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Americans Unprepared for 'Dark Winter'
Friday, November 2, 2001
By Lawrence Morahan
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer

"All they would have to do in such a case would be to burglarize a hospital, steal some radioactive material and put it together with some sort of incendiary device that would aerosolize and disperse it," John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense think tank, said.

CNSNews.com
In a recent doomsday exercise code-named "Dark Winter," a group of leading national security experts determined that a bio-terrorist attack on the United States could cause massive civilian casualties and make it almost impossible for U.S. authorities to contain the spread of contagious diseases.

Under an imaginary scenario set in the winter of 2002, carried out last June under the auspices of a group of leading defense think tanks, residents of Oklahoma City were exposed to smallpox. After nine days, the first cases begin to appear. During the exercise's 13 days, the disease spreads to 25 states and 15 other countries.

Officials closed America's borders and exhausted its stocks of vaccine. By the end of the third week, the number of confirmed cases hit 16,000, the medical system had collapsed and the "government" was considering imposing martial law.

While the exercise may have exaggerated the possible consequences of a bio-terrorist attack, it clearly demonstrated that Americans were not prepared for bio-terrorism, as the anthrax attacks of the past month have shown, security experts said.
(More: CNSNews.com News Source)
2001 © CNSNews.com.

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