This article intends to argue that techniques from the writing of horror fiction can improve military planning. By focusing on such literature’s capacity to unsettle the reader, this article argues horror fiction may provide a useful medium for the unconstrained exploration of future conflicts in ways current planning processes cannot. More specifically, the article focuses on leveraging two aspects of horror literature––the “weird” and the “eerie”––to expand ideation around future wars. Failing to imagine the unsettling potentialities of rapidly changing technology and its interactions with human agency puts us at risk of falling into conflict environments that are not only difficult but fundamentally horrifying. Challenging oneself to work through these thought-scapes as one is planning, training, and equipping is far better than when one is engulfed in a war that seems shocking and alien. The First World War, explored below, offers a sobering example of a conflict that truly horrified its participants due to their failure to grapple with the unsettling implications of their changing world.

It's weird to see military planners talking about Mark Fisher, and eerie that he's been gone for three years already.