A security research group is offering $1000 for the best short story outlining a future nightmare scenario for Australia's national security.

This mirrors a similar challenge launched by the US Army after the September 11 terror attacks, with top Hollywood action screenwriters and directors invited to come up with scenarios for future terrorist attacks on the US.

"The US military went down this path because there had been a failure of imagination by the national security community to conceive that an adversary could do something so radical as hijack and crash planes into buildings," said Athol Yates, executive director of the Australian Security Research Centre.

Mr Yates said entrants needed to write a short story with a security scenario as the story plot line or as the essential backdrop.

It must have an Australian context and be set between now and 2020.