disaster drill designed to simulate a terrorist attack

Nerf Disaster Prevention

OK, so i was in my office's library (READ: Third-floor bathroom), reading a Wall Street Journal, and I came across an interesting article about the Topoff2 test. Topoff2, so named because it involved Top Officials, is a disaster drill designed to simulate a terrorist attack involving the use of biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons. Hospitals, FEMA, and a few other government agencies take part in the drill, which uses actual people and resources to simulate a big-assed terrorist attack.

In a nutshell, the results were "not so good." We are only marginally more prepared for a domestic terrorist attack using non conventional weapons than we were before 9/11, if we're actually any more prepared at all. The recommendations seemed to suggest that our best bet was to invent time travel, and have Jean-Claude Van Damme standing by to go back in time and prevent terrorist attacks that have already happened.

When I read about the results of the test -- particularly when I read the quotes from some of the officials involved -- it looked a lot like the kid who tried to make an "E" look like a "B" on his report card with a colored pencil (ok, me). Just a lot of excuse-making, finger-pointing, and thing-saying by experts and officials, trying to explain away the results without endangering their own jobs and without requiring any observable action on their part to improve the outcome in future tests.

Of course you're not going to come out of a dirty bomb scenario -- one of the tests they ran -- looking perfect, or even looking good. And this is not a criticism of FEMA or the agencies that handle these kinds of emergencies -- there are just too many variables, too many government agencies involved, too many complicating factors for there to be a perfect score. The whole point of the drill is to exploit vulnerabilities, find out what's broken in the process, and then fix it.

So why am I whining (and i am definitely whining, since I'm reading this out loud as I'm typing it, in a whiney voice)? Because they cheated during these tests, and they still fucked it all up! Yep -- the president, the vp, and most of the hospitals and emergency responders involved with the tests had exact information on the date, location, and nature of the threats, in advance. They were able to prepare for specific threats, and did not have to spend time diagnosing or detecting primary or secondary types of casualties, or determining if there were multiple simultaneous attacks happening elsewhere. This is not altogether different from the methodology of Mrs. Kristich, my 11th grade math teacher, who told us that we would be "having a surprise quiz on Thursday," which she did each Monday. (note: anyone who pointed out to her that this ran completely counter to what people consider actual surprises were given warnings, and then detentions. I speak from experience).

See, now this is so much bullshit. If I were to set my Ultimate team up in a defensive drill, and say "OK, the opposing offense will do the following things, in the following order, and at this exact time, so go get 'em," i would be even more worthless than they are. And if they were to actually fuck it up, I would have no choice than to stab them all to death -- which is the worst way to be stabbed!! Defense is by nature a reactive state, meant to repel attacks for which you will likely receive no warning. We run drills because we can't predict everything on paper, and we often don't really know where our true strengths and weaknesses lie until they are tested.

You know what reacts well to predetermined, linear types of attack? Machines, that's whut. Metal detectors detect metal. Spellcheck does its best to prevent people like Tiny or Aaron from homiciding the English language. Anti-theft devices explode with permanent blue ink when I steal Vera Wang dresses from The Wang Store.

Machines are not meant to adapt to new and unexpected circumstances, but people are. So isn't it a little stupid to give away the one benefit we might have in preventing massive casualties, just to save some political face? And that's all it could possibly be -- politicians and officials don't want to run a drill, watch it fail spectacularly, and then have to explain the learning process to a press corps that only really wants to write about failures.

It's OK for a participants in a well-structured drill to fail. That is the whole fucking point. In this kind of drill, there will be a certain measure of failure no matter what -- if a dirty bomb is released in downtown DC, people are going to die. If someone releases smallpox, chances are good that greater than or equal to one person is going to die of smallpox. This is, in itself, a small measure of failure, but it leads to genuine improvement, and genuine innovation. It leads to a stronger defense. Isn't it better to suck it up, face hard facts, and make tough-ass choices in the drills, in the small hope that it will help us all if we're faced with the real thing?

It can't be that obvious, right? Else they'd probably have thought of that already. Maybe it's that they don't have an Ultimate Frisbee metaphor handy to make it easier to understand.