspicuous to overlook. Halo's horde of parasitic, alien, reincarnated dead are easily adapted into a malignant metaphor for Palestinians—just as the infected in The Last of Us and World War Z are—gamifying the settler-colonial response to anti-colonial resistance. Beyond this, warfare as gameplay is neatly and macabrely expressed in testimonies from members of the Israeli military. One IDF soldier compared killing Palestinians to the childhood game of "playing around with a magnifying glass burning up ants." Another said, "Sometimes it reminds me of a PlayStation game."

Ouellette and Thompson argue that militainment video games—both in standard warfare and zombie survival modes—"offer a therapeutic solution to the geopolitical upheaval of 9/11 and, along with film and television, help redefine American identity and masculinity in a time of conflict." As with the post-9/11 disaster preparedness projects that utilized the concept of a zombie outbreak to pull in audiences and manufacture consent for U.S. imperialism, the pop culture zombie becomes an opportune addition to the subterfuge of military recruitment and indoctrination in tactical video games. The militainment industry exploits our culture's fascination with zombies for the nation-state's interests. 

These post-9/11 military shooters that engage with the abstraction of the "Middle Eastern" terrorist work to "render the Middle East as a site of perpetual war and enlist, both through their marketing strategies and through game semiotics, the gamer as a soldier willing to fight the virtual war and even support the ideology that functions as the games' political rationale." The real-world dehumanization and thingification of the brown-skinned, immigrant Other translates to their disposability in the social imagination, which makes it even easier for militainment video games—and arcade-style border patrol games commissioned by the White House—to (c)overtly portray them as zombies and frame extreme violence against them as both harmless fun and patriotic duty.